At the ConVal School District Community Forum on Dec. 11 and in subsequent School Board meetings, residents have asked why Prismatic Consulting didn’t suggest closing the district’s two middle schools instead of Francestown Elementary School, Dublin Consolidated School, Pierce School in Bennington and Temple Elementary School, given the opposition to closing the elementary schools.

The ConVal School Board is developing a warrant article seeking to close the schools for district Town Meetings March 12. A two-thirds majority is required to approve the plan.

As of Sept. 1, the district’s two middle schools – Great Brook School in Antrim and South Meadow School in Peterborough – had a combined enrollment of 563 students. The elementary schools in Francestown, Dublin, Bennington and Temple had a combined enrollment of 197.

At Prismatic’s community meetings last fall, parents were given the option of voting for a hypothetical reconfiguration plan which would redistribute the middle school population among the elementary and high schools. The option included returning fifth- and sixth-graders to their elementary schools, and moving seventh and eighth grades into ConVal.  

John Wood, a parent of three from Dublin, stated: “The lack of analysis of alternatives or multiple choice recommendations by Prismatic seems very shortsighted. Prismatic stated during the community forum that the middle schools were looked at, but no real details were provided.”

When asked why the middle school option was not selected, Tatia Prieto of Prismatic Services said at the Dec. 11 community forum that moving fifth- and sixth-graders back to the elementary schools “would not solve the problem” and would still result in under-enrolled schools. 

“Although moving additional grades back to the district’s eight elementary schools was palatable to a portion off ConVal residents – we got that in surveys, we got that in town meetings – this option, creating eight pre K-to-sixth-grade schools would not be the best, educationally. Extremely small classes would still be the result, and research does not support that as the best practice for student learning. Moreover, if we returned fifth- and sixth-grade classes back to their elementary schools, most of the smaller schools would still have excess space, so we would not solve our problem,” Prieto said.

Previous attempts to consolidate ConVal schools also ruled out the option of closing or consolidating the district’s two middle schools. In a 2019 assessment on middle school education, the ConVal School Board released a statement, “ConVal Middle Schools Work,” which stated that: “ConVal’s middle schools are financially efficient, and maintaining the middle school model costs less than adding grades to the elementary schools. There are meaningful economies of scale in larger buildings. When there are 75 students in a given grade in one building, fewer teachers are required than when those 75 students are spread out over six or seven buildings. Every year, the New Hampshire Department of Education gathers data from all New Hampshire School Districts and publishes a spreadsheet of the cost per-student for each district, broken out by grade level. In 2017-2018, the per-pupil cost of ConVal middle schools was $17,233. The per-pupil cost of ConVal elementary schools was $20,099. Moving students back to elementary schools does not make financial sense.”

According to ConVal enrollment reports, as of June 2023, Temple Elementary School had five students enrolled in fourth grade, Dublin had 13 students in fourth grade, Bennington had 12 and Francestown had seven. According to the 2022-2023 “We Are Conval” financial report,  the cost per-student at the elementary schools is significantly higher than in the middle schools. 

“Moving a grade level of just eight or 10 students from the middle school back to their elementary schools would actually strain resources further. The issue of bringing students back to the elementary schools has been looked at over the years during my time on the board. It would only exacerbate the problem of too few students and too many resources needed to serve those students,” said Katherine Heck, School Board representative from Greenfield.

Prismatic’s assessment determined that the ConVal’s eight elementary schools are not equitable in terms of opportunity for students, including differences in food service, field trips and staffing and student support services. Prismatic’s report notes that in 2023-2024,  Antrim Elementary School was the only elementary school with a full-time reading specialist, Peterborough Elementary School is the only school with a full-time counselor and only four of the elementary schools have full-time nurses. 

Alan Edelkind, the Dublin representative to the School Board and chair of ConVal's Strategic Organization Committee, stated last week that the board may need to address further consolidation involving the district’s two middle schools at a future date.

“We could not address both elementary and middle schools at the same time. It would be more beneficial to our communities to address the elementary schools first, and then maybe address the middle schools,” Edelkind stated.

Prismatic’s full report is available at schoolboard.convalsd.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2023/12/ConVal-Reconfiguration-Study-Full-Report-20231205.pdf. Meeting times, agendas and packets  for all ConVal School Board meetings  are available at schoolboard.convalsd.net. All ConVal School Board meetings can be watched remotely at youtube.com/c/ConValEvents.