The continued decline in public school enrollment over the next 10 years will mean redistricting for the middle schools and other changes to the way education is delivered in town, according to Superintendent of Schools Dr. Karen Baldwin.
There must also be a strategic long range plan for facility utilization, grade configuration, target utilization at the kindergarten through fifth grade level, Baldwin told the Board of Education in a memorandum Nov. 9.
“The challenge for the Board of Education is to think systemically relative to formulating a strategy to address the projected decline in student enrollment,” Baldwin said in her memorandum, delivered to the board as part of a presentation on 10-year enrollment projects from the district’s consultant.
Milone & MacBroom, Inc., the consultant, in its projection called for enrollment to slip from 4,996 this year to 4,385 in 2025-26.
Those are actually liberal estimates. The consultant prepared a chart with more conservative estimates, but Baldwin chose to go with the higher numbers because of the rising home sales and sinking unemployment rate in Ridgefield, which she believes will translate into the highest number of students possible, rather than the lowest.
The Board of Education will have to study how to use its facilities. “Facility utilization is simply an evaluation of the condition and capacity of the schools. It looks at classroom usage and develops benchmarks to discern inequalities or inequities between schools and programs,” Baldwin said in an email seeking further information.
Technology, special services, music, art, media, physical education, and the general classroom environment are part of that. “This information yields what I would term our operational capacity,” Baldwin said. “Capacities compare to current and projected enrollments.”
This information will determine what options are available at the Kindergarten through fifth grade and will also inform whether the district could configure grades of schools differently, for example, pre-Kindergarten-2, 3-5 and 6, and 8/9-12, or another configuration.
Re-districting requires examining the boundary lines of the school district and determining if changing the lines of what schools feed into a specific middle school would balance out enrollment and better provide for an innovative, relevant, personalized learning experience at the middle school level for all students, Baldwin said.
There was a lot of talk earlier this year about the potential of eventually closing one of the schools, to save money with the reduced population.
When the question was first explored a couple of years ago, a ballpark estimate of potential savings of $850,000 to $1 million a year in school operating costs was discussed.
Nobody directly spoke about closing a school at the Nov. 9 board meeting. The Press asked Baldwin that question, and she responded that a systemic approach must be taken.
She noted that the new board members have not been made familiar with the latest enrollment study and its relationship to the school closing issue.
“The board will engage in a systemic response to the information contained in the Report and determine a course of action that could include a range of responses including the planned closure of a school,” Baldwin said.
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