Newton city and school officials are working to address the deteriorating building conditions and declining enrollment at the Ward and Underwood elementary schools, Boston University journalist Andres Picon reports for the Boston Globe.
Will deteriorating conditions, declining enrollment lead to merging Ward and Underwood?
by village14 | Feb 25, 2020 | Newton | 21 comments
Unless you are a school parent, it’s extremely difficult to keep up with what’s happening in our schools. Nice to see someone is paying attention.
I thought all of our schools were far above capacity and that the Northland project would destroy our school system with thousands of new students?
This story makes it painfully clear: we really need those new students and we need more revenue.
Ryan, I bet you do not have kids in the Newton Public Schools. Newton North and Bigelow don’t seem to have a lot of extra space.
At Newton North freshman attend their study halls in a room with desks. The other students are relegated to sitting in the halls or the library. The library only holds 100 students, far less than demand. “Officially” Newton is at 93% capacity. Do you really want to add 140 students to get up to 100%?
It is a myth to think that because we are shy of official capacity that we can handle extra students without further deterioration of their education.
My home has 5 toilets. Not all 5 are being used now. Does this under capacity imply that we should send bus loads of people over to my house to use my bathrooms?
So we combine Ward and Underwood to save money. Then in seven years (because these future kids haven’t been born yet) we have too many kids for the schools. I think I have heard that story before in Newton . . . . . any one else heard that before?
We need to keep neighborhood schools open and functional. We will look back in 20 years and say, why did we close Ward school.
One more thing. It is very misleading to look at average capacity across the system. Let’s pretend that the NPS is at 90% capacity, and elementary schools and middle schools are at 80%, while high schools are at 100%. Elementary students grow up and become high school students. Even though, on average, we are at 90% capacity, defacto we are at 100%.
I think Underwood’s location is important. After the Pike went through, the village was cut in half. Underwood helps hold the 2 sides of the neighborhood of Newton Corner together.
What a bad idea. How to make our school less walkable and increase traffic. Local elementary schools are one of Newton’s best features.
@Pontiff—I agree that Bigelow and North (and Day for that matter) are pushing capacity, but that doesn’t mean our elementary schools are. This seems worth considering to me, since the Underwood playground is by far the best playground in Newton. Because of this, the Ward kids would actually be happy with the change.
And thanks for the invite to use your bathroom! I’ll be sure to swing by after a quick lunch at Los Amigos if you don’t mind ;)
I was fascinated by this quote in the article, ““Ward is a really, really different community than Underwood,” said Andrea Chahrourcq, the mother of two current Underwood students. “People walk to school all the time, everybody knows the crossing guards, looks out for everybody else’s kids, watches each other’s kids on the playground. It’s really nice. It’s hard to say, ‘Oh, let’s have a bigger school’ without worrying that you might lose that.”
What do y’all think that means? Both are neighborhood schools with plenty of walkers and involved parents. Both have excellent reputations. Is it that Ward serves students from Chestnut Hill and Newton Centre, whereas Underwood serves students from Newton Corner? There’s no context in the article relating to the quote.
@Jeffrey,
My kids went through NPS many moons ago but the numbers don’t lie. Enrollment is projected to decline, beginning with kindergartners and elementary students. This will eventually mean decreased enrollment at the high schools too.
@Ryan: AND THEN THEY’LL GO BACK UP. Duh! Doesn’t take a lot of connecting the dots, just look back at recent history. Anybody remember the “Save Our Hyde” campaign?! Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it, someone wisely once said.
@Pat,
How do you figure that? School enrollment is declining in wealthy communities across the nation, including right here in Newton. I know people have strong emotions on this issue but “facts are stubborn things”.
As Newton Mom indicates Predicting elementary enrollment is the hardest enrollment forecast because once you get past 4 yrs the kids have not even been born yet. The enrollment report states that “the projections at best only provide the direction or trend enrollments will take”.
Elementary Schools have been overcrowded due to years of large cohorts some of which are now in MS so the fact that elementary has declined somewhat gives a few schools more breathing room. Now the MS starts to feel the increase. Predictions for Zervas are that enrollment across grades will continue to increase so an area redistricted to Zervas from Mason-Rice is now being proposed as a buffer zone to shift kids to MR. This is also triggered by capacity issues at Angier. There are buffer zones with Ward/MR and Ward/Bowen however historically the kids in that zone have always been sent to the South feeding elementary schools because if they are sent to Ward they then follow the North path and go to Bigelow and North. This was in attempt to balance enrollment between Newton North and Newton South, Bigelow has the least capacity of MSs and a buffer zone was also proposed for Bigelow/Day. So my guess is some kids could be shifted to Ward for the interim until this projected trend can be substantiated. It will be interesting to see what the task force comes up with.
