A Facebook page called “Smaller Classes for Prince William County Schools” has existed for just a week and a half and already has 1,212 likes.
Prince William Education Association (PWEA) members created the page after a community meeting on Feb. 11 in which they dialogued with parents and teachers about ways to raise awareness about class sizes. Prince William County currently has the highest class sizes in the Commonwealth.
The posted photos are probably the most effective aspect of the page. In them, teachers, parents and children hold up signs telling how many students are in their Prince William county classrooms. The photos demonstrate how many students are really sitting in classrooms, whereas teacher ratios that include other educators, such as administrators, counselors and specialty teachers, can be misleading.
It reveals that even elementary-school classes run between 25 and 30 students, while high-school and middle-school classrooms are much higher. Additionally, middle- and high-school educators hold signs telling how many students they have in all of their classes combined. This number can reach as high as 189 for certain subjects, such as middle school social studies.
Teachers have also begun branding the page with clever slogans on it and on t-shirts that say, “Class Size Matters.” These shirts are blue and white as per PWCS colors; PWEA members encourage parents and citizens to wear blue and white to stand up for smaller class sizes.
But according to one of the page's administrators, Jennifer Rokasky, who is a PWEA member, Prince William County School employee and former biology teacher, the most important aspect of the page is its call to action. The page encourages the community tell their elected officials a reduction in class sizes ought to be a priority.
To facilitate this, the Facebook page continues to repost a petition addressed to the School Board and Board of County Supervisors asking the members of those boards to “Develop and implement a practical long-term strategy to significantly reduce class sizes in PWCS.”
The petition begins, “Prince William County schools have the largest class sizes in Virginia. When classrooms and schools are overcrowded, teaching and learning are jeopardized and students suffer. To lower class sizes is to protect our children’s future.”
However, while the page has gotten over a 1,000 likes, the class size petition lags behind that number with just 418 signatures to date.
Rokasky hopes that more people will consider signing the petition, seeing how all students are negatively impacted when class sizes are too high. In higher class sizes students receive less attention from their teachers, and that impacts their learning.
However, even more important than having people sign the petition, she wants citizens to show up for citizen’s time at the BOCS meeting Tuesday at 7 p.m. and the McCourt Building on Prince William Parkway, and tell the supervisors they want to see a decrease in class sizes. If citizens do not feel comfortable speaking publicly, she said that just physically being present should demonstrate to the supervisors that the issue is important to many in the community.
“Absolutely. [we’d like them to attend the BOCS meetings.] It’s one thing to sit there and have this online dialogue, but to actually get people out there- we can inundate them with emails, we can show them the petition, but to have everyone there physically and speaking.”
Rokasky shared antidotal evidence of how class sizes impact student performance. She explained that a colleague of hers moved down to Charlottesville, where she is now teaching Spanish as she once did at Woodbridge Senior High School. At Woodbridge her Spanish classes had approximately 30 students; the average class grade was a C. At her new public high school, she has many fewer students in each class. She offered the same curriculum and lessons, and the students were earning more A’s and B’s in her class. She thinks class sizes are the reason for the difference.
Rokasky thinks that if Prince William class sizes were reduced, Prince William Public School students would also see better grades, and most importantly, they would be receiving a better education.
For a similar reason, parent Esther Carmichael is supporting smaller class sizes. Carmichael’s son attends Bristow Run Elementary. While she says the school has very supportive teachers and administrators, as well as high community involvement, like most Prince William Schools, the class sizes still run high.
“My son has 29 kids in his class for fifth grade. Some I’m hearing have even more,” said Carmichael, explaining that in some cases even kindergarten classes are high, and the school division is bringing in assistant teachers, rather than opening a new class.
This year, her son has been struggling with math and she thinks high class sizes are part of the problem. Carmichael grew up in the county, and attended Potomac High School in the late 90s. She said that class sizes were too large then, but it has only gotten worse.
“Obviously there is a huge effect. For me personally, I grew up attending Prince William County Schools, and it was a lot harder growing up with so many kids. Any time I had a smaller class I did so much better and was able to learn,” she said
Esther’s parents saw that her grades were suffering, and enrolled her in private school where she did much better. When it comes to her son’s education, she is considering moving to Loudoun County where class sizes are smaller.
But Carmichael would much rather stay in a community that she loves and fix the problem of class sizes. She knows it is going to take more than one parental voice to make a difference, so she has been reaching out to friends and neighbors.
“I’ve been sharing it with everybody, everybody that I know. I attended a town hall about it. It’s an issue and it’s a big issue,” she said.
She knows that parents have spoken out about the reduction of recess time, so she does not understand why they have not taken a stand on reducing classroom size, which she believes is a much bigger issue for the county.
She said that many parents are just starting to realize the effect of large class sizes. For so long schools themselves have been overcrowded and that issue overshadowed the number of students per classroom.
Another reason may be that citizens, while they want better schools, also want to keep their taxes low. But for Carmichael, personally, she would rather pay more in taxes than not have her son receive a quality education.
“I don’t why they would even consider lowering the tax rate at this point. We have such a crisis in this school. The fact that the assessments went up is a good thing,” she said.
Rokasky agrees. She knows there is talk about greater transparency and spending money in the right places, but as a Prince William County employee, she said people do not see the cut backs that the schools have already made.
However, supervisors, such as Gainesville’s Pete Candland (R), have made both reducing class sizes and keeping taxes low a priority, and others have acknowledged lower class sizes as a county priority, even if it was not funding in the most recent budget presentation.
While the petition does not include specifics on how the BOCS should go about funding a reduction in class sizes, Rokasky said that the supervisors could start by restoring the $8.7 million in school funding as per School Board member Betty Covington’s resolution that the money would be spent on teachers and decreasing classroom sizes.
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