8.4 Defines elementary instructional duties as no more than 25 clock hours of pupil contact teaching assignments per week. 8.5 Discusses class size, but no caps or limitations. There may not be enough extra curricular activities to go around in a large school. Many students find the large school to be impersonal. Disadvantaged students in some studies appear to experience the most negative effects in large school settings, though a slight positive effect has been found for the higher achieving, higher SES student.
Parents find the teachers and administration more accessible in smaller schools.
This could be mitigated by appropriate enlargement of the core facilities, consistent with space availability. Policy 5.09 calls for a relationship of facilities to educational programs in the context of safe, functional, adaptable, sanitary, comfortable, attractive, energy efficient and permanent and long lasting school plants. Both policies are general and permit maximum Board flexibility. Policy 5.15 restricts elementary space utilization to 30 square feet per primary grade student 27 square feet per intermediate grade which impacts the size of new and the capacity existing schools. A school is not a building, but rather a learning community.