By DIANE LEDERMAN
dlederman@repub.com
AMHERST - A proposal to reconfigure the town's elementary schools will likely not happen for the next school year, but officials still want to get a better sense of what, if any, reconfiguration would best serve the district.
A 32-member ad hoc committee composed of parents from each of the four elementary schools, the principals and two teachers from each of the schools, along with School Committee members and administrators met Wednesday night to talk about several proposals.
Before the committee got to work, co-superintendent Helen L. Vivian told the group that next year might not be the best time to implement any change.
There is a "tremendous push for regionalization" from the governor's office. The School Committee earlier in the week voted to create a committee to look at regionalizing the district kindergarten through grade 12. Currently, the Amherst district composed of Pelham elementary, Amherst elementary and the Amherst regional district. The regional middle and high schools also includes Shutesbury and Leverett. Both those communities, however, have elementary schools that are part of another district. A regional approach would be to include them in the Amherst regional district.
Vivian said there has been some discussion about adding the sixth grade to the middle school which currently only houses grades seven and eight.
With these discussions, "I'm less inclined to make this move this year. I'm less inclined to think it's a good idea," she said.
But Amherst School Committee chairman Andrew M. Churchill believes that the information on what reconfiguration would work is important for the committee to have.
Depending on whether state aid remains the same or is trimmed, between $600,000 and $1.2 million would have to be cut from a level services budget, Churchill said.
He believes it's important to weigh what those costs would be like against reconfiguring the schools to determine which would have the least impact.
Options discussed included closing the Marks Meadow School, reconfiguring the four schools taking Marks Meadow or Wildwood and making one a kindergarten through grade three school, and the other for grades four, five and six and doing the same with the Crocker Farm and Fort River schools, or have one school serve grades five and six and the other three kindergarten to grade four.
Vivian said trying to work through all of this "is like walking a tightrope, you're making decisions every step of the way," but without having the overall picture.
Churchill said Thursday he was planning to talk to the administrators about the meeting and plans to talk to the Amherst School Committee at its meeting Tuesday night.
Churchill said after the meeting he talked with the four principals about whether it would make sense to hire a redistricting consultant "to give us a more factual sense of what the district would like under various situations.
"Whether we do the restructure next year or in future years...for planning purposes it would be a useful thing."
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