WESTBROOK – Parents of children throughout Westbrook schools say that closing Prides Corner Elementary School makes sense, but the idea that fifth-graders would go to school with middle-school children does not sit well.
“I remember eighth grade, and the things you say and do, I don’t want a 10-year-old to hear that,” Katie Hatch, who has three children in the school system, in kindergarten, fourth and sixth grades, said during a forum presented last week by district officials on the subject.
The Westbrook School Committee made the first move toward closing Prides Corner school Feb. 9, voting 6-1 to pass a first-reading measure to shutter the 50-year-old building. Meanwhile, school officials continued reaching out to the public through yet another public forum on the subject Feb. 10 at the Westbrook Performing Arts Center.
The forum is the latest in a series of public events hosted by School Superintendent Marc Gousse, designed to keep the public abreast of, and to seek public suggestions on the Prides Corner closing and subsequent district reconfiguratin.
Prides Corner and Saccarappa Elementary schools teach K-2, with Congin and Canal schools teaching 3-5. Students in grades 6-8 attend Westbrook Middle School.If Prides Corner is closed, officials have said, the city’s three remaining elementary schools would be reconfigured to teach K-4, and fifth-graders would be moved to the middle school.
While some members of the School Committee attended the previous forums, last week’s meeting represented the first time the committee addressed the issue in an official capacity. Jeremy Ray, director of operations, presented a series of charts and maps detailing how the district would be reconfigured if Prides Corner were to close.
The district is working on the 2012-2013 school budget, and is dealing with a $2.2 million shortfall, which may grow if the state Department of Education sticks to its new allocation of funding for the district, which amounts to nearly $400,000 less than the district anticipated.
If Prides Corner remains open, Ray said, the school would need about $2.8 million in immediate repairs and upgrades, including $800,000 to replace an aging boiler that officials say could fail at any time, and $400,000 to fix a poorly made driveway system that does not drain properly.
“There were many areas that were of major concern,” he said.
Even if the district managed to come up with that money, Ray said, long-term repairs to the building could cost millions more, and some parts of the facility, such as the kitchen, which is split between two rooms, would remain sub-standard.
“We have a gym that’s not much bigger than this room itself,” he said.
Peter Lancia, director of teaching and learning, told the committee that beyond saving money, the district also wants to simplify an elementary school experience that is needlessly complicated.
“With this model, we really are creating new identities for our three remaining elementary schools,” he said.
Committee members said the concept made sense, but many details still need to be ironed out. For example, said Alex Stone, the reconfiguration may change the start times for some kids, which means some children would have to get on the bus up to half an hour later.
“I think we’re impacting a lot of parents (by doing that),” Stone said.
Committee member James Violette said the district also needs to pay close attention to who younger children are riding to school with, not just what time they get on the bus. It needs to be clear to parents, Violette said, that fifth-graders won’t be placed in an environment where they might be inadvertently influenced by the behavior of older children, or even high school kids.
“They have a hard problem with their fifth-grader on the same bus as seventh- and eighth-graders,” Violette said. “You tell them their fifth-grader’s going to be riding with high school juniors and seniors, that’s not going to fly.”
Committee member Suzanne Salisbury noted that even with a passing vote on the issue, the committee still needs to take a second vote at a future meeting before making the closure official. That allows plenty of time to refine the details, she said, while still giving the district the chance to finalize the proposed budget, which assumes Prides Corner will close.
“We’re not going to get (all the details) worked out tonight,” she said.
Moving the question now, however, was too soon for Violette, who cast the lone dissenting vote. He said he felt the public hadn’t had enough official hearings in front of the committee yet, and the committee should be more certain of how the district would handle bus routes and start times before acting. Violette’s objection, he said, was not to the concept, but the process.
“I don’t think we have the answers we need,” Violette said.
The committee is expected to vote on the subject again at its March 14 meeting, which will make the closure official.
At the forum, the approximately 75 parents who attended got to see up close the same charts and maps the committee saw, and got a similar presentation from Ray and Lancia. Parent Amanda St. Pierre, who has a first-grader in the district, said the overall reconfiguration concept made sense to her.
“I don’t have an issue with it as long as the education is not going to suffer,” she said.
Jim Wright, who has a kindergartner and second-grader at Prides Corner, said under the new plan, his kids would go to Congin, and that’s fine with him.
“Prides Corner was kind of an old building,” he said. “I’ve seen the updates they’ve done at Congin, and I’m very happy.”
Cindy Jacobs, who has a 10-year-old son, is worried about him riding the bus to school with older kids, and would not want him to ride the bus to school if the reconfiguration goes through.
“I’d end up driving him to school,” she said. “There’s a reason they’re separate in the first place.”
Charity Hirst, who has a fourth-grader at Congin and a preschooler who would ordinarily have gone to Prides Corner, said she was still trying to make up her mind as to her opinion. Like other parents, she was looking more at how the middle school would be configured than anything.
“That’s still kind of a concern,” she said.
Her husband, Albert Hirst, agreed, saying he worried about his children’s physical and emotional well-being, if they were thrust into an environment with kids much older than they are.
“I’m not interested in jeopardizing my son’s safety to save the city a little money,” he said.
Charity Hirst and her husband Albert pore over plans, charts and
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