Back to School Night

Tonight was "Back to School Night" at Sarah's school. I think most "normal" states would refer to this as an open house. There IS something called Open House at the end of the school year where the whole family is welcome and the students' best works are on display. Back to School Night is a parents only event, though some parents ignore that request and bring their kids. This year they even had the yard duty supervisors present so the kids could come and play on the playground while the parents went into the classroom, but some parents STILL brought their kids into the classrooms. I left my kids home with my husband, as I do every year.

Over the weekend, big changes came about at the school. There were too many first, third, fourth and fifth grade students for the number of teachers based on class limits. I'm not sure of the limits for 4th and 5th, but the lower grades max out at 20 students. The usual solution is to have a combination class. They ended up hiring a new teacher and she took on a 4th/5th combo class, which meant kids had to be moved and lots of parents were NOT happy. Sarah is in the 4th grade this year and was not moved. I am grateful for this, because she had been in a combo class last year and I feel that it was "someone else's turn," if that makes sense. The thing is, they try to get the kids who are not behavior problems and generally work well on their own. Sarah definitely fits into this category. A teacher could not "do" a combo class with a lot of behavior problems going on. The problem with the other group of kids that needed combo classes is that they were first and third graders, and you don't really mix up kids unless they are one grade level apart, NOT two grade levels. So, they created a 1st/2nd combo class and a 2nd/3rd combo class to fix the situation with the 1st and 3rd grades. Lots of kids and parents were upset, but in the end, it all worked out. I was talking to a 5th grade student who got put in the combo class with the new teacher, and she seems to think that the new teacher is pretty nice. The problem is that she wasn't present at back to school night-- maybe she had a prior engagement. I'm sure the parents were hoping to meet this new teacher, and weren't too thrilled when it did not happen.

I can see that this will be an interesting year....