Kindergarten and third-grade classes at the Searingtown School will get smaller this year, much to some parents’ relief.

The Herricks School District will add a teacher in each grade to assuage slight crowding in some classes, district Superintendent Fino Celano said Thursday.

“The classes just get bigger and bigger and bigger, so thank you for adding that section,” said Genara DiGirolomo, president of the Searingtown School PTA, at Thursday’s school board meeting.

Each grade’s classes held up to 25 students when they should have had 24 at most in third grade and 22 at most in kindergarten under the district’s class size guidelines, DiGirolomo said.

The district started keeping to the guidelines again last year after abandoning them due to budget pressures in 2011, a move that caused parent protests. 

The coming year’s class sizes in other grades at Searingtown and at the district’s two other elementary schools didn’t raise concerns, Celano said.

Most new families move into the district over the summer, Celano said, so the district watches enrollment closely to keep class sizes where they should be.

Teachers can’t give students as much individual attention when classes get too big, DiGirolomo said.

“Opening up a new section is great because now you’ve got smaller [numbers of] kids in the classroom, you’ve got more attention to them, and the help of an aide is also crucial to these kids,” she said.

In June, the district laid off 10 teacher aides who gave individual help to special education students because fewer of those students will need aides this year, Celano said.

While aides do help in some ways, administrators are “not really convinced” they have a big impact on instruction in large classes, Celano said.

“That’s the reason why rather than do that we’re trying to look at adhering to class size guidelines,” he said.

But parents said they think having an extra pair of hands can help teachers stay in control and keep students focused.

“It helps to have an extra body in the room to walk up and down the aisles and say, ‘Hey, you know what, here, let’s stay on task,” DiGirolomo said.

Also on Thursday, the Herricks school board voted to add about $1.7 million to its capital reserve fund.

The fund, approved by voters to hold up to $5 million, will likely be used to fund part of a $25 million package of building projects if voters approve the work in a December referendum.