Superintendent: staffing ratios drive split classrooms; district proposes reducing K-2 class size to 24

The superintendent of Granite School District said staffing formulas, last adjusted in February 2008, determine how many full‑time teachers a school receives and that local school leaders — not the district office — decide whether to create split classrooms. The superintendent also said the district has proposed budget changes to reduce class sizes in kindergarten through second grade from 27.25 to 24 and will send that proposed budget to the Board of Education by June 1, after which the district may proceed with a truth-in-taxation process if a tax increase is needed.

The proposal matters because, the superintendent said, split classrooms can be “very challenging” in smaller schools and are more likely when a school’s total number of teachers is low. “If I'm at a school with 300 kids in it, and I have that class size ratio, some people have asserted that our class size has gone up. This number has been steady as FTE ratio since 02/2008,” the superintendent said. Using the district ratio as an example, a 300‑student school would receive roughly 11 teachers, and a 600‑student school would receive about 22 teachers under current formulas.

Under those allocations, the superintendent said, local leaders decide how to assign teachers across grade levels. “Then it's up to the school to determine what to do with that 11 FTE. The district does not influence that decision in any way, shape, or form. We leave that to the local school,” the superintendent said, noting that a K‑5 school with 11 teachers will likely have at least one split classroom because there are six grade levels to cover.

The superintendent said the district is proposing to add FTE where class sizes are most challenging at the lower grades. “We have proposed additional funding to reduce class size at from the K to 2 level, down to 24, not 27.25,” the superintendent said. Using the example numbers from the video, reducing the K‑2 target to 24 would change how many teachers those grades receive (the superintendent noted a 300‑student K‑2 population would yield roughly 12.5 teachers at that ratio).

The superintendent also tied the staffing issue to possible school consolidations. “We prefer that we don't have splits. That's why we're looking at school consolidations and school closures. I know that there are some of our schools sitting at not even this number, but even less than 200 students. And if you're trying to staff a school, I know some of their FTE has been as low as 8 teachers, and trying to divide that between 6 grade levels. You're going to clearly have some splits in that type of situation,” the superintendent said.

No formal Board of Education vote or motion was reported in the video; the superintendent described proposed budget steps and the local decision-making process for allocating teachers. The superintendent closed by inviting follow-up questions from the public and school communities.

The superintendent recorded the remarks at the old Cypress High School, which the district will vacate once a new Cypress High School opens.