A New Procedure Negotiated by the United Federation of Teachers has led to a Dramatic Decrease in the Number of Oversize Classes in the Schools

uft.org

- Stephanie Taylor, Editor-in-Chief and Owner, Intelligent Luxury

If you have small pre-kindergarten, kindergarten, elementary, middle school,  high school, and college classes, you are able to attempt to teach children that need more assistance. I attended college in high school. All schools should encourage good well behaved non-violent students to take college classes in high school.  Perhaps the union should hire people who are nice to students and parents.  Bullies should be arrested for stalking and terroristic threats. 

UFT President Michael Mulgrew said: "Under the old system, the union would have to rely on contract arbitration for the hundreds of schools that were out of compliance. The result was that students could sit in oversize classes for most or even all of the year. But the new administration agreed with us that delaying class size enforcement hurts both students and teachers. The new agreement has meant that we will now have to go to arbitration on fewer than one hundred schools – and that number drops every day.”

“Thanks to our new rules, far fewer kids are finding themselves in overcrowded classrooms, and those that are getting relief sooner," Mr. Mulgrew added.

Class size limits established by the UFT contract are: pre-kindergarten,18 students with a teacher and a paraprofessional; kindergarten, 25 students; grades 1-6 in elementary schools, generally 32 students; middle school, 30-33 students; high school academic subjects, 34 students; high school physical education/gym 50 students.