Plan to move Drewicz kindergartners postponed

LYNN ? A June plan to send Drewicz School kindergartners to Commercial Street to ease a space crunch in the West Lynn school has been shelved, said a School Department spokesman.Thomas Iarrobino said school administrators took a second look during the summer at Drewicz enrollment and determined that enrollments in three kindergarten classes will be 25 or 26 students.?We’ve consolidated space and created another classroom,” Iarrobino said.Kindergarten enrollment calculations indicating Drewicz class sizes could top 30 students in each kindergarten class prompted Superintendent Catherine Latham in early June to peg Drewicz as the fourth elementary school to send kindergartners entering the school in September to the Early Childhood Center on Commercial Street.The center opened at 90 Commercial St. last September with 250 Tracy, Brickett and Ford School kindergartners enrolled.Although Drewicz enrollment has stabilized, a steady increase in kindergarten, first-grade and second-grade enrollments is worrying Latham. Citywide enrollment for these grades in past years totaled about 900 students. Latham in June said citywide enrollment for the grades is now topping 1,300 students.With current school enrollment totaling 506 students, Drewicz is not the city’s largest elementary school in terms of enrollment. Ingalls School holds that title with 721 students. Ingalls faces a space crunch requiring administrators to move 13 special education students to a program located on the first floor of 90 Commercial St.Iarrobino said the move makes an additional classroom available in the school and will help keep average Ingalls class sizes “in the mid-to-high 20s.”