Questions from City Council: class sizes

Councilor Eddy: average class size in elementary school?

Brian Allen answers: 22 to 1

Next year?

again, on average 22 to 1, but 29 classes with 27 or more students.

More than this year?

Not an increase...fairly consistent

Do we have a goal on class size?

22 to 1 is the foundation budget number

Are we meeting our goal?

Yes, Brian Allen says, because it's a priority of the school committee. We'd like to have NO classrooms with over 22.

What would it cost?

Require 13 to 19 more teachers: $750,000 to $1 million dollars. Some of that money is in the budget (13 of them) due to the money allocated by the city manager in this year's budget. We still have 16 classrooms that'll be over 27 students.

(Eddy's not following this.)

"If we aren't going to get to where the advocates want us to be, and we aren't at where the administration would like us to be, do we have a plan to get us up there from year to year?"