This Board is responsible for ensuring BCPS complies with state constitutional class size limits. The Board is also responsible for ensuring school safety and providing quality education to its students.

My kindergartener and 1st grader have 25 children in their classes. State statute allows for a maximum of 18. This isn’t an isolated problem—it’s a district-wide problem and is the result of cutting schools’ funding via reducing FTE projections 10% across the board. Even when more students showed up beyond the projections, principals are not receiving additional funding/staffing as previously promised. Principals are being told to rebalance internally, which requires dismantling a class and necessarily overloading another grade level.

BCPS had a class size problem starting on the first day of school. We are now 6 weeks into the school year with no relief. Stakeholder concerns have been blown off and Board inquiries have gone unanswered. In elementary schools, more time is now spent in classroom and behavior management due to class sizes and reduces staffing. This is actively harming student learning. Additionally, I worry about student safety in an emergency given the large class sizes for BCPS’s youngest learners.

Failing to address class sizes will lead to further brain-drain of teaching talent in BCPS and cost our children their educational potential.

This appreciate this item— it is necessary for our students and dedicated teachers, and I would further support additional directives to address class sizes immediately.