SWAMPSCOTT — Some parents are beginning to feel the effects of school budget cuts, which includes a student shuffle between the district’s three elementary schools.
Cuts that have garnered the most attention for FY19 are the elimination of one classroom per grades K-3, which would also cut those teacher positions. But to target support for larger class sizes, one of those teacher positions would be restored for a net reduction of three teachers.
Next year, elementary classes would go from eight classes per grades K-3 to seven. All of the classroom reductions are at Stanley Elementary School.
According to Superintendent Pamela Angelakis, 41 students are being moved from Stanley Elementary School, with some being reassigned to Hadley Elementary School and some shifting to Clarke Elementary School. Fourteen students are moving from Hadley to Clarke and six will be moving from Clarke to Stanley for programming. Those students being moved are currently in grades K-2.
Kevin Farren, a Lewis Road resident, said he was notified that his 6-year-old son, a kindergartener, was reassigned from Stanley to Hadley.
“My wife and I were very, very taken aback and surprised and saddened by that, primarily due to our proximity to the Stanley School,” Farren said. “It never occurred to us we would be a candidate to be reassigned due to our proximity.”
Farren said his son is a walker — his wife timed the distance last week and found that it was a 2 minute and 37 second walk to school for him. They live approximately 650 feet from the school, he said.
One day, unprompted, Farren said his son mentioned that he loves walking to school because he gets his exercise and it’s also a fun time with his mother.
Farren said they appealed the decision to Swampscott Public Schools, but if the reassignment was to stick, his son would no longer be able to walk to school. From his home, it would be a 20 to 25 minute walk to Hadley and about a 2-mile car ride.
Farren said as a middle school teacher, he encounters students who love coming to school, but also has students who loathe it. Often, he said that perspective can trace back to a positive or negative experience at the elementary level. So much of student success depends on attitude, he said.
“I am very concerned for my son and for lots of kids who are going to be uprooted from where they began their elementary careers after only one year — that we are creating a negative experience like this,” Farren said.
“From speaking to people around town, it is causing people to feel like they’re pitted against one another as to why one student gets to stay in a particular school and another student has to move.”
He said his family moved to Swampscott less than two years ago largely based on the reputation of the schools, despite higher taxes than surrounding districts. But this is their second battle with the public schools, which he called frustrating.
Before his son’s enrollment, the town was talking about cutting full-day kindergarten in last year’s budget process, but the idea was shelved due to a larger increase in town allocation to the schools.
Angelakis said there were some families who volunteered for the reassignments.
School officials also made the determination of what students would move based on programming, distance from home to school not to exceed 1.8 miles, keeping siblings together in the same school, minimizing the number of transitions for children and moves by neighborhood if possible. Parental requests were also considered.
Angelakis said the reassignments are meant to reduce hallway learning, or create appropriate learning spaces, and create safer overall learning environments in the event of an emergency.
In the budget process, Angelakis said the amount of teaching and learning that is occurring in the elementary school hallways is a major issue, which is neither acceptable nor appropriate for the district’s students and teachers. She said the budget proposal is about equity — equity for the district’s students, teachers and equity in learning space.
School officials have said the elementary classroom reductions are based on an effort to address the major space issues at all three of the district’s elementary schools that can’t wait for a new building.
The school district has been accepted into the Massachusetts School Building Authority for replacement of Hadley Elementary School — statements of interest have also been submitted for Clarke and Stanley — and officials are vying for a consolidated K-5 elementary school to replace the town’s three elementary schools.
Town Meeting members will be asked later this month to approve the town budget and a $750,000 feasibility study for the proposed school.
