Voters in the ConVal School District will decide at 2024 Town Meetings whether the district should close four of its eight elementary schools.

If voters approve the measure, which requires a two-thirds majority vote, students in Francestown Elementary School, Dublin Consolidated School, Pierce School in Bennington and Temple Elementary School would attend different elementary schools starting in 2025-2026. The vote is March 12, 2024.

The ConVal School Board voted Dec. 19 to follow recommendations in a 400-page assessment by Prismatic Consulting, which concludes that merging the district’s four smallest elementary schools with other towns would provide educational equity and better opportunities for students and teachers, as well as savings for taxpayers.

“The $2.4 million we can save in reconfiguration would enable us to provide the services and  resources we need at the high school and the middle schools,” Katherine Heck, School Board representative from Greenfield and a member of the Budget Committee, said at the Dec. 19 School Board meeting. 

The ConVal School District is operating at about 50% capacity, and in the past 10 years, the number of school-age children in the district has dropped steadily. The New England School Development Council has projected that the population in the Monadnock region, particularly of school-age children, is not expected to grow significantly in the next 10 years. In June, the ConVal School Board selected Prismatic, a North Carolina-based educational consulting firm, to evaluate educational equity across ConVal schools. Tatia Prieto, founder and principal of Prismatic, said that the School Board had charged her team to “find the best solution for the children, and the taxpayers.” 

Prieto said ConVal has an unusual situation, in that the 1967 Articles of Agreement require any proposed changes to the eight elementary schools must be approved by two-thirds of the voters in the district.

“Typically, school boards make these decisions,” Prieto said.

From June through December, Prismatic Services engaged in site assessment, surveys and data-gathering at ConVal’s schools and with staff, faculty, administrators and community members. Assessment included 58 site visits, four surveys, including to ConVal staff and students; community meetings in all nine towns; and focus groups with a total of 88 participants. Prismatic’s 400-page report is available at schoolboard.convalsd.net/2023/12/08/december-11-community-forum-on-prismatic-report. 

At the community meeting in Hancock Elementary School, resident Joe Klug said, “The facts are that the cost of running the school is going up every year, while the number of students is going down every year.” 

Parents in Temple, Francestown, Bennington and Dublin, faced with the possibility of losing their village schools, have expressed concern for their children’s social development, emotional well-being and safety, given increased travel time. Other residents expressed concern for their property values and the effect on losing the school would have on attracting young families to their town.

“Kids needs friends in their own community. If they’re on the bus for 45 minutes or an hour each way and end up with friends who live an hour away, that’s really hard on the kids and the families,” said Leslie Davis of Francestown. 

“It isn’t the work of the district that allows these small schools in Dublin, Francestown, Temple and Bennington to become the soul of the towns and function so efficiently. It is the principals, the teachers, the paras, the secretaries, the parents, the community members and the children themselves who breathe life into them because we love them,” said Kari Higley of Dublin at the Dec. 7 School Board meeting. 

In presenting the reasons for the recommendation on Dec. 11, Prieto spoke to the advantages of larger peer groups for children, noting that in the student focus group section of Prismatic’s report, no middle- or high-school students mention tiny class size as an asset in their elementary schools. Prieto noted that standard school research considers “small” classes between 15 and 20 students, and that very little data is available on “micro” schools such as most of the ConVal elementary schools.

“Typically, we only see classes this small in very isolated communities, such as in Alaska,” Prieto said. “Most communities in this situation would really like their schools to be larger.” 

School Board Chair Dick Dunning, former principal of South Meadow School, said that having multiple teachers of the same grade level in the same building was beneficial for students and teachers.

“They are able to collaborate, to share ideas and to learn from one another. It’s much harder for them to do that when there is only one teacher per grade level in a building,” Dunning said.

ConVal is the only district in New Hampshire comprised of nine towns, and is geographically, one of the largest districts in the more-populated southern third of the state. The next-closest comparable district, Kearsarge Regional School District, includes seven towns and has four elementary schools and one preschool. 

If voters choose to close the four schools, families in Francestown would have the choice of enrolling students at Antrim or Greenfield, Bennington’s Pierce Elementary School students would chose between Hancock and Antrim. Temple students would have the option of Peterborough or Greenfield, and students at Dublin Consolidated School would choose between Hancock and Peterborough. 

“We’re not going to just forget about it if you close this building. This is not something that will easily blow over,” said Laura Mafera of Francestown during a community forum Dec. 11. 

John Wood of Dublin pointed out that the four schools slated to close are also the schools without preschools, and questioned the methodology of the report.

“The report shows a bias toward schools with pre-K,” Wood said. 

Christopher Gallagher of Dublin asked the School Board if they would commit to speaking with Peterborough Planning Board about the high number of housing units currently under proposal in Peterborough. Dunning responded that the board could do this, and Gary Gorksi, a member of the Peterborough Planning Board, submitted alternate enrollment projections to the School Board.