Parents of Mrs. Shrock’s 2nd Grade Class:

This email is to follow up on the Tuesday night orientation meeting where we briefly discussed shared concerns of class size and the tight space in the room, an environment not conducive to second-grade learning. I volunteered to be a conduit of information in a timely fashion to anyone who wanted to get onto an email list for the class.

I spent an hour this morning in Crestview Principal Ned Levine’s office with fellow parent Kristi Anderson to get more information about what can be done to mitigate the problem. Here is a brief summary from my perspective on what’s happening:

Ned Levine is sending a letter in tomorrow’s Friday folder to provide his explanation of what’s going on and what the school is doing about it.
Ned said that Sofie Shrock is getting another one-hour paraprofessional to help in addition to the one hour assistance she told us about. She can decide how to deploy that extra help.
There are 88 second graders. Sofie has 30 kids and the other two sections have 29 each. This was a surprise to all as there were 75 first-graders at the end of last school year. An additional 13 neighborhood kids enrolled over the summer. A new class won’t happen because of district formulas.
There are some long-term issues and shifts in demographics that are impacting Crestview and will continue to. There is additional development in North Boulder that will potentially impact Crestview size.
There are a lot of complex issues and variables here, as well as district thresholds on class size before resources are allotted.

Here are a few personal thoughts on some of the issues that concern me and I’d like more information on:

What constructive steps can we take quickly as a group of parents to assist in fixing the immediate problem and pushing the school district to address it with all available resources?
Taken in context with what is happening in other parts of the district, I’d like more information to determine if there are inequities in the distribution of resources to neighborhood schools.
From my perspective, there appears to be a potential danger of allowing Crestview to degrade in its overall capabilities because of district management constraints. I am concerned whether there is a disconnect between the reality of the current and future demographics at Crestview and the resources devoted to the school.
We love the diverse and creative environment that helps to define Crestview. I’d like to find some solutions to the short-term problem in our kids’ classroom and gain more information to better understand what’s going to happen over the next four years through fifth grade. I’d like to help build an even stronger school. I’d like to avoid getting to a crisis point before getting engaged and getting additional resources mobilized.

I would find it helpful personally for our group of Mrs. Shrock’s 2nd grade parents to meet as soon as possible to share information, and to invite both Crestview and district representatives so everyone might learn more about the options, constraints, issues and potential solutions. As a group, we have a few choices. We can sit back and see what happens and how the school finds resources (or not) to mitigate what we all consider a bad learning environment. Or we can raise our voices to squeak the wheel to make sure that all possible efforts are made to create a better situation.

Please let me know by the end of the weekend (email or home phone 303-998-1137) if you think this meeting is a good idea or if you have other thoughts for how to proceed and move forward constructively. If there is enough support, I’ll try to set up the meeting. If there isn’t much support, then we can use the school’s formal communications to stay informed on its actions or lack thereof, and individually react. And please let me know if you’d like to be removed from this list. I am not sharing this list with anyone else, and only intend to keep it intact until it no longer serves what I understand its purpose to be — to keep us informed collectively about the class size/environment issue and to share ideas and concerns to help our kids gain a better learning environment in Mrs. Shrock’s class.

Sorry for the too-long email! I’m thankful that Sofie has such a positive attitude, and I hope that we can collectively find ways quickly to help her provide the best possible learning situation for our kids.

Tom

cc: Ned Levine, Crestview Principal

Sheri Williams, BVSD Director of School Leadership (Director of Elementary)

Sofie Trujillo-Shrock, Crestview Teacher