Let's get community input

By TRACY HIGHTOWER, MEG ROSA, STEFAN PETRUCHA, JEAN KOSHA, JOCELYN CUFFEE and LORI GOLDNER

Published on January 30, 2009

The fiscal crisis has created an immediate and serious problem for Amherst Elementary Schools, which face a projected deficit of up to $1.4 million for the coming year.

Several plans have been floated to achieve cost savings, among them, closing Mark's Meadow Elementary School. However, on Jan. 13, the interim superintendents reported to the School Committee their belief that even under the current situation, maintaining our four-school system is "far preferable to the disruption that would result from reorganizing or closing a school at this time."

Regardless, members of the School Committee insist on championing the closing of Mark's Meadow based on rudimentary, unreviewed calculations of the savings that this would achieve. Time, they insist, is running out, while an actual time-line for the procedures or a decision has not been made clear or public.

Online and in public meetings, parents attempting to make certain the most effective decision is made, have been accused of putting Mark's Meadow's desires ahead of the overall community, "romanticizing" small schools, and even "slighting" staff at other schools by suggesting there are advantages to the small school choice.

We know that good teaching and learning takes place in all of the schools, but small schools have been repeatedly recognized in research as having been particularly successful. A 2006 research brief on elementary school size in Chicago, released by Research Development and Accountability Office of the Albuquerque, N.M., Elementary School System, reviewed dozens of studies conducted in a range of settings about this issue. The brief can be found online at: www.rda.aps.edu/RDA/Documents/Publications/05_06/ES_School_Size.pdf.

It concludes that student achievement in a small school is often superior to large schools. It also concludes that student attitudes toward school are better, that small schools have lower incidences of negative social behavior and higher academic achievement.

To be clear, while we don't imagine there are no circumstances under which closing Mark's Meadow is advisable, an extreme decision, even the dialogue about such a decision, should occur only after careful professional review, hard numbers and community input.

Mark's Meadow has been part of Amherst since 1961 in a building maintained for the district by UMass. It has a broadly diverse population in every conceivable way. The outstanding staff has achieved exceptional performance by students on MCAS and created an environment where children feel their voices are heard and respected. It also has a long history of being a Title 1 school serving some very needy students, as well as having a population with up to 20 percent English-as-a-second-language students.

Not everyone in Amherst would or can attend this single small school. However, there are between 25 and 30 children every year who do opt into Mark's Meadow from the other three schools. Despite the fact that this desirable school is not filled to capacity, there is no plan to increase the total number of students attending.

School choice, for example, would allow students from other school districts into all of our elementary schools, bringing with them $5,000 per child per year. Yet school choice isn't even injected into the budgetary process. Nor has it been answered how, without Mark's Meadow, the remaining schools would deal with the year-to-year fluctuations in class size.

In all the proposals that have put forward, six to seven teachers are lost. The unreviewed calculations being considered by the School Committee put this savings at $335,000. Closing Mark's Meadow, eliminating administrative staff, they believe, will create an additional $300,000 in savings.

If the committee numbers prove accurate, the question becomes, at what point of savings does Amherst wish to create an upheaval that eradicates the small school choice, possibly forever, for everyone, creating a ripple effect that displaces students in all our schools? At $100,000 in savings? $200,000? $300,000?

We implore the committee to withhold judgment and cease publicizing unconfirmed information, and beseech all members of our community to come forward with their ideas and voices. It is in everyone's interest to assure we make an educated decision.

The column writers all hail from Amherst.