| By Neil Johnson Reporter/Anchor, Big Radio |
Milton School District is bucking statewide trends this year with an enrollment increase of more than two dozen students.
But with that comes growing pains.
Milton Schools Superintendent Rich Dahman says classroom crowding comes amid an increase in 30 students district wide, a growth compared to the last two years.
That’s not major growth but it’s at a time when the district is adjusting to spending cuts and school staffing attrition that came during budget woes last spring.
In some classrooms in the district’s intermediate grade levels — 4 through 6 — headcounts have jumped to 27 or 28 students, and that’s as Dahman says the district continues to see new families moving into the district and open enrollments continue to trickle in, too.
The numbers are preliminary, but they come just a day ahead of public school districts submitting September third Friday public school classroom headcounts reports to the state’s Department of Public Instruction.
The state will review statewide enrollment numbers and release them publicly in late October.
The growth has not yet begun to reach trends seen in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but burgeoning class sizes are becoming noticeable as they start to peak.
Wisconsin doesn’t have a defined maximum classroom size except for school districts receiving funding under state academic achievement improvement plans.
Over the last few years, some urban school districts statewide, including Madison, have seen class sizes creep to near 30 students and above.
In the COVID-19 pandemic era years of 2020 and 2021, when some students remained at home, districts had federal COVID emergency funding at hand. Some used cash to hire extra staff to add more classrooms in a public health strategy aimed at social distancing.
During that period, classroom sizes averaging 18 or 19 were more common in local school districts. Dahman says people shouldn’t expect a return to those leaner headcounts.
Larger class sizes, particularly in the lower grade levels, makes it more likely some students could slip behind in learning. But Dahman says the district thinks its teaching and support staff is well trained to intervene if some students begin to slip through the cracks in more crowded classrooms.
This article has been edited to clarify that Wisconsin does not have a maximum classroom size except for districts that are under achievement improvement programs.
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