Roseville School Candidates Share Views on Class Size

Editor’s note: Six candidates are vying for three positions on the Roseville District 623 School Board in the Nov. 8 election.

School Board Chair Lisa Edstrom and Board Clerk Tom Ring face challengers Christopher J. Heinze, Shoreview; Mike Boguszewski, Erin Azer and Kaying Thao, all of Roseville.  In August, these candidates shared their views with Roseville Patch.

In the coming days, Roseville Patch will focus on the responses of each to specific questions posed by the local chapter of the League of Women Voters at a recent forum in Roseville. The forum will be rebroadcast CTV Channel 15 at 3 p.m. and 11 p.m. today (Oct. 31) and at 7 a.m. Nov. 1.

Please discuss how important class size is to student achievement, and what is the role of the board is in improving or lowering class size

Erin Azer: I was a classroom teacher. I can tell you what it’s like to have a class that has a variety of learners, some who may need alternative lesson plans to succeed. You’re there to make connections.

You’re there to teach the content, but you are also there to teach critical thinking and foster creativity.  Class size matters.  We need to have class sizes that are smaller.  As a school board member, my role is to advocate to the Legislature for money to properly fund our schools.  Class size is huge.  It is one of the most important issues facing the district.

Kaying Thao: I think the class issue is a very big issue, and there is evidence that students [have greater success] in smaller classes.  However, I believe our district’s focus ought to be on having higher expectations for students.  Class sizes should be second to that.

Mike Boguszewski: The quick answer is funding, funding, funding. But that’s not always going to be possible in a period of limited resources. So we need to look at what class size is all about. It’s about teacher contact time with students. 

We need to find innovative ways to provide that. We may have to look at co-teaching strategies [rather than adding classroom space] or innovative scheduling.  

One district made the news because it flipped how they managed the classroom.  The teacher lectured online for 20 minutes at night then spent the day walking from kid to kid working on their homework – where the learning actually occurred. We have to look at creative ways to get that ratio down.

Lisa Edstrom: One of the biggest questions about class size is, does it make a difference? And how much difference does it make?  It is quite expensive. It would cost our district about $17 million to reduce class sizes to 15, and that doesn’t include the amount it would cost to add classrooms. 

There’s a research project called the Tennessee Star Project which found out that class size makes a difference in kindergarten through third grade.  So if you’re going to focus on class size reduction, it needs to be in those grades. After that, it makes less and less difference. So there are there ways to focus our resources rather than class size.

Christopher Heinze: At Emmett Williams, we had class sizes of 36 in both sections this year, which caused 10 students to leave. Not only did we lose kids who are residents of our district, but we also lost the state dollars [the per-pupil funding from the state]. At $6,000 per kid, the district lost $60,000.

It’s all about [teacher-student] ratio. If it means having two teachers in a classroom or having teachers float between classrooms [instead of adding classroom space], we need to keep that ratio down.

Tom Ring: Class size is important. The research is persuasive that in grades K-3, the size of the class does matter a great deal, so we should be very careful about keeping those class sizes small.  And we have been. 

There’s a stair-step approach in the lower elementary grades. After about the third grade, the research indicates that the quality of the teacher is the most determinative factor in achievement. The better the teacher, the better the relationship, the better the achievement. So [in higher grades] we focus on professional development, professional supplementation of the classroom. 

It’s always a trade-off between cost and benefit. Class size reduction is expensive, and in these tight budgetary times, it needs to be done in the best way, and that’s in the lower grades.

Next:  The candidates on the achievement gap