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Schools

Close a School in 2011? Perhaps

The Board of Education reconfiguration committee continues to look at the school system's physical possibilities.

The Board of Education's reconfiguration committee said the whole board should decide on a plan to reconfigure the district before it is submitted to a consultant to scrutinize.

The committee met Wednesday night to discuss the possibilities its members brought up at last week's Board of Education meeting, as well as to float a few new ones.

The committee—which includes Amy Shinohara, Russell Katz, Irene Burgess and John Palermo (who was absent)—is looking at the feasibility of closing an elementary school in town by fall 2011, earlier than the 2013 date previously recommended by district administrators. Board members are worried about staying within future target budget increases that they said the Board of Finance is strongly suggesting.

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The school board agreed last week to hire an outside company to look at different options using updated enrollment projections. Superintendent Deborah Low agreed to have a contract with the company, Edulog, signed by the next full board meeting on June 14.

"'11-12 would be very tight, but what I think you have to do is say, 'Is there any possibility?'" Low said at the meeting.

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The basic idea the committee worked with was that the more children in one grade are in one building, the fewer overall classes would be needed because more classrooms could be filled to class size break points. Combined with declining enrollment, some type of consolidation could make it possible to save money by closing a school or, if there isn't enough space until enrollment drops for a few more years, by decreasing the number of teacher salaries needed.

Low will eyeball five reconfiguration possibilities before the next full board meeting to see if, at a simple numbers level, there would be enough classrooms to fit the number of children projected to be in the system in September 2011.

Those possibilities are:

  • making Veterans Park a fifth grade school and closing another school,
  • sending one year's worth of students slated to enter East Ridge Middle School in sixth grade there a year early, in fifth, and closing a school,
  • making a K-2/3-5 complex out of Scotland and Barlow Mountain Elementary Schools and either closing a school or not and
  • turning Veterans Park into a pre-K and Kindergarten early childhood center and closing another school.

These options or others where simple math works, Low said, could then be scrutinized by the consultants to see if the districting makes sense.

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