Panel drops plan to close middle school - Advocate Oct 19

By Chris Gosier Staff WriterPublished October 19 2007
STAMFORD - The school board's redistricting committee last night voted to drop the idea of closing a middle school or merging Westover and Hart magnet elementary schools.

The possibility of closing an elementary school is still on the table, but board members are going to consider other schools, not just Toquam Magnet Elementary School.

The committee, which is exploring ways to reduce overcrowding and socioeconomically balance schools, decided yesterday that closing Turn of River Middle School - or any middle school - would not save enough money to justify the disruption to students and families.The committee also decided merging Westover and Hart magnet elementary schools isn't the best way to balance the two schools' populations.

Those ideas had arisen from the committee's monthslong discussion about redistricting, or revamping district boundaries so that no schools are crowded and that all have about the same socioeconomic makeup as the entire city.

School closures are on the table because the district will get another school building in 2009 with the opening of a new prekindergarten through eighth-grade interdistrict magnet school, built mostly at state expense, and the committee is looking to save facilities costs in a time of tight budgets.

"It would be irresponsible not to consider closing an elementary school," board President Martin Levine said.

Changes generally would not take place until 2009, board member Richard Freedman said.

The committee also wants to maximize the number of children who walk to school and cut down on transportation costs, said Susan Nabel, chairwoman of the committee.

"We'd like to be able to spend some of those millions on instruction," she said.

The board is spending $12.5 million on student transportation this year, or 6 percent of its total budget.

Freedman said having more families living close to their schools is "one of the few tangible ways that we can increase family engagement in the schools."

Committee members addressed parents gathered last night in the auditorium at Westhill High School. The committee meetings are not open to public comment, but the topic has generated so much concern that numerous parents have come to recent meetings just to listen.

Parents yesterday carried signs reading: "We support Hart Magnet School." Others carried "Save Toquam" signs. Others wore black shirts emblazoned with the letters TOR, for Turn of River Middle School.

Last night's vote only changed the discussion among committee members and administrators. The committee will have public hearings - the first one coming up on Oct. 30 - before crafting a final plan so the full board can vote on it, possibly early next year.

Nabel noted the outpouring of calls and e-mails from parents concerned about school closings. Any further discussion of school closings would come up at meetings of the redistricting committee in the near future, she said.

Committee members had been considering closing Turn of River, in part because of the high cost of running the building, and redistributing Toquam's students so that building could be used to expand Dolan Middle School, which is nearby.

Administrators said yesterday that closing Turn of River under that scenario would save about $728,000. But closing an elementary school, by contrast, could save as much as $5.6 million by the 2011-12 school year, so board members kept that option open.

Nabel said the board should involve the Board of Finance and the Board of Representatives' leadership in its discussions about how to proceed. School board Vice President Rosanne McManus said the committee needs to decide soon which school, if any, it's going to close.

"We cannot redistrict until we've decided what to do about our facilities," she said.

The committee was considering merging Westover and Hart - by putting different grades at each school - to bring both schools into balance and spread the practices at high-achieving Westover to another school. The imbalance between the two schools "has to be addressed, but I don't think this is the way to address it," Levine said.

The members decided to examine the costs of expanding the Westover model to Hart without the reconfiguration, and how to balance the two schools through changes to their attendance zones.

Toquam parents were happy to hear the discussion moving away from closing their school. But they didn't take it as a reprieve.

"We need to continue to extoll the value of Toquam," said Jeff Herz, a member of a parents' group organized to keep the school open. "I think we're doing well. We cannot stop. This is good news for us, but we need to keep going."

Another Toquam parent, Karen Cammarota, said, "it was just mind-boggling" that a school's educational performance was not mentioned as criteria for opening or closing a school.

Herz agreed. "Where was academic performance in today's discussions?" he asked.
Nabel said part of the reason for redistricting is to equalize the opportunities among all schools to excel academically."

Academic performance is not the result of what building the learning is taking place in," she said.

Freedman said all the budget discussions can sound clinical and detached from education, but said "you can't separate the two."

"Fiscal policy is educational policy . . . because if you can't pay for something, you can't do it," he said.