This meeting focused almost entirely on two issues: the budget situation (grim) and the potential school reorganization (related to the budget issue, and also grim, but in a different way). First, Rob
Detweiler presented information on projected cuts of nearly half a million to next year's budget ... stating that the next round of cuts would be deeper (probably at least a million, potentially more). Specific information on the nature of the cuts was not given, so I can't comment on those -- but that information will be given at the next Amherst School Committee meeting on February 10
th (please put that date in your calendar now).
Next, we turned to the issue that had brought many parents to the meeting -- the potential school reorganization. This part of the meeting began with Superintendent Vivian reading a 2-page statement that entirely reversed her recommendation of only a month ago -- she apparently now believes, despite all reports that the economy continues to be very bad and major cuts will have to be made, that we should continue to have four elementary schools, and simply make careful cuts and raise fees. In addition, her statement spoke at great length about her strong opposition to closing Marks Meadow School. This statement is available on the district homepage (
http://www.arps.org/node/475), so you can read it yourself -- but in brief, she made (in the fourth paragraph) three statements that are based entirely on her opinion, not any data or facts, and seem to be, in the words of several parents I talked to who attended the meeting, "fear-mongering." These statements were as follows:
1. Closing MM will lead to three extremely crowded elementary schools;
2. Many Marks Meadow families clearly prefer a small school, and thus will likely leave the district for the charter school or choice out of the district, thereby costing the district a great deal of money; and
3. Redrawing the attendance boundaries for the entire district will be very difficult and lead to serious disruptions for many students.
I am extremely concerned that the superintendent's comments, particularly because she presented absolutely no data to back up any of her assertions. First, and as Steve
Rivkin and I pointed out in our recent op-ed in the Amherst Bulletin, even a quick examination of the school enrollments over the past 20 years show that the three larger schools can in fact accommodate all current students and projected enrollment into the foreseeable future with class sizes below 25. Three elementary schools can easily handle an additional 19-34 students per grade (projected enrollment at Marks Meadow). Next year’s projections show that the average class size at the three schools will be: 16.7 at
Crocker Farm; 18.8 at
Wildwood; and 19.6 at Fort River, and there are 3 or 4 classes per grade at both
Wildwood and Fort River and 2 or 3 classes per grade at
Crocker Farm. If you put an additional 10 students per grade at
Wildwood and Fort River and an additional 5 or so at
Crocker you would get average class sizes of between 18 and 23 throughout the district. The two portable classrooms currently at Mark’s Meadow would obviously be moved to
Crocker Farm to create additional classroom space.
Second, the vast majority of families now attending Marks Meadow do so because it is their assigned school, not because they necessarily chose it because it is small. It is likely that some like the size and others would prefer a larger school (I've heard now from several Marks Meadow families who feel uncomfortable speaking out "against" their school, but would prefer for their own children to attend a larger school, where they would have more potential classmates during a 7-year period and would have more ability to match their children with teachers that fit their child's learning style). It is of course not surprising that families feel a strong attachment to their current school -- my own kids have a great attachment to their school (Fort River) and would be sad to leave it (and we too, like many of the MM parents who spoke, bought a house where we did so my kids could go to that school). However, whether many of the families would leave the district for charters or other districts is entirely speculative on the part of the Superintendent. More important, I believe that it is far far more likely that serious cuts to programs at all schools and the elimination of K-6 neighborhood schools would lead to these types of costly defections. The fact that the savings from the closure of Marks Meadow could be used to maintain and perhaps even augment current programs including neighborhood K-6 schools for all district students seems too important to dismiss out of hand. I also believe that the proposed cuts to maintain all four schools would have a
disproportionate impact on low income families -- who would be forced to pay for the bus, would lose music lessons for their children, would lose guidance counselors, etc. And I find this very, very problematic -- major cuts just don't impact all kids equally (and wealthier families can more easily opt out of public schools).
Third, redistricting would not be easy given the strong views held in the community about many of our schools and the natural desire to remain with current friends and teachers. Nonetheless, the district is not that large, and a careful planning process that would ensure that all students would be able to remain with a
sizable group of current classmates seems entirely plausible. One could certainly consider a plan that would move all Marks Meadow students en
mass to one of the other schools (in fact, these students would stay together with ALL of their friends, whereas some children in both CF and FR would certainly move, thereby splitting up friendship groups). In addition, one of the pairing plans that that MM families pushed to keep on the table was having three K to 4 schools and a 5/6 school -- this plan would obviously eliminate the
Wildwood school as we know it -- which those kids/families/teachers would also see as a huge loss (and this is a much larger school), yet not a single family from
Wildwood complained about this as a model. I also remain very concerned about the massive
inequity in our schools, and believe that a redistricting to three districts would thus not only achieve very important cost savings, but also allow us an opportunity to create much greater equity in our schools. I've pasted the current district map at the start of this posting to show you how ridiculous our current districts are -- and frankly, we would probably achieve cost savings on transportation alone if we had kids going to schools that were closest to where they actually lived!
Despite the Superintendent’s efforts to oppose even considering the closing of Marks Meadow, the School Committee unanimously asked to keep this option on the table, which I think is frankly the only appropriate action we could take, given that this is the most cost-effective model. However, we also agreed (this was NOT my preference) to keep the other two models on the table (pairing the schools, creating three K to 4 schools and a 5/6). We are supposedly going to receive numbers related to all of these options (cost savings, cuts, etc.) at the February 10
th model — so stay tuned (though I think it is very unlikely that we will actually be able to get good data on four different models in four weeks -- another reason why I preferred just focusing on the closing MM as an alternative to our current system). But even if timing was not such a huge issue (which clearly it is), I think the issue I’
ve heard repeatedly from parents and teachers about the two transition models is that the pairing model (K to 2, 3 to 6) makes only a three year school for the first experience, which seems very rough. In addition, this plan
doesn’t work PHYSICALLY in our district — we don’t have the classrooms at MM to take care of all the K to 2 kids now at MM and WW. And the other model (3 K to 4s and a 5/6) introduces a 2-year school, which in turn means that we have another two-year school (which
hasn’t been perceived as very successful in the case of the Middle School). Thus, both of these seem to have pretty major problems in the opinions of many parents/teachers I’
ve talked to, and those problems are very hard to get around, given our current configuration of school buildings. In addition, neither of these models saves very much $$ -- about $300,000, which is less than half of what we save by closing a school (meaning those models would create a transition AND require additional cuts).
But the most important issue for me is that if we move to either of those models for next year, we are in effect blinding the hands of the next superintendent ... Because if we go to either of these models, we can’t close MM for the foreseeable future (because it would mean redistricting and moving kids again), and even if we decide not to close MM this year, I just think it would be irresponsible to take this massive cost-saving option off the table for the new superintendent to consider next year.
