Class Size Aid

There were a few comments last night about elementary school classes with 24 to 27 kids in them.  While I think our teachers and families are excellent and will thrive in almost any environment, I also spent a little time thinking about the alternative.  There is this fundamental tension between small classes sizes and the fiscal reality of how our teachers are compensated.  I'm 100% fine with teachers being highly compensated, but I have mixed feelings about how much their compensation grows each year.  The growth in the required contributions to the retirement systems, along with step increases in pay, are the main drivers in budget growth.  But how can you decrease class size without hiring more teachers?

One thought I had, was to hire TAs.  I need to talk to actual teachers to verify, but I would bet that a 27-student class is overwhelming to a lone teacher, but more manageable to a teacher with a full-time or nearly-full-time assistant/aid.  Right now, if I understand things correctly, the only TAs are ones that are assigned to a specific student as part of their IEP.  The means the aid can't help the teacher manage the entire class, both because they have to focus on a particular student and because they're not in the classroom all the time.  I wonder how much better a dedicated TA would be.  I haven't looked into any of the details as far as what they cost or how many teachers would want a TA.

I wonder if we could organize grants through the PTOs to pay for TAs focused solely on helping the teachers with the largest class sizes.  I imagine a system where donors would specify a specific elementary school or indicate district-wide, and then teachers would submit requests for TAs (potentially part-time), and the grants would be award based solely on class size.  If one teacher didn't have the largest class but felt they really needed the grant, they'd need to convince other teachers not to apply.  The funding organization could put out a RFP indicating how many FTE TAs it will fund, and hopefully the district could help in that hiring process.

There may be aspects I'm overlooking, but I just wanted to capture that thought so I have something to reference and modify as I noodle it a little more.