Teachers Express Concerns Over Class Sizes
All renewing nonresident students who have applied to attend Lexington City Schools will be able to reenroll this fall after a tense Board meeting on July 8, Superintendent Rebecca Walters told The News-Gazette on Monday.
The School Board, at its June 3 meeting, had approved a nonresident wait list for the coming year that included eight students already attending Lexington schools as it faced larger class sizes at some grade levels.
Only 15 students remained on the waitlist as of this week, all of whom are new nonresident applicants.
For some nonresident families who wished to keep their children in Lexington City Schools, the wait for a decision has been agonizing.
“This has been a rough month for our family,” Brent Hierman, whose daughter Rose was waitlisted, said at the most recent Board meeting last Wednesday. “Our daughter has been at Waddell since kindergarten, so it’s the school she knows. The uncertainty and anxiety of whether she will be welcomed back or disposed of has caused quite a great deal of pain, as well as more than a few tears. I don’t wish those feelings on any parent, and certainly not on any child.”
Rose was one of four rising nonresident third-graders who remained on the waitlist last week, and one of three who have attended Waddell Elementary since kindergarten. Nonresident students live outside of Lexington city limits and pay tuition to attend. But the division attempts to keep class sizes below 18 for kindergarten through second grade and below 20 students for third through fifth grade.
This year, several grade levels were at or above their caps with a particularly large cohort of rising third-graders.
When faced with too many students, the division’s policy prioritizes enrollment for children with parents who work for Lexington City Schools, then children of city employees, and then siblings of nonresident children already enrolled, in that order.
But concerns over the policy played out in real time at the July 8 meeting after Walters presented an updated list of her enrollment recommendations to the Board. She said that having larger class sizes in several grade levels for the 2026-2027 year is a unique situation, and that the decision to wait-list some potentially returning students was a difficult one.
“We have tried to be very conscientious while looking at those numbers, keeping many things in mind, certainly keeping in mind the needs of our students and our families, also keeping in mind those of our staff and the ability of our staff to effectively meet the needs of those students,” Walters said.
The updated list recommended the approval of four renewal students, two in second and two in third grade. That left four third grade renewal students on the list.
Hierman asked the Board to reconsider the division’s current policy when it comes to reenrollment of nonresident students, to give more priority to students who have been at the school since kindergarten than the siblings of students who are already enrolled.
“Because they have older siblings, they have priority over students who have been at Waddell since kindergarten, and that just seems wrong,” Hierman said.
Before Hierman addressed the Board, teacher Deborah Mohr spoke on behalf of a group of teachers in the audience about why they are so concerned with larger class sizes, saying that teachers are struggling to give each student individualized attention in cramped classrooms packed with desks and not much room for anything else.
“When there are above 18 students in the room, each additional student does matter, and (you lose) those moments that you’re able to build relationship opportunities, whether they are academically or socially or even behaviorally,” Mohr said. “Secondly, our classroom spaces are simply not large enough… We are aiming to not have kids sitting in their desks all day. So, simply put, more kids, less space, and more time you’re stuck at your desk.”
After the speeches from both sides, a lengthy and occasionally heated discussion among Board members followed.
Katie Shester, who was not at the June meeting, presented graphs suggesting that the pinch point in the thirdgrade class is a fluke. She said the Board should review reenrollment policies to prevent similar issues in the future, but proposed making an exception for the first three rising third-graders on the waitlist and setting the cap at 21 students per class.
“I absolutely think that small classes make the magic that happens at Waddell possible,” Shester said. “But we’ve never been in this situation before where we had to waitlist reenrollment students, and I don’t like it.”
Board member Katie Masey said she appreciates that those students have been at the school since kindergarten, but that the school system should still try to avoid going above the enrollment cap. Masey pointed out difficulties with previous grades that were overcrowded.
“I think that’s a slippery slope,” Masey said. “What I’m saying is that’s been done before. I mean, the outcome is not good.” Masey proposed a closed work session to give the Board time to get more feedback from teachers and administrators and then hammer out enrollment numbers privately.
Board member LaTonya Douglas agreed with reexamining the enrollment policy at a later work session, saying renewal families should have priority over students’ siblings, and families should possibly even be able to renew for multiple years at once to give them peace of mind. “From the nonresident families, this becomes their home too,” Douglas said. “We think of them as ours, too, so it pulls at the heartstrings.”
The Board also discussed possible solutions like switching larger classes at Waddell into larger classrooms.
Shester then introduced a motion to amend the list to allow the three third-graders at the top of the waitlist to reenroll.
After some confusion about Shester’s amendment, the motion to add the three thirdgraders passed four to one. Masey, who said she’d rather decide after a work session, was the only dissenting vote.
The Board then unanimously voted to pass the entire enrollment list as it currently stands, leaving the 15 new non-resident students on the waitlist. A total of 28 new nonresidents were approved for next year.
In a moving moment after the motion passed, Board member Kasey Potter pulled out a yellow piece of paper, scribbled a note on it, and board members passed it to Superintendent Walters, who unfolded it.
“Can I read it?” she asked Potter.
“Yeah,” Potter said.
Walters took a moment, then read the note aloud to Hierman in the crowd to laughs and cheers from the board.
“Rose is in!” Walters said. Walters said this week she has since recommended the approval of the fourth thirdgrader and expects the Board to approve it. That student started at Waddell later than kindergarten, but has a sibling in another grade.
