According to a recent follow-up survey by Prismatic Consulting for residents in the ConVal school district, Temple Elementary School, which is currently the smallest school in the district with 37 students, spent the most per student spending among elementary schools in the 2022-2023 school year at over $33,000.

Peterborough Elementary School, the largest elementary school with 233 students, spent less than $25,000 per student. All data came from the New Hampshire State Department of Education.

“People have complained that these numbers on spending per student in the district are inaccurate, but we have triple-checked these numbers,” said Tatia Prieto, founder of Prismatic. “We are working on providing the 2022-2023 numbers with data from the Department of Education.”

Prieto said there are several factors in why smaller schools cost more to run.

“In ConVal, you have four of five elementary schools that are identical, so the fixed costs are the same. What’s different is the number of children. There are fewer kids to divide the costs by; it costs more to have a teacher teaching six kids, as opposed to 15 kids or 20 kids. The cost of the administration is also a factor. In  New Hampshire, it’s a state law that every school is required  to have a principal, and that also drives costs up,” Prieto said.

Prismatic, a national school consulting company based in Charlotte which specializes in “equity and inclusion audits,” was hired by the ConVal school board in the spring to analyze educational equity in the district and create strategies to address the financial affects of  under-enrollment.

Recent numbers from the state Department of Education indicate that since the 1999-2000 school year, spending per student in the ConVal District has increased from $11,809 to $24,030. According to demographic projections for the nine-town ConVal district, which was created in 1967,  the population of school-age children is not expected to rise in the next few years. 

At a series of community meetings hosted by Prismatic, some parents, community members and educators expressed dismay at the possibility of closing and consolidating any of the region’s small elementary schools. Parents expressed concerns about their children’s social development and the effect on the community if schools were to close. Some business owners, including real estate agents, said they were concerned that towns without their own schools would not be attractive to young families. 

“Why would anyone want to move to a town without a school?”  Lee Davis of Francestown asked at Prismatic’s community forum at Francestown Elementary School.

At the community meeting at Pierce Elementary School in Bennington, former state Rep. John Manley, who was a high school teacher for 36 years, pointed out that leaving ConVal school buildings empty would provide another headache for the district.

“The Town of Bennington would never buy this building back, and ConVal would still have to maintain it, and all the other empty buildings,” he said. “Maybe they should close Peterborough Elementary, which is the oldest building, and send those kids out to the newer buildings in the smaller towns."

Greenfield School Board representative Katherine Heck, whose three children attended three different schools in the district because of their specific learning needs, supports exploring school consolidation as a possible option if it is proven to benefit children. 

“I had one child attend Greenfield Elementary, one attend Francestown and one at Peterborough, and they all had a great experience, but I have to say, my daughter got a lot more extras attending PES. They had yoga club, they had after-school activities. The larger school was just able to provide a lot more,” Heck said. “So from my kind of unusual personal experience, while all my kids had wonderful teachers, I was really surprised at how much more was offered at PES because they had so many more kids. It just wasn’t something I had been aware of.” 

The ConVal School Board will host an open meeting Tuesday, Nov. 7, at 7 p.m. in the School Board meeting room at the SAU office to present and review the project for the public. The data-collection phase of the consolidation/reconfiguration project ends Nov. 15, and the School Board plans to make a recommendation based on analysis of the data by the middle of December, with a community forum scheduled for Dec. 12. The board will vote on a proposal Dec. 14, and if needed, start drafting a warrant article for town meetings in the spring.

Information about the reconfiguration study is available at schoolboard.convalsd.net.