ORFORD — Samuel Morey Elementary School and Westshire Elementary School would become preK-to-fifth-grade schools, with sixth graders attending Rivendell Academy, under a plan Rivendell Interstate Superintendent Barrett Williams has proposed to the Rivendell School Board

The realignment, which would begin next school year, also calls for students from Vershire and West Fairlee to attend Westshire in West Fairlee through grade 5.

Under the current system, those children move on after fourth grade to the Morey school in Fairlee for grades 5 and 6 with students from Orford and Fairlee.

“I feel that our students and families would be well served if we had only one transition for all children moving to the academy,” Williams wrote in a letter to parents this week. He also said it made sense to have the same grade configuration at both elementary schools.

Williams also proposed cutting one faculty position from the school system — an idea that teachers and parents appear to see as a net gain for the district’s 463 students.

“I haven’t polled everybody yet, but I also haven’t heard anything negative, which is telling,” Rivendell Education Association President Barbara Griffin said Friday afternoon. “A reduction in force is always a concern for us, but we’re weighing it against the overall educational benefits to our students. In the best possible scenario, the reduction would be achieved through attrition, and there’s a very strong possibility that this will be the case.”

Williams, an Upper Valley native who boosted enrollment as principal of Sharon Elementary School before joining Rivendell in July, estimated Friday morning that the district would save “with benefits, anywhere between $65,000 and $85,000.”

If the Rivendell School Board approves the plan, all 36 of the current fifth graders from the four towns would graduate from Samuel Morey to Rivendell Academy for grade 6.

“So far what I’ve heard from parents … has been mostly positive,” Orford resident Tami Sullivan, president of the district’s parent-teacher organization and the mother of two Samuel Morey students, said via email Friday. “There has been some concern voiced about whether sixth graders are ready to transition to middle school, but overall, parents seem supportive of the idea.”

In his letter to parents, Williams wrote that administrators foresee giving sixth graders at the academy “their own space and team of teachers providing core academic instruction … (and) integrating adventure-based outdoor education, technology and life skill activities into the weekly schedule.”

Kathy Hooke, who represents Vershire on the Rivendell School Board, noted that planners of the district in the late 1990s originally considered placing grades 6 to 8 at the Academy as “the most developmentally appropriate configuration.”

“In many ways, putting grades 5 and 6 together worked for a time, but there were imperfections,” Hooke said. “We began to notice that putting the kids through two transitions was pretty challenging for some of them socially. It’s not a brand-new idea; it’s just come full circle.”

Griffin, the head of the teachers union, added that moving sixth graders out of Samuel Morey also would free up much-needed space at the school, which was becoming crowded since the addition of pre-kindergarten.

“We had to turn closets into workable space,” said Griffin, who has taught reading in both elementary schools since the district merger in 2000. “It is tight in there.”

David Corriveau can be reached at dcorriveau@vnews.com or 603-727-3304.