Orford
Closing either the Westshire or Samuel Morey elementary schools could be devastating for children, those attending a public forum told district officials.
The move, they said, likely would increase busing between the district’s four towns and break up friends and family attending the same schools.
“Kids are close to home when they go to school,” said Katie Knowles, who has two children at Samuel Morey. “I couldn’t see putting them on a bus for 45 minutes.”
The idea of potentially closing an elementary school came from an ongoing study — commissioned by the School Board — into how Rivendell uses its buildings, Superintendent Elaine Arbour said before the forum.
“I think the concern is that when we operate three buildings for 500 students, there’s a lot of overhead in terms of running the facilities,” she said in a phone interview. “(The School Board) just wanted to make sure that what we’re doing is meeting our needs and, if not, they’d like me to bring forward recommendations about things that we might do differently.”
Rivendell currently is spread out across three campuses in New Hampshire and Vermont.
The Westshire Elementary School in West Fairlee serves children in preschool through sixth grade. Students who attend classes there are from West Fairlee and Vershire.
The Samuel Morey Elementary School in Fairlee caters to the same grade levels for students from Orford and Fairlee. Children from all four communities join together when they enter the seventh grade at Rivendell Academy in Orford, which also serves as the district’s high school.
But maintaining those buildings can be costly, Arbour told parents.
Speaking to an audience of more than 50 people, Arbour said all of Rivendell’s buildings will require improvements in the coming years. Some need new roofs, boilers, floors or upgrades to help students with disabilities, she said.
“There’s a pretty wide array of things here,” said Arbour, who added that the overall cost to keep all three schools running amounted to $432,000 in 2017.
Arbour then presented residents at Tuesday’s forum with four potential options for reconfiguring classes.
She said the district could maintain its current setup, in which children attend one of two elementary schools based on their hometown. The district also could decide to keep its buildings and group children by age, so that all of Rivendell’s pre-K through sixth-graders attend the same school together, Arbour said.
It’s also possible that school officials could decide to close either the Westshire Elementary School or the Samuel Morey Elementary School, she said.
In that scenario, students from the closed school would move into Memorial Hall, which contains a gymnasium and about a half-dozen classrooms. That building, about 50 paces from Rivendell Academy, currently is used as district offices.
Arbour said that whatever the district decides, school consolidation would not occur in the next year. If changes were made, she said, students and parents could expect them in the 2019-20 school year at the earliest.
But the notion of closing a school worried many at Tuesday’s forum.
“When these buildings were first built, the idea was that you wanted to be town-centered and that students would never have to travel more than the neighboring town to go to their school,” said Doug Tifft, whose two children graduated from Rivendell Academy.
Knowles also argued that separating age groups could result in less collaboration between grade levels. Students in the sixth grade often will interact with and can be asked to help their younger peers, she said.
“At that age, it’s good for kids who are developing more slowly to have some younger kids in the same building, and for those who are developing a little bit quicker to have some older kids in the building” Knowles said.
However, others expressed some interest in separating children by grade level, saying it could allow teachers to better work together and potentially end the perception that one elementary school has more resources than another.
The reaction to district plans was similar to forums nearly a decade ago, when officials considered closing Rivendell Middle School and reducing staff in an effort to contain costs.
That reorganization resulted in sixth graders joining classes at Westshire and Samuel Morey elementary schools during the 2010-11 school year. Seventh- and eighth-graders were moved to Rivendell Academy.
At the time, the School Board estimated it could save $100,000 by eliminating a middle school principal position and reducing hours for the superintendent.
They also hoped to avoid $168,000 in renovation costs at Memorial Hall, which was used for the middle school.
Arbour said she’s still unsure when the district’s building study will be complete. The community will have another chance to speak up in an upcoming survey, she said, and students also will be afforded a voice in the decision.
Tim Camerato can be reached at tcamerato@vnews.com or 603-727-3223.