by Brian Keaney

A new first grade teacher will be hired at the Avery School due to soaring enrollments, but a fourth grade classroom will be left with a large number of students.  The School Committee voted to hire an additional first grade teacher on Wednesday night at their last meeting before schools open, but did not take a vote on the fourth grade teacher.

The number of students in the first grade will shoot up from 36 last year to 53 when schools open their doors this week.  When the School Department presented their budget during the winter they projected having two classrooms of 19 students each for a total of 38.

Instead of two additional first graders there are 17 additional students.  Principal Clare Sullivan said the nearly 50% jump was due to a large number of families moving into either apartments in East Dedham, or with extended family after the child’s family lost their home. 

Without the additional teacher there would be a class of 26 students and a class of 27 students.  Sullivan said, and the Committee agreed, that these numbers were too high for a first grade classroom.  With the additional teacher there will now be classes of 17, 18, and 18.

These lower class sizes are comparable to class sizes in the rest of the district.  At the Oakdale and Greenlodge Schools first grade classrooms range from 16 to 18 students, and the Riverdale’s two first grade classes will have 20 and 21 students, respectively. 

Funding for the additional teacher will come from savings associated with “creative hiring” of new teachers, Superintendent June Doe said.  As some teachers retired or left the district this summer they were replaced with others at a lower salary level.

Enrollment in the fourth grade at Avery has also risen to troubling levels, officials say.  A “looping classroom” designed to meet the needs of certain students with language-based disabilities will have 18 students in it, higher than the 14 or 15 students it is traditionally capped at.

Sullivan cautioned that the looping classroom is designed to have a smaller class size, and that the higher it goes the less likely parents may be willing to accept that placement for their children.  This could lead to expensive out of district placements for some students. 

The second fourth grade classroom will have 29 students in it, Sullivan said.  Doe did not recommend hiring an additional fourth grade teacher, however, saying they would have to take a look at the profiles of the students of the fourth grade.

As School Committeeman Tom Ryan noted, the class sizes in fourth grade classrooms are “lower across the board” in the other elementary schools.  At the Greenlodge School fourth grade classes have either 17 or 18 students, at the Oakdale they have 22 or 24 students, and at the Riverdale there are 15 and 17 students in the fourth grade classes.

In total, an additional 36 students have moved into the district and enrolled at the Avery School.  “They have been coming in droves all summer long,” Sullivan said, “and they seem to like first and fourth grades the best.”

In total, the Avery School will have 28 more students than was projected when the budget was being drafted and presented in March.  Oakdale will have five more students, Riverdale will have three more, and Greenlodge will have three fewer.