Closing a local school is not that simple
March 29, 2024 | By Lisa Loomis | The Valley Reporter
Fayston Elementary School. Photo by Justina Boyden
In the recent online survey by The Valley Reporter/Waterbury Roundabout, 73 of the 315 responses commenting about the failed school budget on March 5 mentioned the possibility of closing Fayston Elementary School and at least 17 other responses mentioned closing district schools in general.
The process for closing one of the five elementary schools in the Harwood Unified Union School District is spelled out in the 2016 Articles of Agreement that were ratified when Waitsfield, Warren, Duxbury, Moretown, Fayston and Waterbury merged into one school district. The merger became official on July 1, 2017.
The process requires an affirmative vote of two-thirds of the school board, but that vote can’t happen without at least three public hearings, one of which needs to be held where the school closure will be. No school was to be closed within the first four years of consolidation.
Close to home
After the public hearings and a 10-day warning period before the school board’s vote, board members could vote to close a school and set a time frame to do so. But closure requires that all students in the closed school must be able to attend the elementary school closest to their home unless their parents are using intra-district choice to place them in another school.
Fayston is a hilly community that abuts Warren, Waitsfield and Moretown. Students from Fayston could easily be closest to Waitsfield and Moretown, but some could also be closest to Warren.
And there’s the rub. According to HUUSD superintendent Mike Leichliter, there is not enough room in other district elementary schools to accommodate the 95 kindergarten through sixth-grade students and 21 preschoolers at Fayston. Across the district, preschool students only attend school part-time with some schools offering two days a week, some schools offering half days, some offering five days a week in half-day sessions, etc.
Square footage
Leichliter shared a document from TruexCullins, the architects the district has used for construction bond planning and other projects, that recommends how much space schools need per pupil. The most recent state standard for space per student dates back to 2007 Agency of Education guidelines that recommended 140 square feet per pupil. That recommendation is currently a moot point according to Ted Fisher, spokesman for the Education Agency. The guideline was part of the state’s education construction funding program which currently does not exist, although reviving state funding for school construction projects currently is being considered by the state legislature.
Based on February 2024 enrollment figures, two district elementary schools —Waitsfield and Moretown— fall short of the140 sq.ft.-per pupil benchmark:
Brookside 199.85 sq. ft. per pupil
Fayston 206.89 sq. ft. per pupil
Moretown 133.93 sq. ft. per pupil
Waitsfield 137.50 sq. ft. per pupil
Warren 204.54 sq. ft. per pupil
Costs travel
In an interview this week, Leichliter was joined by school district finance director Lisa Estler who explained that there is no direct relationship between closing a school and any projected cost savings. Some fixed costs will travel with the students, she said, including staffing costs for paraeducators, teachers and aides, she explained.
“If there’s an IEP that goes with the student. We have to make sure that the other building has appropriate services as well. And if you’re increasing capacity, in theory, then you have to increase services because a lot of the services for students with IEPs are calculated in minutes, how many minutes they give certain kinds of instruction like specialized reading for example,” Leichliter said.
“And if you’re increasing capacity, you have to look at extending lunches. At Brookside we have an undersized cafeteria, so students eat lunch in shifts with the first lunch period starting around 10:30 a.m.,” he said.
Costly renovations
“But there are different kinds of capacity. There’s a rated capacity which is what the fire marshal would say you can fit in a building and there’s functional capacity which is what you look at in your class sizes along with what the building can handle,” he added.
At a March 13 school board meeting, Leichliter said absorbing students from a closed school into other elementary schools would involve costly capital spending. Asked this week if he had any sense of what those capital costs might be and what work would need to be done in the receiving schools, Leichliter said that had not been explored in depth yet.
“And that’s one of the reasons why doing something like closing a school can’t be done as a quick budget fix in the course of two months. It needs to be a long-term study by the board to see what the options are and where the community is,” he said.
In 2019, there was a debate about closing Fayston Elementary among the district administration, school board and community. At the time, it had 60 K-6 grade students according to district enrollment data. While the school board in November that year voted to explore the possibility, it ultimately opted not to pursue the move. The only consolidation the unified district has attempted to date was a proposal to merge the seventh- and eighth-grade classes at Harwood Middle School and the fifth- and sixth-grade classes at Moretown into Crossett Brook Middle School. That was proposed in 2020 without any permanent expansion to Crossett Brook.
That year the $39,770,000 budget was voted down 3,048 to 2,254. That budget included $315,000 for temporary classrooms at Crossett Brook to accommodate the additional students. A subsequent budget vote that did not call for merging those students at Crossett Brook passed in June 2020.
“Simply closing schools is not a solution. In order to consolidate you have to look at your facility and there are big price tags for massive renovations or new construction. With the state currently not funding school construction, it’s not feasible,” Leichliter said.
Costs and enrollment
Should the school board, administration and community revive the discussion around consolidating elementary schools, a likely starting point would be to look at the associated costs and enrollment at each school.
Below are enrollment numbers for district schools and the annual operational costs for each according to the 2024 Harwood school district’s annual report.
Brookside Primary School: 352 students; $7,632,273 operating cost
Fayston Elementary School: 116 students; $2,178,730 operating cost
Moretown Elementary School: 165 students; $2,870,856 operating cost
Waitsfield School: 160 students; $2,920,102 operating cost
Warren School: 132 students; $2,902,100 operating cost
Lisa Loomis is editor of The Valley Reporter. This story was originally published in The Valley Reporter.