School closure hotly debated

By Mary Carey
Staff Writer

Published on January 16, 2009

The Amherst School Committee considered, then rejected, narrowing potential elementary school reconfiguration scenarios to closing Mark's Meadow at an emotional meeting packed with 50 or more parents Tuesday.

Faced with having to possibly cut as much as $1.2 million from a level-services budget for next year, School Committee members said they would like to investigate whether closing Mark's Meadow, the smallest of the four elementary schools, could result in savings that would allow the district to preserve programs that might otherwise have to be eliminated.

It appears from the committee's preliminary calculations that closing Mark's Meadow would be the most cost-effective change the schools could make among several options that have been discussed, some members said.

But after much input from parents at the meeting and the suggestion by Interim Co-superintendent Helen Vivian that the committee should not eliminate other reconfiguration options until there has been much more community involvement in the decision-making process, members opted to revisit several reorganization scenarios at their next meeting in a month.

Mark's Meadow parents and the school's principal, Nick Yaffe, expressed relief that closing the school wouldn't be the only option on the table going forward. Losing Mark's Meadow would harm children and prompt some families to withdraw their children from Amherst public schools, parents said.

Yaffe invited everyone to visit Mark's Meadow, which is on the University of Massachusetts campus, and see what would be lost if it closed. "It's easy to talk about an abstraction," he said.

Closing the school would do no less than "rip up the community," Mark's Meadow parent Tracy Hightower said. "This is a drastic change that we can't erase."

Despite the disruptions any redistricting of the schools would cause, there is fairly widespread agreement that the town will have to do it at some point. There are wide disparities among the schools now, with 60 percent of students at Crocker Farm qualifying for free and reduced lunch compared to 22 percent at Wildwood, for instance.

"As a Wildwood and Crocker Farm parent, the discrepancies, if you saw them on paper, would disgust you," parent Becky Demling said.

School Committee member Catherine Sanderson said redistricting is "the morally right thing to do as a school district." As they stand now, "The lines look ridiculous," she said. "They look illegal."

Vivian had earlier said she favored another of three elementary school reorganization plans that had been developed by a committee charged with exploring scenarios last year. Under that plan, Mark's Meadow would be paired with Wildwood, and Fort River would be paired with Crocker Farm, with the lower grades going to one of the schools in each pair and the upper grades going to the other.

The other plan to be evaluated is creating three kindergarten- through fourth-grade schools and one for fifth- and sixth-graders.

Vivian no longer favors reconfiguring the schools at all this year, because of the potential disruptions to the community, she said. And other reorganization plans might emerge if the district pursues some form of regionalization with the Pelham, Shutesbury and Leverett elementary schools, she said. One possibility is that the sixth grades would be moved to the middle school. Another is that children in north Amherst could attend Pelham Elementary School.

Adopting school choice, in which elementary school students from other school districts can choose to come to Amherst, is another, Vivian said.

"We get requests for it all the time. We have a wonderful school district. People want to come here."

Mary Carey can be reached at mary.carey@att.net.