AMHERST - The Amherst School Committee will take up possible elementary school reorganization scenarios tonight, but Interim Co-superintendent Helen Vivian said she no longer favors reconfiguring schools this year.
She had suggested earlier that pairing Mark's Meadow with Wildwood and Crocker Farm with Fort River elementary schools seemed like the best of several options developed by a committee charged last year with studying elementary school reconfiguration models.
The younger grades would go to one pair of schools and the older grades go to the other, in the option Vivian favored. As it could save an estimated $400,000, she had suggested that the change be made in time for the next school year.
Now that there is talk of creating a kindergarten- through 12th-grade regional school system, a different reconfiguration scenario could emerge as the most educationally and financially sound model than one she had previously supported, Vivian said Friday.
There seems to be a fair amount of agreement that the time has come to readjust the elementary school districts anyway, Amherst School Committee Chairman Andrew Churchill said.
"The way the schools are districted now has gotten a little out of whack over the years, because we have variation of class size, numbers of low-income kids and we have pockets of kids from one section of town ending up at a school that is farther away than the school closest to them."
A new group has begun examining reconfiguration options, but it isn't clear yet how long it would take to redraw the district lines effectively and whether it could be done in time to affect the coming year's budget, Churchill said. Vivian has estimated the schools may have to spend up to $1.2 million less than what is considered necessary to maintain services at their current level.
School Committee member Catherine Sanderson has advocated closing Mark's Meadow Elementary School to save money. "I don't see keeping the current four K- to six schools and making massive cuts (not just this year, but next year, etc.) as a viable option," she said last week.
"Parents and kids would lose so much because the schools wouldn't have the same characteristics that they have now. It seems to me that closing Mark's Meadow is the only option that accomplishes my primary goal ... preserving what we love about the Amherst schools - neighborhood schools that are K to six, with small classes and a rich instrumental music program."
Mary Carey can be reached at mary.carey@att.net [1].
