With all the discussion of project planning and MSBA ballot requirements, it’s easy to miss how much more needs to be done to keep our schools running besides rebuilding Angier and Cabot. After seeing Deputy Superintendent Sandra Guryan’s Enrollment Analysis Report at last night’s School Committee meeting, I suddenly realized how much more there is to the crisis than crumbling infrastructure, and how critical the operating override will be in the short-term for Newton’s Schools.
School Department graphic
Think schools are crowded now? Projections show those trends continuing. Even with the larger, rebuilt Angier and Cabot schools, this report shows the need for a significant number of additional (modular) classrooms elsewhere — and the teachers to staff them — just to handle the projected increase in enrollment.
School Department graphic
Next year’s Kindergarten will be the largest incoming class since 1975! That trough in Kindergarten size was the period when Newton closed so many elementary of its schools, with the state adopting Proposition 2 1/2 at the lowest point in 1982.
This is NOT a great idea. We need MORE space. Right now OT’s take kids out of elementary school classrooms, and work with the kids in the hallway. My son has ADHD, and he needs a quiet place to work. Half the time that he had OT in the hallways was spent with his head looking around at each child that passed and every noise that happened. A hallway is NOT where kids should be learning.
Moving specialists around (and not giving them dedicated space) is ridiculous. Mayor Warren, Alderman and School Committee Members and Citizens of Newton – THE CHILDREN NEED MORE SPACE! More kids in the same outdated and over crowded schools are NOT the solution. And NOW is the time to plan for middle school and high school. This BUBBLE will move up the school system. WE NEED SPACE NOW!!!!!!
If Newton can’t keep great standards, then home prices will fall. No one is going to pay TOP DOLLAR for your house for a school system that does not produce. How are we going to keep the top teachers and staff?
Newton Mom, the plan is to add more space, contingent on funding. See the space recommendations presented that same evening.
Since I am in the Angier district, that is the one that is moving people within the school. When you enter the building and see how many specialists and teachers use the hallway as teaching space, it makes me angry. For the schools that will add modulars (Bowen, if it is approved and Burr), then real space is added. However, if you move the district wide programs around the middle schools. . . . you still haven’t solved the space issue. Because the preK and K bubble in a few years will be at the middle schools. Why not add “modulars” to the middle schools now. . . so we are ready for that bubble?