Hi @Ryan, one consideration is where in the City growth is happening or will happen.
The new Angier school has more than 500 students (519 if memory serves) and Riverside will add students to that district.
Franklin, Pierce & Horace Mann will need to handle 2.5K-3K housing units on Washington street over the next 20 years as the Vision plan comes to life. Also, multi story apartments and townhouses will be allowed in many single family home neighborhoods north of the pike if early drafts of city wide zoning reform being discussed by the Council Zoning Committee are approved. This will add to the 2.5K-3K unit total.
Northland has been discussed a bunch.
A few more points.
1) I’ve heard approximately 20% to 25% of school age children attend private schools in Newton. This could change fast in an economic downturn adding to our enrollment
2) Little is planned for expanding middle schools as we scale up our elementary schools (Zervis, Angier…)
3) Our City ordinances don’t require NPS to count students from developments until projects are permitted. NPS enrollment projections are more current state which is probably accurate for Newton Center as not much development is planned there.
Rich, quick addition: new students along some sections of Washington Street have already been routed to Cabot and its increased capacity.
I’m also a fan of neighborhood schools and I feel a special attachment to Underwood as that was the elementary school I attended as a child.
I have said it before and I will say it again, I fear the closing of schools much more than overcrowding.
School enrollment does fluctuate and always will. We once had over 17,000 kids in the NPS. Now we have a measly 12,500. We learned our lesson about selling off our public buildings. The school administration is also very good estimating enrollment, at least in the 6 years I have been looking at the reports. I will be following the working group meetings carefully. But looking at the data it seems clear to me that new growth is important to maintain adequate enrollments in the future. Most young families can no longer afford to live here and as a result our school enrollment will likely drop significantly.
Alison is correct to think about fluctuation.
I just looked at the enrollment report. I could not find confidence intervals, so I did some rough calculations myself.
It seems like the standard deviation of the forecast error is about 0.6% per year. Current enrollment is 12,611. We can be 90% confident that next year’s enrollment will be between 12,590 and 12,732. Expected dispersion increases over time. Assuming that the mistakes that the NPS estimation makes are independent (a big assumption). We can be 90% confident that expected enrollment in 5 years will be between 12,648 and 12,310.
Based on this, the probability of an INCREASE in enrollment over the next 5 years is 15%.
This probability is too low. Why? If I understand the model, if the NPS forecast misses one year, the students stick around for future years. My guess is the probability of a 5 year increase in enrollment is greater than 30%.
Thanks @Mike.
@Councilor Leary the combined enrollment at Franklin, Horace Mann & Pierce is projected to drop just 6.2% between the 2019-20 and 2024-25 school years in the latest NPS enrollment report.
As mentioned, these projections don’t include potential pupil increases from Dunstan East, Dunstan West, other future developments along Washington street AND increased housing density in single-family neighborhoods served by those schools.
It would be great to see any additional data beyond the NPS enrollment report making it “clear to you that new growth is important to maintain enrollment in the future” at these 3 elementary schools.
I’m still hearing anecdotally from local realtors that families with kids are moving to Ward 2 & 3 to take advantage of our City’s great schools. It sounds like you have better data signaling this trend is slowing or about too.
Thank you in advance for your counsel.
A school facility is built to last 80 – 100 years. To base a decision as drastic as closing a school based on a 10-year enrollment report is simply bad policy. These buildings are supposed to educate students for a future we can’t even imagine – well beyond 2030. Think 2090. Over time, enrollment will wax and wane and the school system will need to accommodate these fluctuations – as it has since the disastrous decision to sell schools in the late 70’s and 80’s.
In addition, in the last 30 years, NPS has added at least 10 new programs to each elementary school but did not add space to accommodate any of them. That means that multiple programs are currently stuffed into one classroom space. These programs include the literacy program, a new reading program to address the needs of vulnerable readers, an ELL program, the inclusion program and safe room, resource programs for students who have IEP’s, an afterschool program, math coach, space for a psychologist, social worker, occupational therapist, physical therapist, speech/language, and an IT specialist. Many of these programs are unfunded state mandates.
To be clear, there are no empty classrooms in any Newton school. If enrollment declines to the degree that a classroom isn’t needed for a regular class, then these programs can be moved to this space so educators have adequate space to provide an excellent education to her/his students.
I simply can’t believe Newton would repeat the mistakes of the past. As a result of that short-sighted decision, the system had to add the first modular to an elementary school (Cabot) in 1991 – just 10 years after the closure and sale of schools.
NPS educators welcome all students and their families, but they need to have adequate resources to do their best work. Adequate space is the resource that is amongst the highest priorities and most lacking in every elementary school, with the exception of the three new buildings.
What Jane said.
Well stated, Jane.