Student enrollment in the Nashua School District may be stable, but candidates for the Board of Education say the number of students in classes should be reduced.

“To me, class size comes first,” said BOE candidate and former teacher Dorothy Oden at a forum held on Wednesday night at Nashua High School South. “First grade at Amherst Street has the highest number of first grade students – a little over 25.”

The average district class size varies from school to school, but the amount of students can range from 29 to 17, according to candidates.

Superintendent Mark Conrad said class sizes vary greatly from year to year, based on the amount of students in a particular grade level.

“You will see some variation and that really has to do with the
mathematical impact of dealing with small classes,” Conrad said in a phone interview Thursday. “You might have one year where you have 40 students, and for two classes, that would be 20 per class. Then you find the next year, the larger grade comes up, and you’re at 50, which all the sudden puts you at 25 per class.”

School board candidates agreed the district should work toward maintaining smaller classes.

“I don’t believe that we should have fifth grade classes that are 28 students, or 29 students,” incumbent candidate Tom Vaughan said. “I can’t think of any classroom composition that could have 28 or 29 kids and not have a very stressful job.”

A higher number of students in classrooms makes it difficult for teachers to meet their students’ individual, educational needs, candidates said. To combat the problem of having too many kids in a class, candidates said hiring more teachers and supervisors may be a solution.

To achieve smaller class sizes more money would need to be directed toward hiring teachers, incumbent candidate David Murotake said.

“When I first joined the board in 2010, we faced a $6 million hole in the budget,” he said. “Eighty percent of the school’s budget is out there to pay people. …How many teachers could we hire for $6 million a year?

Incumbent candidate Sandra Ziehm said students would benefit from having the attention of more teachers and paraprofessionals, citing Charlotte Avenue Elementary School’s decision to ban the game of tag as an example.

“When I look at that whole issue, I ask myself, ‘How many monitors do they have outside? How many people they got out there watching them?” she said. “I think that those are the kind of things that we need.”

Candidates said there may be ways to adjust district class sizes, and that they plan to explore the issue further.

“I don’t think there’s any one magic number that says, ‘This is the best class size,’” challenger George Farrington said. “You can begin by talking and sitting down with the administration to say, ‘How did we get from a 17 to 29 spread?’?”

“We can probably fix those 28, and 29 class sizes. We can shift things around, we should be able to shift things around, and do that,” Vaughan said.

Six candidates are vying for four seats on the Board of Education in the Nov. 5 city election. Incumbent Dennis Ryder was not present at Wendesday night’s forum.

Emily Hoyt can be reached at 594-6402 or ehoyt@nashuatelegraph.com.