Pittsfield Considering Ways To Even Out Elementary School Enrollment
 McCandless told the School Committee on Wednesday that redistricting isn't easy. |
McCandless told the School Committee on Wednesday that he is considering ways to shrink the number of students by about 65 over time. Enrollment projections show 515 students in the 2015 school year and he would like to get that number closer to 450 over time.
"We're hoping get Egremont down to more reasonable levels," McCandless said.
The School Department could go as far as a redistricting process to even out which schools students will go to. But, McCandless says that is a last resort.
"If I am a taxpayer and I bought a house with the understanding that my children would go to my school in my neighborhood and that gets taken away from me, I'm going to have a real problem with that," McCandless said.
"Redistricting can happen at any time. And we will certainly take a look at it with the new Taconic. But, I warn everybody that it is an easy solution to say but a painful solution to enact."
The department has already pushed back the age of kindergarten, which McCandless thinks will help even out enrollment somewhat. In 2015, the cut off date is moved to Oct. 15 and then the next year it will got to Sept. 1.
The next step for Egremont, McCandless said, would be to disallow both in-district and out-of-district transfers — allowing just those who own homes in the district boundaries to send their children there.
"I think there are other things to be done first. The first and easier is to simply say no," he said.
If that doesn't work, then the department could consider redistricting, McCandless said.
Egremont has the largest enrollment of the elementary schools. Morningside is right behind it with 485 children expected for 2015 and Crosby is expected to have 419. Conte Community School, the next lowest, is expected to see a bump in enrollment over the next two years to 373 and then to 392.
"As we see Conte move forward under new leadership, we are going to see Conte's enrollment continue to climb," McCandless said.
On the lower end, Allendale is expected to have 318, Stearns 233, Capeless 236 and Williams 334. Evening out the enrollment numbers per school isn't simple, McCandless said. Some students need programs offered only in certain areas, parts of the city are seeing more younger couples buying homes and adding to the population, and bus routes would need to be changed to accommodate certain changes.
"These are the guidelines that tend to guide us in budget decisions," McCandless said of the enrollment numbers.
The overall goal is to provide adequate number of adults per student. The department is following guidelines that call for class sizes of no more than 18 students for kindergarten through Grade 3; 22 for 4th and 5th grades; and 24 for middle and high school. Special education classes also have restrictions on sizes that go as low as one adult per every 10 children. Vocational programs on the high school level also have low thresholds.
Crosby, for example, is designed to have more classroom spaces for special education and therefore has a lower ratio of adults to children. There are programs with as low as a half-dozen students, he said.
"It is not quite fair to say that as student enrollment goes down, so to should the budget," McCandless said.
Tags: class size, elementary schools, enrollment, pittsfield schools,
