St. Paul School Finances—Update

As you might expect, my last post about this topic generated quite a bit of discussion. Thank you to everyone who contributed to the conversation. I appreciated your honesty and insight. I’d like to follow up and clarify some of the questions that you raised.

The most common concern was that next year’s second grade classes would be too large if we move back to two sections (rather than the three first grades we have this year). Right now we have 56 first graders, and we expect to have 54 move to second grade next year. We have not had any new enrollment in next year’s second grade. This would be 27 students per class. (One more than the current maximum of 26 per class). We can hold to the limit of 26, but I would hate to lose two students because of that cap.

Here are some questions raised by parents:

Does this mean you’re planning to allow 30 students in a class?
We are NOT planning to increase the maximum of 26 in a class—we’re talking about an exception for one grade. It’s important to note that it is not our goal to have all classes be 20 or less in size. As a Catholic school attempting to keep tuition at a reasonable level, we simply cannot offer the very small classes that might be found at private schools charging perhaps three or four times what we charge in tuition.
How will this affect our current third grade? Fifth grade?
If the third grade enrollment holds at 60, I expect that we'll continue to have three sections as they move into fourth grade. However, if it drops by 4 or 5 students, we'll have the same situation as with first grade. We'll need to make this decision before the end of the school year (and typically not everyone has enrolled by then). I just want to make sure that families are not surprised if we cannot accept every student back (If people wait until the summer to register, we may have to make the decision to cap enrollment at 52 per grade). Fifth grade will not be affected. Our policy is 26 students per grade, and I do not expect that to change.

I can appreciate that everyone (parents, teachers, and students) prefers the smaller class sizes. I firmly believe that all of our classes provide a high quality education, and most of them are between 22 and 25 students in size. It's always a balancing act, and Msgr. Halfpenny and I are committed to looking at all alternatives with our primary goal of continuing to provide a high quality Catholic education. My purpose in writing the article was to ensure that the process of decision-making is as transparent as possible, and to invite parent comment.