Over the last few weeks I’ve been regularly talking with a public teacher named Erika Wozniak about the 36 kids in her fifth-grade classroom at Oriole Park elementary—go Panthers!—on the city’s far-northwest side.
But it’s dreadfully overcrowded. For instance, there are 72 fifth-graders but only two fifth-grade teachers. That means each class has 36 students, even though the teachers’ union contract says no fifth-grade class should have more than 31.
Thank you, Mr. Mayor!
As you might have heard, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel recently wrote an article in which he said he didn’t want to live past the age of 75 and suggested it might be a good call for most of the rest of us too.
There will now be 72 kids divided among three teachers, meaning 24 kids in classroom.
The first thing I noticed: yeah, it’s crowded. No joke. Kids bump into each other just trying to get in and out of their chairs.
