Work by Matthew Stone

Jan. 13, 2011

READFIELD — Parents in the Maranacook school district will weigh in Thursday on a range of proposals that would change which elementary schools their children attend, and potentially close one of them.

The 7 p.m. forum Thursday at Maranacook Community High School comes nearly a month after school board members first saw outlines for restructuring elementary schools in Manchester, Mount Vernon, Readfield and Wayne.

One proposal would assign students from all four towns to Readfield Elementary School for grades three through five and split Readfield's younger students among Manchester, Mount Vernon and Wayne elementary schools.

Other proposals lay out what the district would look like if Wayne Elementary School closed.

All four elementary schools currently educate students in kindergarten through grade five.

"The board has been very clear," Maranacook Superintendent Rich Abramson said. "The status quo isn't an option."

That's because the 1,400-student district estimates it's facing a $345,000 shortfall as it plans its 2011-12 budget.

"We understand that this is an initiative that's charged emotionally," Abramson said. "We've always had our small, rural elementary schools, but our (student) numbers have gone down and are going down in the future, and state revenue, federal revenue has not made up for everything else."

If the schools remain as they are, district administrators say they'll need to hire the equivalent of 1 1/2 more teachers to absorb fluctuating class sizes.

The proposal to centralize third- through fifth-grade students in Readfield would allow the district to get by with three fewer teachers, according to administrators' projections, and it would even out class sizes across the district.

Currently, the elementary schools range in size from 60 students at Wayne -- which assigns its students to multigrade classrooms -- to 204 at Readfield.

Administrators haven't yet examined the costs associated with busing students to different schools.

For parent Emily Fontaine, sending Readfield's younger students elsewhere would split her two children -- a son in pre-kindergarten and a daughter in third grade -- between Readfield Elementary and one other school.

"How hard is it to be one foot in Wayne, one foot in Readfield, and then what do I do about my parent involvement?" she said.

A major restructuring, Fontaine said, could send parents looking for other school options for their children, like homeschooling or private schools. Either way, she said Maranacook has to demonstrate significant savings projections before restructuring.

"Perhaps to perform better within a limited budget, our district has to find a scenario that ultimately reduces the number of schools and restructures the remaining three," she said.

Maranacook board members are entertaining separate proposals that involve closing Wayne Elementary School, the district's smallest, and:

• splitting Wayne children among Readfield and Manchester elementary schools for kindergarten through fifth grade; or

• splitting Wayne children among Manchester and Mount Vernon elementary schools for kindergarten through second grade and sending all Wayne students to Readfield for grades three through five.

Those options are already making waves in Wayne. About 40 residents gathered Sunday to discuss the prospect of their school closing and to review the Maranacook district's school closure policy.

"Hopefully, it's going to be considered and put off to the side and (the board will) consider the other proposals that are, in my mind, more appropriate to the situation at hand," said Larry Stewart, a Wayne selectman who led Sunday's meeting.

While closing a school could eliminate some spending, the Maranacook district wouldn't see any of the savings for two to three years. The district's school closure policy makes closing a school a multi-step process that lasts at least two years.

"The proposal to close a school really is unrealistic, based on the (district) policy," Stewart said. "If we're going to spend time considering a proposal that is unrealistic, then we're wasting time."

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