NORTHFIELD — A decision whether to close either of Pioneer Valley Regional School District’s two smaller elementary schools — Leyden’s Pearl Rhodes Elementary School and Warwick Community School — must be made by the School Committee by Feb. 1 to accommodate the towns’ financial planning and the terms of the district’s leases on the buildings.
But some School Committee members still feel that the relevant information hasn’t been fully laid out for them, even after seeing the results of a study by the HEART Committee (Honest Education and Retaining Trust) that demonstrates the economic feasibility of sending Warwick’s and Leyden’s elementary students to the schools in Northfield and Bernardston, respectively.
A meeting to review the information one final time is being scheduled for January. In the meantime, School Committee members have been encouraged to send clarifying questions to the HEART Committee or to the consultants who conducted the study.
The main shortcomings of the data already available, School Committee members said at a meeting on Thursday, have to do with the provided financial evaluation of closing Warwick Community School, and a perceived lack of practical information on how the two larger elementary schools would be affected by absorbing the smaller schools’ students.
School Committee Chair Sue O’Reilly-McRae, who is also on the HEART Committee, said that the data on Warwick Community School provided by the consultants seemed incomplete; perhaps intentionally so, she said, to urge the School Committee to close Leyden’s school this year and to wait another year to decide on Warwick. She said she requested more information on Warwick’s school from the consultants.
Yet some Warwick residents suggested that the district is hurrying into closing their town’s school. In a letter to the School Committee, the Warwick Education Task Force claimed that savings from closing the town’s school would be less than what the study represented, and pointed out that the costs of maintaining the building would fall on the town if the school were closed. They also requested more information.
“We can’t make decisions when we don’t trust the data,” O’Reilly-McRae said.
Pragmatic concerns on class sizes were brought up too. At last week’s presentation on the HEART Committee’s data, Warwick Community School Principal Elizabeth Musgrave questioned a perceived assumption that small class sizes are less than optimal for children, and added at this week’s meeting that there are intangible benefits to small, mixed-grade classrooms like Warwick has.
“I see a profound difference in the climate and culture of our school,” Musgrave told the School Committee at its meeting this week.
Both models have their advantages, School Committee members reminded one another. But it will be the committee’s job to decide on one.
“It’s our role to set a philosophical basis for what our district is,” said committee member Robin L’Etoile. “That expands that particular conversation outside of the size of any particular elementary school, and to how we envision our children learning.”
Contact Max Marcus at mmarcus@recorder.com or 413-772-0261 ex 261.