A projected decline in enrollment sparked a ConVal School Board discussion about the future of Francestown Elementary School. The issue will be discussed at a School Board meeting at the school on Dec. 17.
In a statement to families of Francestown Elementary students, Superintendent Kimberly Rizzo-Saunders said that ConVal’s administrative team saw that only 38 students were projected to enroll at Francestown Elementary School next year, the lowest enrollment in any school in the district. In light of this, the administrative team proposed the option of a warrant article on next year’s ballot to temporarily reassign Francestown Elementary School students to other schools for a period of time until numbers increase.
There are 53 students currently enrolled at FES. The latest Census data projects that FES’s 2020 kindergarten class will have five students, six in 2021, three in 2022, 15 in 2023, and five in 2024. Records indicate there are currently ten homeschooled children of elementary school age in Francestown, Rizzo Saunders said, and noted that the projections, although only projections, were the best data currently available to the School District.
“FES is intact as it stands,” Dr. Rizzo-Saunders said on Thursday, and that there’s been no decision, no warrant, and not even a public discussion about the suggestion yet.
She said she doesn’t want to close FES, and reiterated that the suggestion to relocate students to a different school was one of a “continuum of solutions” she said her position tasks her to provide when considering the needs of students in light of the projected declines. The subject was first brought to the School Board at a Nov. 2 meeting, where the Board tabled the discussion.
FES currently operates with seven staff members, a number the administrative team recommended as a minimum number to legally, safely, and effectively educate students, Rizzo-Saunders said. When asked whether the suggestion to relocate students came down to a matter of operating costs, Rizzo-Saunders said “there’s an inherent cost,” to keeping a school open with low numbers of students, and said the district did look into the cost of running the school. She also said there is currently no set number determining when a class or school in ConVal is too small. “If everyone is committed” to maintaining that minimum staffing threshold of seven, she said, “we can do that,” but it’s important to discuss the issues of low school enrollment that aren’t about money, as well.
She said that children model their behavior on their peers, and the smaller their cohort, the fewer options they have for modeling. “What if you’re the only boy” in a class, Rizzo-Saunders asked, or a student with no other class to join if their peers won’t leave them alone? She said situations like those have happened in smaller schools in the district.
Francestown parent Meghan Hardwick is on the leadership team at FES, and has one son currently enrolled in the school and another in sixth grade. She said she’s not naive to the fact the school has low enrollment.
“We definitely need to have a discussion about that,” she said. “But financially, how does it balance out? There are so many costs here that would be really interesting to find out about.”
Hardwick said she doesn’t necessarily want to see a school stay open if its costs could be applied better in another school, but said she has yet to see the finances that could justify such a change.
“There so many wonderful things going on at that school that I think are just groundbreaking,” Hardwick said, citing the school’s recent outdoor school session, and frequent collaborations with the Harris Center and Cornucopia.
She said the leadership committee was currently working to students with different town agencies “to get our kids involved in what the town is doing for us,” by developing programs in conjunction with town entities like the police and water commission.
When asked if she saw any drawbacks to a small school environment, Hardwick said that this was the first year FES set up two learning groups in the school: the “squirrels” are a cohort of students in kindergarten through second grade, she said, and the “owls” comprise the third and fourth grade students. Hardwick said she was initially leery of combined classes, describing the concept as “something you don’t want to hear as a parent,” but she said she was won over when she saw how it worked in practice.
“I was so worried that my son wasn’t going to be getting as much [in a combined class], but he’s learning better from his peers,” she said. Instead of “just looking at grade level,” Hardwick said the structure adapts better to children’s individual learning needs.
“Teachers become so familiar with what the kids need,” she said, and group students who are proficient in a subject with those who are less proficient. “It’s something I get really excited about,” she said.
Hardwick said that even though her younger son will graduate from the school this spring, she’s invested in its future.
“I’ve watched the school grow over the years,” she said, “I care so much, having seen the effort everyone has put forth in these newer ways of learning. A lot of [staff] training went in as well.”
As a realtor, she said that property values are involved in a decision like this. She said her clients, prospective residents, ask her about the school “even if they don’t have kids, even people who are renting. It’s incredibly important to them to have their kids going to school close by,” she said.
The School Board meeting will be held on Dec. 17 at Francestown Elementary School at 7 p.m.