Fair warning: This post may not be of interest unless you have kids at River Elementary School or are thinking of buying or renting a home in Carmel to send your kids to our exceptional public school system.
Last night the Carmel School District held a board meeting at the Carmel River School with Jay Marden, the principal, presenting performance numbers and goals for the school. There were several excellent presentations.
The board also heard from the district’s administration on their strategy for the unexpected increase in the number of students registered at River school.
As I have said in earlier posts, the school system here is incredible and to some extent a victim of its own success. Along with the beach, the beauty, and quality of life–the schools are big part of why families buy or rent homes in Carmel.
The Issue
The number of students enrolled at River Elementary is approaching a critical number. I covered the issue and options presented at the board meeting in an earlier post, Carmel River School Boundary Issues.
The Several Steps in the Short Term Solution
The administration recommended a series of steps, some already underway, to address the problem in the near term.
Conduct a survey to confirm that the students that are enrolled, should be enrolled. This is already underway. As of last night, 92% of River School families have provided the administration with the documents required to prove residency.
As a result, three families have come forward and confirmed that they have moved out of the district and will not be returning in September.
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Establish a Tip line for anonymous reporting of possible residency violations
Four tips have been received and are being investigated.
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Quantify the number of Inter (from other districts) and Intra (from other elementary schools within the district) transfers
There are 17 students at the school from outside the district. There are 6 students from Tularcitos elementary school, some at the request of parents, others at the request of the district.
The highest concentration of these is 6 at one grade level.
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Acknowledge that if the critical number is reached in a given class, some of these non-resident students may loose their place
The administration has structured a prioritization list for the transfer students to determine in what order they would loose their “seat.” It is important to note, and there was some confusion at the meeting, under this solution every child living within the River School footprint maintains their right to attend River School ahead of all of the transfer students. These transfer students are only entitled to attend the school if the number of students in their grade is under the “caps.”
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Establish a strategy for dealing with increased class size.
As class size increases in each grade, the administration proposes to add resources to the class.
For example, in first through third grades for classes with up to 22 students, the lead teacher is supported with 90 minutes of an instructional assistants time in the classroom. For classes with 23-25 students that time allocation increases to 120 minutes. In the event there are 26 or more students in a class, the administration either creates a combination class (a smaller class of approximately 18 students made up of kids from two grades) or frees up a classroom by instituting AM/PM kindergarten.
Similar guidelines exist for each grade level.
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Modifying kindergarten to release the pressure
There are currently 4 classroom dedicated to Kindergarten. In the event a classroom needs to be “freed up” to address overcrowding the most likely way to do so is to modify the kindergarten schedule so the same number of students are served by 3 (or 2) classrooms versus the current 4.
Option 1) Split the day into AM and PM Kindergarten classes. Unfortunately with AM/PM Kindergarten resources such as Spanish and computers become a problem and the schedule can be a problem for parents. Teachers are not supported of this approach as the teaching day is shorter for each group of kids.
Option 2) Establish staggered day Kindergarten. One half of the class would arrive at 8:30 and depart at 1:50 while the second half would arrive at 9:30 and depart at 3:00pm. This would give the teachers and additional hour a day focused on 1/2 the class at a time.
Conclusion
At the moment there are still spaces available in each grade before the “cap” requiring the Kindergarten change is reached. [In grade 1 there are 13 spaces; grade 2, 5 spaces; grade 3, 8 spaces; grade 4, 19 spaces; and grade 5, 11 spaces.]
Again, as of today we have not reached the point where modified kindergarten or combination classes will be required.
The School board will be reviewing the numbers periodically and at the end of June will structure the classes and allocate the additional resources according to the guidelines. In the event a “cap” is reached they will take the steps necessary to reduce transfer students and consider adopting the options related to Kindergarten and combination classes.
As I learn more, I will post updates here. If you would like to hear from me by email when I post something on the topic, send me an email or give me a call.