Bennington residents talk schools during community meeting
Published: 10-03-2023 11:28 AM |
Longtime Bennington resident and retired ConVal teacher John Manley said during Monday night’s community meeting at Pierce Elementary School that he is concerned about the possibility of the school closing.
“The elementary school is the lifeblood of the town. The district would save nothing by closing this school. For one thing, the town would never buy the building back, so it would just sit here, and ConVal would still have to maintain it. We fought to keep this building right here in the center of town, and we won. It’s the heart and soul of Bennington,” Manley said.
Manley added that some other towns, such as Francestown and Temple, built their new schools far out of the center of town.
“Those are the schools you might want to close,” he said. “They’re too far away. No one can walk there; they’re not part of the village.”
The meeting was the seventh of nine hosted by Prismatic Consulting, which has been contracted by the ConVal School Board to address low enrollment numbers in the district. About 40 people, many with children in tow, came to learn about possible reconfiguration plans and take the survey created by Prismatic to gauge concerns and gather feedback from the community.
Residents were given the opportunity to cast weighted ballots, write in responses and submit their opinions on different options presented by Prismatic – combining as many schools as possible, including perhaps the middle schools; keep ConVal like it is now; combine only some of the elementary schools; and keep all the elementary schools, but move grades five and six back to those schools. As of Sept. 1, Pierce’s enrollment was 62 students, fourth-lowest among the eight in the district, ahead of the 37 at Temple Elementary School, 43 at Francestown Elementary School and 55 at Dublin Consolidated School.
Colleen Allen, a mother of three children who have attended Pierce School, said her fourth-grade daughter was worried about the school closing.
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“I’m fine with all the options, honestly,” she said.
Phil Germaine, a former Bennington Select Board member, said he liked the fact that people could express themselves freely in the interactive information sessions.
“This way, no one has to feel uncomfortable expressing their opinions. It’s much easier for people to let their feelings be known in this format,” Germaine said. “They can just write in their questions and their concerns and be heard.”
Meredith Lyons, a Bennington resident and eighth-grade teacher at South Meadow School, also liked the format.
“It’s good to have data to look at. We can’t make decisions without actual data. How do you make a decision without input from the community? Maybe someone will have a great idea or a solution that no one else has thought of,” she said.
An online survey is also available at research.net/r/convalcomsep on the School Board section of the ConVal website. TatiaPrieto, founder of Prismatic, said total survey response in the district is up to 1,300, which is short of the 2,500 responses they were hoping to receive.
“Surveys are still trending ‘gray.’ We are not hearing from as many young people, the age brackets under 40, and that is who this will potentially be affected the most by changes in the school district,” Prieto said.
Prieto also noted that response rates from ConVal staff are very low, with only 106 ConVal employees responding so far out of the total 1,300.
“We really want to hear from teachers, from administrators, from everyone who works in the schools,” Prieto said. “We need to know what people think and hear their ideas and concerns.”
The last two community meetings with Prismatic are Wednesday, Oct. 4, at 7 p.m. at Dublin Consolidated School and Thursday, Oct. 5, at 7 p.m. at Hancock Elementary School. For information about the ConVal consolidation and reconfiguration project, go to schoolboard.convalsd.net.