Why cutting a second‑grade teacher crosses a line the research has already drawn.

Tennessee's STAR experiment, conducted from 1985 to 1989, randomly assigned 11,600 K–3 students to small classes (target 13–17) or regular classes (target 22–25) and kept them in those assignments through third grade. It is, to this day, the benchmark every serious class-size conversation returns to.

STAR's results have been reanalyzed by Princeton economist Alan Krueger, replicated by Nye and colleagues across multiple journals, and treated as the reference point in every major meta-analysis of the field. The American Federation of Teachers, the National Education Association, and Florida's constitutional class-size amendment all cite it. It is not a fringe study.

The most persuasive research for a board audience is not the test-score research. It's what Harvard economist Raj Chetty and colleagues found when they linked the original STAR participants to IRS tax records twenty-five years later.

The pattern is striking: test-score advantages from small early-grade classes partially fade by middle school, but non-cognitive effects — effort, persistence, engagement with school — persist. These are what drive the adult outcomes. Chetty's work is the strongest evidence in the field that what happens in a second-grade classroom does not stay in a second-grade classroom.

Second grade sits at the hinge of elementary literacy. It is the year when Matthew effects — the compounding divergence between strong and struggling readers — begin to lock in. Hernandez's longitudinal analysis (Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2011) found that students not reading proficiently by the end of third grade are four times more likely to drop out of high school than proficient readers. Among children who spent at least a year in poverty, 26% of non-proficient readers fail to graduate on time — versus 9% of proficient readers who also experienced poverty.

Second grade is also the year when small-group reading instruction becomes structurally critical. The evidence-based delivery mode — used by teacher-preparation programs nationwide — calls for teachers meeting with three to five flexible reading groups per week, with struggling readers seen more often and in smaller groups. The arithmetic is unforgiving:

The honest version of this argument is not that smaller is always better. Research identifies thresholds — nonlinear ranges where benefits emerge or erode. Glass and Smith's 1979 meta-analysis, which has held up for 45 years of subsequent work, established the curve: moving from 40 to 30 does little, moving from 40 to 20 produces roughly 0.10 SD of learning, and moving below 20 steepens the curve sharply.

What this means for a class going from 21–23 to 28:

Expect the board or administration to cite Eric Hanushek, Caroline Hoxby, or Matthew Chingos. Their work is real, peer-reviewed, and worth acknowledging. Here's how to engage it honestly.

The marginal cost of keeping one second-grade teacher is roughly $90,000–$110,000 in total compensation. If cutting the position pushes existing sections from 21–23 to 28, the affected cohort is roughly 60–80 students per year. The per-student "savings" is on the order of $1,100–$1,500 annually.

Against that figure: Krueger's (2003, Economic Journal) estimated ~6% internal rate of return on STAR-scale reductions; Chetty's finding that a one-SD higher-quality kindergarten classroom produces roughly 9.6% higher adult earnings at age 27 (about $1,520/year); Fredriksson's Swedish data showing long-run wage gains large enough to pass a cost-benefit test. Even if the local effect is half the magnitude documented in STAR, the present value of lifetime-earnings impacts exceeds per-student costs by a wide margin — particularly for the subgroups where effects are concentrated.

And the math excludes a second-order cost. The RAND State of the American Teacher 2024 survey found teachers report burnout at roughly twice the rate of comparable professionals. The Alliance for Excellent Education (2005) estimated annual US teacher-turnover costs at $2.2 billion. Class size is a documented driver of retention. A cut that raises class sizes this year makes positions harder to fill next year.

Every figure below is pulled directly from Sycamore Community Schools' own October 2025 Five-Year Forecast, filed with the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce. Nothing here is projection or opinion — these are the numbers the district has already recorded.

What one teacher actually costs

Derived from Sycamore's own 2025–26 Certified Salary Schedule and the forecast's 37.8% benefits-to-wages ratio, total compensation for one elementary teaching position runs roughly $90,000–$120,000. Against the district's own numbers, that figure represents:

The cash-balance concern, fairly stated

The forecast projects the General Fund cash balance sliding below the board's 25% policy floor in FY28 (to 19%) and turning negative by FY30 (−10%). That pressure is real. But the forecast's own assumptions show where the pressure is coming from — and it isn't salaries:

A November 2026 levy is already on the calendar (slide 19), with filing deadlines in July and August. Three General Fund debts mature in December 2025, freeing $866,000/year starting in FY27.

None of these numbers answer the question: why balance on a 2nd-grade teaching position — the single grade band where the research on class-size effects is most conclusive — rather than on any of the discretionary expenditure lines above?

Three questions to leave with the board

Public comment is capped at three minutes. Pick one — don't try all three.

The meeting runs 6:00–8:00 PM at the Kenwood Learning Commons. Four things any parent can do — attend and speak, email the board, bring a printed brief, or forward this page to a neighbor. Each is pre-written below.

The Sycamore Community Schools Board of Education is five elected members. Emails and one-line context below — a personal note to an individual member, written in your own voice, is worth more than ten form emails to the group address.