Today in America, over 49 million children are enrolled in schools, and more than 50% of that number are public school kids. Student enrollment in public schools would increase by 8% for the 2024-2025 school year. Though that is a give or take, about 2 million kids are added to the school system every 2 years. With this over growing number of children entering the school system, many states are not prepared for the massive increase in student to teacher ratio.
Many states have been battling the overcrowding situation for years now New York, California, Florida and Nevada and more have all faced the growing concern. This might be obvious since these are some of the US highest populated states - with that many people, you're bound to have a classroom full of children. However, overcrowding does not account for all the adverse effects it has on its students and teachers. For one, teachers cannot teach more than 14-20 students at one time and fulfil every individual need, learning ability, and or personality. Though many schools struggle with this issue there’s apps like Parent Teacher Mobile that can help reduce the stress of not knowing what’s going on in your kids' classroom. You can maintain communication with teachers and parents on the activity going on directly in your school and figure out how to solve them as a team.
This is where the beginning of students passing through the system begins. Students are in High School with a 4th-grade reading level but required to perform at a 10th-grade capacity. It is impossible and leads to unsafe environments, and makes teaching more difficult. Schools that weren’t designed to accept over their limit suffer from students being taught in auditoriums, gyms, school storage rooms, and other places weren't meant for instructional usage. Many of these exact locations do not have proper installation or heating, which raises health concerns. This also draws the attention of not having adequate specialty rooms like science labs or libraries because they need to be flexible for teaching other subjects.
Overcrowding isn’t just a concern for public schools (which, on average, have a higher overcrowding concern). Students in High School suffering from over populated schools have a decrease in attention span and test scores, leading to low graduation percentage and college enrollment, but an increase in violence and absences. As mentioned earlier, this affects everyone in the school building, including the building itself. In 2019-2020 in downtown San Francisco, over 10 schools had no drinking water. Ceiling tiles were falling on students, and desks were poorly maintained. None of these things makes for positive learning or teaching experience.
There are many ways this can be fixed, but a large portion of that generates a healthy budget for schools and limits class size. Removing school zoning so that parents can have more options to where they will/can place their kids can allow for children to be spread out throughout cities than crowding the one school in the immediate area. Also using apps like Parent Teacher Mobile helps remove a lot of the stress of the unknown that can occur in schools. Between working and taking care of home school often gets left out of the talks or brushed to the side, but with a mobile app and website like Parent Teacher Mobile parents, teachers, school administrators, superintendents, and community board leaders can connect any and everywhere to discuss topics and changes that can needed in your city. The work has to get done, the work needs to be done and it’s possible.
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