An online forum and follow-up online survey for residents of the ConVal School District opened Monday and continues through Friday, giving residents another chance to weigh in on possible school district reconfiguration options after the recent series of meetings hosted by Prismatic Consulting.

School Board member Alan Edelkind of Dublin, chair of the district's Strategic Organization Committee, urges all residents and taxpayers in the ConVal district to participate in the online forum if they have not yet taken the survey or attended a meeting. 

“We want to be clear that we are not anywhere near making a decision. People are maybe not used to just how transparent this process is, but we are very seriously looking for input from everyone,” Edlekind said   “Right now, we’re looking at data from the first set of meetings.”

The online forum is moderated by consultants from Prismatic, the consulting company hired by the district this spring to study the low enrollment number and look at ways to contain costs for taxpayers. Prismatic will respond to questions from participants within 48 hours.

Residents taking the survey will be provided with an overview of select district costs and recent student performance data and will be asked to provide feedback. Participants will be also be able  to view the comments of other participants and may choose to respond to them. Participation can be anonymous, and any inappropriate comments will be removed. The forum is available at ideaflip.com/drop-in/contrib/cuszxyj4bdz9/AsoJlYrkxriJ.

The ConVal School District includes one high school, two middle schools and eight elementary schools, with an estimated capacity of 3,350 students. Currently, only 1,993 students are enrolled, and enrollment trends are not expected to rise in the coming years. 

In September and October, Prismatic hosted nine public meetings, one in every ConVal town, in order for  residents to give feedback on possible reconfiguration options. A total of 472 residents attended the nine meetings and 1,555 people completed the online survey. 

“The hardest thing in this project has been reaching everyone and getting the information out there. Every town has different channels, different ways people are used to hearing local information of communicating, and we’ve worked very hard to cover all the bases on communication,” said Edelkind.

In addition to hosting community meetings, the online survey and the online forum, Prismatic Consulting has been “on the ground” in the ConVal district since August, according to Prismatic founder Tasha Prieto. Work has included evaluating and assessing every aspect of ConVal schools, including operations, food service, transportation, assessing physical plants and evaluating both education and special education programs.

“The part of the process people don’t see is that we went to every school in the district multiple times. It’s not just the community forums, ” said Prieto. “Our facilities person visited every school three or four times. Our food service person visited every school. Our transportation person visited every school; they rode bus routes. They looked at the  layout of every building; they looked at the parking lots. Our special education person visited every school. Our tech team visited almost every school to look at access to technology in every school. It is all about equity for the student.” 

Since August, Prismatic has also conducted teacher observation in every ConVal elementary school and met with teachers, administrators and other school staff to get a complete picture of how the district operates. 

Edelkind said the study is “not just about the money.”

“Right now, yes, we have a situation where we are spending a lot more to educate children in one building than in an another building. Some of the schools cost a whole lot more to run, but it’s not just that. The question is, can the needs of every child still be met with a model like this? It’s their social needs, what kind of a community they have, what education they are getting,” he said.

According to  the U.S. Department of education, the average school size in the U.S. is 526 students.  A “small” elementary school is considered to be 300 students, and the average class size for American elementary schools is about 20 students. As of Sept. 1, there were 133 students in  Antrim Elementary School, 62 in Pierce Elementary School in Bennington, 55 in  Dublin Consolidated School, 43 in Francestown Elementary School, 88 in Greenfield Elementary School, 76 in Hancock Elementary School, 243 in Peterborough Elementary School and 37 in Temple Elementary School.

“ConVal is a very interesting and unusual project for a lot of reasons,” Prieto said Tuesday. “When the articles of ConVal were created in 1967, there was a deliberate choice to keep the schools small. Now, these are not even considered small schools. According to the literature on education, these are actually considered micro-schools. We have only ever seen other schools this small in places that are very geographically isolated, like in Alaska, or coastal communities, and in those communities, people really struggle that there are not more opportunities for their kids—social, educational, everything. What makes ConVal very unusual is people are choosing these micro-schools.” 

Prieto noted that while there is a common perception that tiny classes are better for children, but that is not always the case.

“At every school I went to in the ConVal district, I had a parent quietly come up to me and say their child was really struggling in that class of six or eight kids, and often, it is that child who just is a little bit different, ” Prieto said. “It is a toss-up whether that same tiny class is going to be the best thing for a child for their entire five or six  years in elementary school. The child’s social experience, their experience with their community, has an enormous impact on their overall school experience. These micro-classes are not necessarily the best thing. In every project, what we do is advocate for the one stakeholder who does not have a voice in the project, and that’s the child.” 

The ConVal School Board will have an open meeting, also available online,  on Nov. 7 to review the process so far, while Prismatic enters the data analysis phase of the process. The board will release the final proposal to the public on Dec. 4, which will be followed by a community forum on Dec. 12. More information can be found on the ConVal School Board page on the ConVal website at schoolboard.convalsd.net.