Forest Acres to Add 5K Class

Kindergarten students at Forest Acres Elementary School will benefit from the creation of an additional 5K class in the near future.

The Board of Trustees for the School District of Pickens County voted this week to add two new 5K classes in the county, one at Forest Acres and the other at Pickens Elementary School. Increased class sizes this year have added challenges to classrooms that were already at capacity, officials said.

"We hope to get them in place just as soon as we can," Superintendent Henry Hunt said. The district hopes to hire two teachers and two assistant teachers in the coming weeks.

The district eliminated 30 teaching positions in the 2010-11 school year, according to Board of Trustees Chairman Alex Saitta. The cuts were made in effort to increase a dwindling general fund, but this year there has been room in the budget to add back some of those positions.

"Despite the overall cut in spending, the board has managed to add back 8.5 of those teaching positions," Saitta said. "Our aim is to continue to knock down class sizes."

Hunt acknowledged that adding the positions mid-year was not the ideal situation but a necessary step to improve the classroom setting for the students and teachers.

"There will be some disruption and adjustment," Hunt said. "It's a matter of trying to meet the needs of the students."

Forest Acres Principal Darian Byrd has been concerned about the size of his 5K classes and sees this as a necessary step towards meeting his students needs.

"I'm a firm believer that when you're able to focus more on our entering students they will be more successful later on," Byrd said.

Many of the classes that were cut last year were 4K classes which reduced the 4K program to half of its precut capacity.

"Many of the kids that qualified for 4K didn't get it," Byrd said. "That worried me to death."

The elimination of the 4K classes and the crowded 5K classes had an immediate impact on the success of the students.

"We saw a 10 point difference and I attribute it to not being able to serve those 4K students," Byrd said.

District officials are in the process of hiring for the two new 5K positions and hope to add the new classes soon, but not too soon Byrd hopes.

"I don't like that it's 13 weeks into the school year and we're just now getting to this," Byrd said. But he also doesn't want to rush the kindergartners into a new class only to turn around and send them home for vacation.

"It's frustrating that we had to wait this long but I'm happy that we're doing it," Byrd said. "I think we're going to see some immediate effects."