Lerner: Biggest Issue is Overcrowding at Adamsville

With major concerns about overcrowding in , and the knowledge that the other facilities are being underutilized, the board of education showed off six possible suggestions for in the coming years to accommodate students.

“I think there are two issues here, that Adamsville is too crowded and the other facilities are under-utilized,” said board of education president Evan Lerner. “The former issue is critical and needs to be addressed, and the other doesn’t need to be addressed with the same speed.”

The board held a discussion Tuesday on the issue of redistricting, with the understanding that a committee will be formed to discuss options for the coming years—although the board decided to call it a “task force” instead.

“A committee implies an informal authority to make decisions,” said board member Jeffrey Brookner. “I think this is more in the nature of a task force."

The board came into the meeting with six suggestions outlined by the administration for possibly handling the redistricting issue. They are:

• Moving the AI program from Adamsville to decrease enrollment, with the goal that it could be done by September 2012
• Move 42 students from Adamsville to decrease enrollment there and increase it elsewhere, with the goal of doing so by September 2012
• Perform a district-wide enrollment shift to balance the kindergarten through fourth grade schools, to be done by September 2013
• Perform a district-wide enrollment shift to balance kindergarten through fourth grade, and the intermediate schools
• Close one kindergarten through fourth grade school with a district-wide enrollment shift to balance the remaining schools
• Close the Wade Administration Building with a district-wide enrollment shift to balance the schools for grades kindergarten through eighth.

It was that sixth recommendation, to close the Wade Building, that drew the most discussion from board members.

“I think that one is untenable,” Brookner said. “We have facilities in the Wade building that would be too expensive to duplicate, and rooms that are set up specifically to be accommodating for meetings.”

“There are things in this building that would require a lot of money to move elsewhere and duplicate elsewhere,” he added. “I don’t think it’s worth the money when there are options that I think are better.”

But board of education vice president Patrick Breslin said he does not think it would be a good idea to eliminate any option, including closing the Wade building, without looking at what’s going to happen with the numbers of students over the next several years.

“We will have potentially two severely underutilized intermediate schools and one underutilized middle school,” he said. “While I am not proposing any specific solution to that, I think going through a study without looking at those things could cause us to have to redo our decision in the future.”

Breslin said he believes all the suggestions are actually too specific at this point.

And board member Cindy Cullen said she would not recommend closing any building that could potentially be used for student services.

“The issue with the Wade building in particular is that it doesn’t have the capability to house students,” she said. “We couldn’t turn it back into an elementary school, so if we are talking about closing facilities, we have to discuss it all.”

“But I would rather take off the table the idea of closing any facilities,” she added.

Superintendent of Schools Michael Schilder said the board should remember that in order to even consider implementing the first two ideas that could be ready for September 2012, a decision would have to be made by March.

“I think those two are really like a patch, just to live by for a year,” said board member Arvind Mathur. “But they’re not long term solutions. We need to do something more extensive for long term, and I wouldn’t advise taking anything off the table.”

And Lerner said he believes if the district looks to realign any schools, it has to do so for all of them.

“It doesn’t seem to make sense to look at realigning the kindergarten to four schools without looking at the entire kindergarten through sixth system to put balance at and ,” he said.

Brookner said he would recommend not limiting the task force to only these few recommendations. The discussion should be open, he said, to accommodate any new ideas.

“We need a committee to come back and say here are the five options that were the top for us, plus the pros and cons of each of them,” he said. “And then we decide which one to go with based on all that and public input. We can give them this list as ideas, but that shouldn’t be the limit.”

The task force will be made up of Lerner and another board member, in addition to members of the public, a facilitator and representatives from the individual schools.