By Stephen Floyd
The Silver Falls School District (SFSD) has published a new Class Size Dashboard to increase transparency regarding teacher workloads.
The dashboard went live April 11 and the district expects to update classroom figures weekly.
Assistant Superintendent Dan Busch told the SFSD Board April 10 the dashboard was in direct response to recent union negotiations where class size figured heavily. He said many questions were raised about actual class size numbers and the dashboard is intended to provide up-to-date answers.
SFSD spokesperson Derek McElfresh told Our Town it was “no small task” compiling classroom data into searchable tables. He said the district hopes the effort will benefit parents and district stakeholders.
“We hope the community finds it informative,” said McElfresh.
The dashboard allows users to view class size figures by grade range and by specific schools. Also displayed are teacher names and the grades they teach.
The largest classes came in at 32 students: Devin Brady’s fourth grade class at Butte Creek Elementary, and Emma Milstead’s sixth/seventh grade split class at Scotts Mills Elementary.
The school with the highest percentage of large classes was Bethany Charter School, whose four split classrooms for first through eighth grades had between 29 and 31 students.
For teachers who are not assigned specific classes and instead have students assigned at different periods, student contacts could range well into the 200s per day.
Teachers with the highest student contacts tended to be in physical education, such as Daniel Lever with 244 contacts, Erik Cross with 230 contacts and Craig Porter with 209 contacts at Silverton High School. Silverton Middle School PE teacher Mary Hayden had 175 contacts, while K-8 PE teacher Allison Highland had 181 contacts.
Some extracurricular teachers also had high student workloads, such as K-8 music teacher Nikita Williams with 207 contacts and high school art teacher Jody Mandish with 181 contacts.
The dashboard can be accessed at lookerstudio.google.com/s/no47VM-7gOU.
