BRUNSWICK

A small group of parents is gathering public support to get the Brunswick School Board to reconsider plans to move grade 5 from Harriett Beecher Stowe Elementary School to Brunswick Junior High School in the next school year.

Parent Jon Boyd said the decision was made in May “to bus students from HBS to the junior high and put them in temporary trailers that they plan to lease for $250,000.”

“Not a lot of the community knew about that decision, and we’re asking them to reconsider that. The funding hasn’t been passed by the (town) council,” said Boyd.

Boyd and his wife, Heidi, spent Election

Day at the junior high school, where the town’s polling is performed, gathering signatures for a petition. The petition asks “our leaders to re-vote on this issue and to seriously consider other options that were presented by the board.”

There were 859 signatures gathered, according to Boyd.

“We’re hoping there’s a more creative and better solution than busing fifth graders with junior high and high school kids and spending money to buy more trailers,” said Boyd.

The board’s decision in May to move grade 5 to the junior high came as a result of a student population bubble at Harriet Beecher Stowe, which opened in 2011 and was intended to house 600 students.

The school’s population is now at around 700, according to Superintendent Paul Perzanoski.

On May 28, the school board’s vote was 5-2, with Chairwoman Michele Joyce and Rich Ellis in opposition.

“Many different options to handle the population boom in the second grade were presented. This was, I think, the cheapest option presented. There was a more creative, less expensive option which was not voted on and not presented,” said Boyd.

Boyd said there may be an “opportunity to resolve this issue” by either combining class rooms, or by looping, a practice in which teachers stay with a particular class for more than one year.

“The reality is that those students have to have some place to be,” said Joyce. “Even if you combined classrooms, you’d still have the same number of bodies in the room.”

Boyd said that he hoped for “more sympathy” from newer board members.

He may find that in Sarah Singer, who was newly elected to the school board on Tuesday. Singer ran unopposed and will be taking Joyce’s seat when she steps down at the end of her term.

Singer on Tuesday said she was not convinced that the best argument was made for moving grade 5.

“I could be convinced that it’s a great decision, but I wasn’t by their process,” Singer said, referring to the school board. “I think that’s what the petition is about. There are a lot of people who are not convinced it’s a good decision, and so I think if that decision is going to hold, we’re going to have to go back and talk again about why it came to that conclusion and defend it. If it was the best decision, I think it will prevail.”

“One big disadvantage would be to put fifth-grade children on the bus with junior high and high school kids, which we don’t feel is appropriate, for safety and body image reasons at that age,” said Boyd.

Brunswick Junior High School principal Walter Wallace said no decision has been made yet regarding transportation.

He noted that other school districts that have grades 5- 12 sharing buses have grade 5 students sit up front where there is more access to the driver.

Wallace said there are nine subcommittees he has set up to handle the transition, including one that handles transportation.

“We want people to be comfortable with the move, and we understand there will be some anxiety with any change that happens,” said Wallace. “I’m confident people in the schools will make any move a successful one.

“Even as parents of a fourth-grade student, fliers went home to the junior high school parents, telling them the fifth grade would be moving to the junior high, but fliers were not sent out to the elementary school parents to let them know this plan was in the works. We just feel like communication from the school board has been poor. We’ve heard the decision was ram-rodded through, though I don’t know the details of that,” said Boyd.

Wallace said fliers have been sent to elementary parents, and that the school board’s decision has been widely communicated and noted that the school board meeting was televised on local cable access. Notification and information about the move is also posted on all school websites, he said, and he has been updating parents through his newsletter.

Perzanoski said the idea of the decision being rushed is “misinformation from the petitioners,” and that discussions over a solution to HBS overcrowding had been ongoing since October 2013.

“It was pretty deliberate,” said Joyce. “We took the time as individuals to think about the circumstances common for each move. We compared the costs.”

Joyce said she would like to see parents participating in Wallace’s subcommittees, rather than fighting the move.

Moving grade 5 “wasn’t my first choice,” said Joyce, “but I’ve made it clear that I would support the majority of the board.”

“When the decision is made, you don’t fight it,” Joyce added.

According to Perzanoski, there is very little research that supports whether any school configuration effects student achievement. He said it did make sense to have smaller student populations in schools with the lower grade level — in this case, HBS and Coffin Elementary School.

Finally, Perzanoski said the board started looking into solutions to overcrowding at HBS, based on complaints by some of the same people who are petitioning against moving grade 5.

Boyd said he wants “just a thoughtful reconsideration of the issue.”

“We recognize the school board’s been under a lot of pressure with the loss of Jordan Acres school and the opening of the new school,” said Boyd. “We know there’s a lot of challenges, we know it’s a highly complicated problem, but we simply want them to reconsider and see if there’s a better solution.”

jswinconeck@timesrecord.com