CLAREMONT — Even as a kid, Amber Hammond knew she wanted to be a teacher, but not at just any school.
As a student at Bluff Elementary in Claremont, she had been inspired by her teachers’ enthusiasm for learning and their belief in their students.
“I pictured myself growing up and teaching at Bluff,” Hammond, 26, said in a recent interview.
After graduating from Keene State College with a degree in elementary education in 2021, Hammond, a third grade teacher, returned to her old school with the hope of continuing her educators’ legacy. Upon her arrival, she was greeted by a community of families and staff who also shared the same affinity for Bluff.
But that community was recently broken apart after the Claremont School Board voted in September to close Bluff and move teachers and students to the city’s two other elementary schools amid staffing troubles in the district driven by an ongoing financial crisis.
A few weeks ago, after learning of the impending move, Bluff faculty and former staff gathered together in front of their building for a group photo to commemorate their time together.
“Many of us are grieving…because we’ve been there for so long,” said Tammy Yates, who has taught at Bluff since 2002 and is the president of Sugar River Education Association, the district’s teachers union.
Teachers spent a week of packing up their classrooms and moving into unused spaces in Claremont’s remaining elementaries — Disnard Elementary School and Maple Avenue Elementary School. Classes resumed on Oct. 14.
Almost 90 Bluff students as well as 24 staff members migrated to Maple Avenue, according to Maple Avenue Principal Mark Blount, while roughly 50 students moved to Disnard.
Teachers have been left to process the shuttering of their old school and adjust to life at Maple Avenue and Disnard, all while the future remains tinged with uncertainty in light of the district’s financial crisis.
“It was rushed. It was stressful. It was a lot of tears. People were not ready,” Yates said.
A blow to morale
To mitigate the fallout of a $5 million deficit due to cash flow issues and mismanagement, the SAU 6 School Board announced in August that it would not be ratifying the contracts of 19 new hires, including teachers and paraprofessionals. At least 14 teachers across the district have since resigned, Yates said.
Amid the staff shortage, Bluff Principal Dale Chenette wrote in a message to staff last month that the school could no longer meet its legal obligation to offer special education services. He proposed to close the school, which the School Board voted to do at its Sept. 17 meeting.
At the meeting, principals presented an alternate plan to keep Bluff open for the remainder of the year, which the Board rejected.
“That just dropped the morale of teachers,” Yates said. “It was that last hope.”
For many teachers, one of the most stressful parts of the switch from Bluff to the new schools was the move itself. After the closing of Bluff was announced, the district gave teachers the week before Columbus Day to move their things into their new classrooms.
The window was initially shorter, just a couple days, but the teachers union pushed to have the entire week to move, Yates said.
On top of the short time frame, Facility Director Steven Holt informed teachers that anything they had purchased for their classroom they would have to move on their own, without the help of school facilities staff.
“We’re there to move district property, not personal possessions,” Holt said in an interview. Holt wasn’t aware of Bluff teachers who needed special accommodations during the move, he said.
The decision posed a particular challenge for Hammond, who is eight months pregnant, and who, over time, has purchased a number of large items for her classroom such as bookshelves, a cart and cabinets.
Her colleague, Cindy Couitt, who is set to have shoulder surgery next week, also struggled with the move.
The district’s interim Superintendent Kerry Kennedy neglected to make any accommodations for them after she voiced her concerns in a September meeting, Hammond said.
Kennedy did not provide a response by deadline on Friday.
The message Couitt took from the district was “just fend for yourselves,” she said.
Luckily, teachers at Disnard and Maple Avenue as well as Stevens High School students and community members stepped up to help their colleagues move into their new classrooms, Yates said.
“But still, it was a difficult transition,” she added.
Staffing remains precarious
Even after moving in, it’s taken time for Bluff teachers to adjust to the new rhythms of a bigger building and a brand-new schedule.
Bluff’s small student population of about 140 made it easy for teachers to collaborate and be flexible with their curriculum, Yates said. Meanwhile, at Maple Avenue, where the student population is about 330 after the transition, much of that flexibility has been lost.
Days at Maple Avenue also are structured completely differently than at Bluff, Couitt and Hammond said, yet no one from the school walked them through what their schedule would look like in advance of the first day.
Blount, the principal, said all teachers received a copy of the school schedule and campus map before the start of classes.
“I guess it’s up to the individual teachers to look at those pieces,” he said in an interview.
Initially, Couitt and Hammond were supposed to share a class, with Couitt teaching solo for two months while her colleague is on maternity leave, which is scheduled to begin after Thanksgiving break.
However, Couitt has been assigned to a different third-grade class so that another teacher can fill in for a special educator who recently resigned.
“My stress levels are through the roof,” Couitt said.
She worries about how the students she’s leaving behind will fare now that they have to adjust to yet another change to their routine.
As of Friday, the school has found a substitute to teach Hammond’s class while she’s on leave, Blount said.
Despite the chaos behind the scenes, teachers are doing their best “to make it look like we’re not stressed” in front of students, Hammond said.
“Personally, I’m trying to not let this bother me for the sake of my baby,” she added.
For the first day of school at Maple Avenue, Hammond set out a stuffed animal at each student’s seat to offer some comfort during the transition. The stuffies were donated by Debbie Bates, a retired Bluff teacher who taught Hammond when she was in second grade.
Bates was one of the teachers who inspired Hammond to pursue a career in education.
“She made everything about learning so fun,” Hammond said.
Easing the transition
While teachers have voiced strong concerns about the shuttering of Bluff, parents and kids seem less rattled by the move.
“The transition seems to be going smoothly,” said Brittny Wadsworth, whose son Declan McNamara, is a student in Hammond’s class.
Wadsworth is glad the group could stick together at their new school: “(Declan) was able to stay with his friends, and he loves his teacher,” she said.
Declan’s also made new friends playing football at Maple Avenue, though misses his previous gym teacher, who moved to Disnard, because “she was a very fun P.E. teacher,” he said while waiting for his mom to pick up from school on Tuesday.
Elementary student Keren Gómez prefers Maple Avenue to Bluff because “the slides are much better, and there are more swings,” although there are some play structures from her old school that Maple Avenue lacks.
Yetzenia Waly, a “Maple mom” to a fifth grader, has been encouraging her son to “be a leader” for others now that there are new kids on campus.
“There’s no Maple and no Bluff, there’s just school,” she said at pick-up earlier this week.
Right now, it’s too soon to tell if Bluff students will remain at Disnard and Maple Avenue next year, Kennedy said.
But the stress of this year has taken a toll on teachers. With all the uncertainty in the air, Yates expects there will be a “mass exodus” from the district once the school year is up.
“People want stability, and they are able to get that at other districts,” she said.
Even though Hammond is living her childhood dream of teaching in Claremont, she questions whether she can remain in a district with such financial uncertainty. As the primary insurance holder in her family and a soon-to-be parent, she needs “a sense of stability,” she said.
Yates, meanwhile, is prepared to stick it out for now. “I feel committed to the students,” she said. “I just feel that it is my job as an educator to stand with them and make it through the year and educate them as well as I can and we’ll see what happens next year.”
Not just that, but she’s invested in the teachers she represents. “I love fighting for their rights,” she said. “I feel so privileged to be their president… and speak on their behalf.”