AMHERST – School officials are moving toward a class size policy, and Associate Superintendent Adam Steel urged the school board recently to set class size maximums for the Amherst School District.

Over the past several years, he said, Amherst’s first and second grades have had some of the highest class sizes in New Hampshire, a situation “proven to lead to bad outcomes.”

In the absence of a policy, class sizes have been growing slowly over the years, and no one notices except the teachers, he said.

“Our class sizes, grades one and two in particular, are enormous compared with the rest of the state,” he said.

There were a number of teachers in the audience of the March 29 Amherst School Board meeting, and they applauded Christine Landwehrle, the district’s director of curriculum and professional development, when she said teaching has become more challenging.

“Children have “more and more social and emotional needs,” she said, and with large classes, teachers can find it hard to individualize instruction, and “that feels terrible as a teacher.”

First grade teacher Mary Ireland talked about the challenges of having 23 young chidren in a class.

“Eighteen would be fabulous,” she said.

Board members asked about the use of paraprofessionals, but teachers said they preferred smaller classes,

and Steel said the pay difference between teachers and paraprofessionals is not great.

“If hearts and minds don’t reach you, perhaps dollars and cents will,” said Steel told the board, because if they don’t intervene early it will cost more later in special services. “We end up paying for it one way or another.”

He cited the Tennessee Star Study, research that showed controlling class size is vital to student success, especially under third grade.

Over the past few months Landwehrle, working with teachers and administrators, produced a document to guide class sizing practices, and school officials will be discussing it in coming months.

For grades 1 and 2 the goal is 18 children, with 20 considered high and 16 low.

The New Hampshire Department of Education’s standard for those grades is a goal of 20.

“This is not a school district that wants to hit minimum standards,” Steel told the board.

On his recommendation, the board voted to allow him to find funds to hire an additional second grade teacher for next fall.

There is concern about the size of next year’s grade 5, but Steel said he isn’t ready to hire another teacher because of complications involving team teaching.

He also broached the subject of renovating or replacing Wilkins School. Enrollment seems to be trending upward, he said. One of the first grade teachers talked about how the building was not built for today’s teaching methods, with their emphasis on hands-on learning.

Kathy Cleveland can be reached at 673-3100 or kcleveland@cabinet.com.