Dear Superintendent Baier and Trustees,

We are writing you as concerned parents of current Oak Avenue School Kindergartners. We would like to see a third class added to the class of 2019 at Oak as they move into first grade this fall.

As you may already know, the Kindergarten at Oak is small in comparison to the other grades at Oak.  As such, we have only two classes, both of which have 25 children. We understand that there are at least three additional children that were wait listed for placement into Kindergarten at Oak, but they did not receive a spot in the class. That means at least 53 Kindergarten-aged children mapped to and tried to attend Oak School this school year. It is fair to presume this number will at least stay the same, if not grow, for the coming school year.

The teachers and the staff at Oak will tell you there is a huge difference between a class maxed out at 25 and a class with fewer children in it. We want to give our children the best learning environment possible.

For next year, LASD has a choice between three classes with approximately 18 (or slightly more) children each, where every child that maps to Oak receives a place, and two classes with 25 children each, where some children continue to be unable to attend school with the other children from their neighborhood, additional disruption in class occurs, and each child gets a smaller slice of the extremely valuable resource - the teacher's time.  Given the importance of class size to student success and the funding from LAEF, beginning this fall we would like to see the class of 2019 at Oak have three classes like the other grades and allow all of these children to attend their home school. Let's do it!