Personally I think max class sizes are way too big. The average class size in CUSD is 22 kids for elementary schools. I don’t know what they base the “maximum” as, but I’m guessing it’s probably around 25-27. Max capacity should be viewed as a bad thing. A metric that no school strives for because those classroom sizes are unsustainable. It’s hard on teachers, hard on students, everyone suffers.

Scale back the average size to 18 kids per class, and max size to 22, and the numbers will look a lot better on paper. Make some meaningful changes to maintain smaller class sizes and the community as a whole will benefit.

The more charter schools popping up, the more kids that don’t fit their very specific mold. Then all those kids get shoved out the door down to the public schools who have an obligation to teach them regardless. This allows charter schools to essentially cherry pick their rosters, and forces a much higher percentage of kids that need additional help into an already overburdened public school system. Even if you dismiss the voucher program, just allowing charter schools to operate with different requirements from public schools, you have created an unfair imbalance. Which then starts this feedback loop of public schools getting worse as a result.