Piedmont elementary schools - teaching assistants?
Does anybody know if the elementary school classes in PUSD have teaching assistants? I'm trying to figure out whether private schools actually offer an advantage in terms of teacher:student ratio over PUSD. It seems like most private schools (e.g. RWD, PS, BPC etc) aim for a target classroom size of ~22, with a primary teacher and an assistant (i.e. 22 students : 2 teachers). I gather from the various school report cards classroom sizes for PUSD elementary are also in that ballpark (~20-25 depending on the grade and year). If each of these classrooms also has a teaching assistant, PUSD elementary would be comparable to private schools in terms of student:teacher ratio. Does anybody know if this is actually the case? Appreciate any insight (from experience or otherwise) anybody can share. Thanks!
Parent Replies
PUSD elementary is not comparable to private schools in terms of student:teacher ratio.
PUSD tries to keep k through 3rd grade classes 24 students or under and 4th and 5th grades, 32 students or under. Teaching assistants AKA para educators are not always in the classroom and may not strictly be attached to one classroom. My sense is that they are in the classroom less and less as the kids get older and that by 5th grade they aren’t in the classroom very much if at all. On the flip side, besides the para educator, there were sometimes 1 to 3 parent volunteers in the kindergarten classrooms, pre-Covid. (After kindergarten, parent volunteers are no longer welcome in the classroom, with some exceptions in 1st grade. Parent volunteers are very welcome in many other areas outside the classroom.)