Parents and teachers urge board to address class-size inequities at Union Pleasant

Several parents and a teacher used the public‑comment period on March 12 to press the board about class-size policy and perceived inequities across elementary schools.

Amelia Peek, a Union Pleasant teacher and parent, laid out a numerical critique of district class-size caps and their unintended distributional effects. She explained that a uniform policy (for example: K–2 maximums and 3–5 maximums) can create very different effective averages depending on school enrollment and the number of sections per grade. "The effective result of that, if you actually crunch the numbers, is that the range of possible class sizes at smaller schools is from 14.5 to 28," she told the board. "Here at the biggest school, our range is 21.25 to 28. That puts our average at 24.5. Those students are going through this system getting less (per-student attention)." She urged the board to consider policies that average or otherwise normalize class sizes across buildings so students at larger schools are not systematically disadvantaged.

A parent, Sherry Green, offered a contrasting but complementary testimony: she thanked staff for the supports that followed her child's Tourette syndrome diagnosis and listed the many ways the district supported her daughter academically and extracurricularly. "The teachers at HMS kept encouraging her to try new things and now my daughter is thriving there," Green said, listing clubs, music, and course work her daughter has taken.

Board members acknowledged the comments and said the topic would be taken under advisement. Several trustees noted the complexity of master scheduling and shared that staffing decisions are made with building-level input but that the board and administration will continue monitoring class-size impacts as enrollment and staffing decisions develop.

The public-comment sequence ended when the board recessed into a scheduled executive session to address a superintendent evaluation.