ORGANIZATION OF CLASSES AND PLACEMENT OF STUDENTS

In May and June, most schools begin to consider staff and student organization for the next school year. Staff assignments and student placement into classes are not finalized until September. Staffing in all schools in Richmond is based on the number of students enrolled at the school on June 30th. In September, when classes reach their maximum size, new students moving into our area may have to attend another school.  Each year in February, families are asked to fill out and return a form stating their intention to return to this or another school in September. As well, cross boundary requests are also accepted in February.

The student placement into classes is a collaborative school based professional process involving teachers and administrators.  Teachers spend a great deal of time, care and effort gathering and sharing information about each child in the school to help determine class placements.  There are a number of considerations involved in this process and we review these factors prior to making a placement decision.  As professionals, we consider the criteria to ensure the best placement for our students, believing them to be educationally sound and sensitive to the needs of each student.

These student considerations include:

• Learning styles and strengths
• Academic abilities in relation to goals of the program
• Degree of independence in work habits
• Social and personal characteristics
• Age and physical maturity
• Exceptional needs
• Previous year's placement
• Parent knowledge of their child
  

Other school organizational considerations include:

• Location of class in the school
• Equitable class size teaching assignment
• Creating heterogeneous (mixed ability) classes
• Creating a balanced social and academic educational setting
  

The Process of Creating Class Groupings:

Step 1:  Administrator and teachers consider individuals in light of the "social grouping" concept and create tentative groupings that will create cohesive, stable groups of learners.

Step 2: Next year's teacher and the present teacher discuss the tentative class list.

Step 3:  The administrator, the present teachers, and next year's teacher finalize the class list.

In late spring each year, the administration explains the placement process in a school newsletter and allows parents to provide new information to the school related to their child’s temperament, work habits at home, learning style and tolerance of structure. This new information is directed to the school principal in the form of a letter.

These letters are shared with all teachers during the placement process and cannot contain requests for or against specific teachers.