A community-based group in Dublin is still working toward a recommendation about the fate of fifth grade in town, but one thing was made clear during a meeting Tuesday: a decision needs to be made one way or the other.
About 15 members of the community gathered at the Dublin Town Hall on Tuesday night to discuss the community’s feelings about retaining fifth grade students at Dublin Consolidated School or sending them to South Meadow School.
“It’s not sustainable to be making a decision every year,” said Karen Niemela, a member of the community-based selectman’s advisory committee that held the meeting. “I don’t think the social-emotional impact on our students is worth it.”
DCS has been without a fifth grade class since February of last year, as all parents had requested their children be moved to South Meadow School in Peterborough, according to Kim Saunders, ConVal superintendent. As of right now, there are fifth graders scheduled to attend DCS for the 2017-18 school year.
Dublin Consolidated School is the only school in the ConVal School District to have an option for fifth grade. All other fifth-grade students currently attend South Meadow School in Peterborough or Great Brook School in Antrim based on their location within the district.
Parents and others at the meeting were divided as to what school would offer the better choice to their students.
Jen Bergeron said that she has a daughter currently in fourth grade at DCS and a son getting ready to graduate from SMS. After asking her son about his experiences, Bergeron is contemplating what to do with her daughter.
“I was talking to my son and he said he felt like he was at a disadvantage,” said Bergeron. “He loved his time at DCS, but he wishes he had that extra year at SMS.”
Bernd Foecking, Dublin’s representative to the School Board, said he has posed a few questions to the district and has been unable to gather any meaningful data to show whether it would be better to keep Dublin fifth graders at DCS or send them to SMS.
“I believe that there is no data to support the discussion either way,” said Foecking. “It looks a little like we are trying to create logical answers to an emotional issue.”
SMS principal Anne O’Bryant was in attendance to talk about her school and the potential benefits of having Dublin students come to middle school at the same time as their peers.
“To be different in middle school is hard,” said O’Bryant. “We want to give them the experience everyone else is having.”
O’Bryant said that DCS and SMS were both great programs, adding that parents are not wrong to want their students at either school.
If the district was to decide to keep the option open for parents, many at the meeting said the school should move forward the cut off date for parents to make a decision, to give each school a better idea of the number of students they will have.
Another meeting will be scheduled sometime in May, according to Niemela.
Nicholas Handy can be reached at 924-7172 ext. 235 or nhandy@ledgertranscript.com. He is also on Twitter @nhandyMLT.