Sen. Jim Hammond, R-Coeur d'Alene, said he is struggling with how to vote on SB 1184, and hasn't decided. He told senators that if they support this bill, he hopes they'll commit to not increasing class size as a way to fund improvements. During the debate over school reform, he said, there have been claims that research shows class size increases won't make a difference. But, he said, "The difference is that back in 1973 when I was teaching 35 children, they were very homogenous. ... Their levels of skill were very homogenous. ... The reason that that classroom was so homogenous, was that those other children who had severe mental or physical disabilities were not in that classroom. They were self-contained in a separate classroom, probably even in a separate school, and the rest of the kids didn't even see those children." That's not true today, he said; those children are in the regular classroom with all others.

"So class size does make a difference," said Hammond, a former school principal. "If you're going to support this measure, we can't do it by reducing class size (he meant to say, 'increasing'). We have to find another way to do it."