Clark High School teacher Nat Player is getting used to it.

The psychology teacher has one of the largest classes in Northside Independent School District, with 39 students taking one of his Advanced Placement courses. He has more work to grade and he can't use all the whiteboard — their desks block access to it.

But what worries him most is losing the ability to focus on each of them.

“It's just easier for kids to fall through the cracks, I think,” Player said. “I enjoy being able to get to know the students and better keep an eye on (them) if they need help or some attention, either with homework or just needing someone to talk to.”

In his 16 years at Clark, he has seen class sizes balloon, and the trend is accelerating. Students regularly haul desks from down the hallway into a French II class so they all can fit in, then take them back out for a smaller subsequent class.

Northside's predicament mirrors that of several other local districts with expanding enrollments. It's part of the argument hundreds of Texas districts are making in an ongoing school finance lawsuit against the state, blaming lawmakers for a funding scheme that doesn't keep up with growth.

Administrators say larger classes are cheaper than hiring more teachers. There's no state limit on class size for grades 5-12. In kindergarten through fourth grade, school districts must seek permission to go above 22 students per teacher — and the number of requests for such waivers from several local districts has skyrocketed in the past two years.

School boards, lawmakers and even presidential candidates this year debated whether larger classes hurt education.

“I would say that the majority of those people who say class size doesn't matter haven't been in a classroom in a long time,” Southwest ISD Superintendent Lloyd Verstuyft said. “To think we can take a college format with larger sizes and bring it down to lower grade levels, where students still are developing socially as well as academically, is a farce. These kids need attention and interventions.”

A class size boom

The state's education agency routinely grants school districts' requests for class size waivers with few questions asked.

In 2010, before the Legislature slashed $5.4 billion in funding to public education for the current biennial budget, only two local school districts asked for a total of 15 such waivers.

This year, 11 local districts asked for waivers for a record-breaking total of 1,119 classrooms in Bexar County, according to a San Antonio Express-News analysis.

Northside sought no waivers in fall 2010, but in fall 2012 its board authorized asking for 597 of them. The state's two-year education cuts cost the district $61.5 million.

The other districts that filed the most requests this year also are rapidly growing: North East, Judson, Harlandale and Schertz-Cibolo-Universal City.

One local district not on that list, Southwest ISD, has found a way around the waiver requirement by using a “multi-grade” setup, placing some students overflowing from a lower grade into a higher grade classroom and having the teacher instruct the appropriate curriculum.Verstuyft said the district might need to end that experiment and opt for waivers — enrollment is swelling with population attracted by nearby manufacturing plants and the Eagle Ford Shale energy drilling boom.

Now at 13,024 students, Southwest added about 600 in each of the past two years since the Legislature cut its funding by almost $12 million.

Some area school boards have chafed at the steady stream of requests for class size waivers. Trustees in Harlandale and South San ISD said they wanted to vote against them but it would have just forced district staff to cut budgets elsewhere.

When South San trustees pushed back on the issue last month, Superintendent Rebecca Robinson told them she'd have to hire 11 more teachers and said the district couldn't afford it after cutting $5 million to make ends meet in the wake of the state funding reductions.The norm for class sizes in grades 5-12 is around 30 students, local officials say. At Southwest, classes in grades 5-12 with more than 30 students almost doubled in the past two years — from 166 to 324.

Districts have common methods to squeeze in more students. They tend to pack them into electives such as dance — around 50 at some Northside classes — or Advanced Placement courses, whose students are considered more motivated and therefore not in need of as much individual attention.

Districts try to keep core classes such as math or English smaller in size as students face increasingly rigorous state standardized tests. Usually, special education classes are smaller as students need more supervision and assistance.

Unfunded mandate?

State lawmakers and educators have said capping K-4 class sizes at 22 students per teacher is justified because younger students are learning social skills as well as academics.

But some lawmakers and fiscal conservatives believe school districts should make that call, arguing a few more students in a classroom won't necessarily mean a lower quality of education.

Before the 2011 legislative session, Texas Comptroller Susan Combs called for the K-4 class size cap to be lifted. Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, supported that. He will be chairman of the Senate Education Committee in the legislative session that starts Jan. 8, a powerful role in shaping state education policy.

His spokesman, Logan Spence, said Patrick hasn't proposed changing class size limits but hasn't ruled it out.

“We have attempted that in the past, but it hasn't gone anywhere,” Spence said. “We are looking at all opportunities to give schools more flexibility.”

That worries legislators like Mike Villarreal, D-San Antonio, who said his office analyzed state data and found schools with smaller class sizes have performed better on Texas' accountability ratings system.

“Here's the bottom line: Class sizes are increasing because the state cut public school funding and the system is penalizing those school districts which are growing the fastest,” Villarreal said.

“This is affecting student achievement, and we should fund the schools so they're able to hire teachers to meet this growth.”

The debate has national echoes. In September, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney reiterated his belief at an education forum in New York that class size doesn't matter, a position President Barack Obama attacked in ads.

Both sides point to research, but little decisive study has been done on secondary school grades, said Matthew M. Chingos, a national education policy researcher as a fellow at the Brookings Institution and Harvard University.

“There is little doubt that reducing class size can boost student achievement in some circumstances,” he said. “What is much less certain is how much of a difference class-size policies make, and whether the impacts are large enough to justify the costs of hiring additional teachers and building new classrooms.”

At Harlandale's Gilbert Elementary School, which grew by 60 kids this year, some teachers recall large classrooms decades ago and say they'll get the job done no matter what.

“You just deal with it and adjust, because we aren't going to turn the kids away,” said Benito Garcia, a fifth-grade teacher who during his 38 years in education once managed 46 students at a time.

Students also learn to adjust.

“Sometimes, it can be harder to concentrate,” said Cassidy Miller, 17, a Clark senior who is in two of the school's largest classes. “I don't know how they fit in everyone in that French II classroom. I know some of us will experience it in college, but it's not something we all want.”

fvara-orta@express-news.net

Twitter: @fvaraorta