Sisters schools seeing second year of growth

If two years constitute a trend, Sisters schools are entering a period of growth. The schools have experienced significant enrollment increases in 2003 and 2004 after seeing virtually none in the preceding six years.

Enrollment early this month (October is commonly used as a benchmark) reached 1,281, an increase of 86, or 7.2 percent, from last October. By the same token, the 1,195 students counted in 2003 were 72, or 6.4 percent, more than in 2002.

Yet between 1996 and 2002, the numbers moved up or down a little each year but were nearly the same at the end of that period as they were in the beginning -- 1,112 in 1996 vs. 1,123 in 2002.

(All numbers count only "regular" students, not those in various alternative programs who receive district services but do not ordinarily occupy classroom seats.)

The increase this fall has caught the attention of district administrators, including Superintendent Ted Thonstad, who moved into his job in August.

"This district has a real commitment to small class sizes," Thonstad told The Nugget last week. "That's been one of its primary goals. And when you have growth like this it becomes very difficult to do (maintain small class sizes) in a small district because you can't make the adjustments you need to make to reduce class sizes."

He noted that Sisters' fourth grade illustrates the problem this year. It grew from 64 students last October to 82 this year, an increase of 18.

"In a bigger district where you may have four or five elementary schools, if your fourth grade gets out of whack at one you can balance it, which is what Redmond does, by sending the kids someplace else," he said.

"The other thing that some districts are able to do because they have some type of reserve fund is that they can hire a teacher to solve the problem. If we had the money we could have hired a teacher and reduced class sizes in two of the grades (fourth and fifth) by creating a blend between the two grades."

Lacking that ability, Sisters Elementary School currently has three fourth-grade classes of 29 or 30 students each and three fifth-grade classes with 31 students each.

The superintendent acknowledged that space is also a problem at the elementary school. It doesn't have any more; all classrooms are occupied. One possible way of relieving that problem in the future will be to reserve a room or two for classroom use in the anticipated remodeling of what will become the district's administration building (see story page 3) across Locust Street from the elementary school.

Another example of difficulty created by growth, Thonstad noted, has been excessive enrollment in what had been a ninth grade "honors" English class.

"We got 49 kids for honors English and we couldn't teach two sections because we didn't have the staff," he said.

The solution has been to spread the students among regular classes and give them opportunities for advanced study through what is called differentiated education.

Thonstad said he wasn't too worried about that because "I have a hard time philosophically with sorting kids at the ninth grade anyway." But he acknowledged that the loss of the class "created an uproar in the community" and upset several parents.

Another matter of concern for some people is the effect of students who live in the Redmond School District but have enrolled in Sisters schools. For the second year, to help relieve overcrowding in its own schools Redmond has employed a permissive policy on requests for transfers to other districts.

Sisters added 27 Redmond students to its classes last year and 19 more this year, for a current total of 46.

"We have 11 of them at the elementary school, pretty well spread out," Thonstad said. "At the middle school we have 14, but it's not a big impact. The biggest impact is at the ninth grade in the high school (10 students). So I don't think that Remond is having the impact that some people think it's having."