Earlier today, MCEA's President, Doug Prouty, and I met with the Chief Operating Officer, the Deputy Superintendent, and the leadership of the two other unions. (This meeting - the "Associations/Deputy/Chief Operating Officer Committee", or ADC, occurs every two weeks). One of the primary topics today was our ongoing monitoring of class sizes. Key data from the most recent reports are:
* The average elementary school class size is currently 20.8
* There has been an increase in the number of elementary combination classes
* the number of oversized middle school and high school classes is about identical to where we were this time last year (still too many - but due to improved scheduling, there has not been an increase in the number of oversized classes, even though more than 1,000 additional students have enrolled in MCPS than anticipated in the budget)
* MCEA has beealso been inquiring about oversized classes in Pre-K, where in recent years late enrollments during the school year have driven a number of classes above the recommended guidelines. The good news is that MCPS is now planning for the addition of three more Pre-K classes to accomodate students still enrolling, rather than driving existing class sizes up over the recommended maximums.
MCEA and MCPS continue to work on individual situations where there are significantly oversized classes to see what accomodations can be made.
Tom Israel, MCEA Executive Director.
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