New Hampshire Residents Trying To Save Education Dollars

Post 46 of 100 of Brad’s Tiny World Scribefire Challenge.

Redistricting of Elementary Schools Looms on Horizon
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That won’t be an easy task.

“It’s impossible to ‘cherry pick’ particular students in specific grade levels for a whole host of reasons, including transportation,” Greenberg said. “What we did was go through various areas and asked where would be some logical places where we could redistrict some students to Matthew Thornton and provide reasonable transportation.”

The district has identified an area off High Range Road from which student distribution of children in grades one through four could be centralized for the coming school year.

Greenberg emphasized that a decision on the redistricting wouldn’t be made in haste.

“We’re not asking the board to take any action today,” he said at the Oct. 7 school board meeting. Instead, he urged the board to “take a couple weeks to ruminate over this.” From there, Greenberg said letters would be sent to parents residing on the listed streets, and those parents would be urged to attend upcoming school board meetings.

The Londonderry School Board will meet Tuesday, Oct. 21, at 7 p.m. in the Town Office Moose Hill Conference Room to conduct a public hearing to discuss redistricting encompassing the following streets: Royal Lane, Imperial Drive, Mayflower Drive, Chestnut Hill Drive, Laurel Hill Drive, Polar Circle, Chandler Drive, Tyler Drive, Jewel Court, and Raintree Drive.

Immediately following the redistricting hearing, the school board will meet in regular session.

“During previous discussions, we looked at the entire stock of our classrooms, with the next 10-15 years in mind,” Greenberg said last week. “We’re coming to a point where we are going to have to make some adjustments.”

In the current school year, North School has 104 first graders. South School has 91 first graders, while Matthew Thornton School has 113. Students who didn’t attend Moose Hill School for kindergarten last year but entered first grade in Londonderry this fall totaled 34.

This year, Londonderry has a total of 1,809 elementary school students.

Using this year’s kindergarten enrollment numbers, that total number of elementary school students in the district is expected to decrease to 1,752 students for the 2009-10 school year.

Without any redistricting, Matthew Thornton School would be underutilized next year, with three empty classrooms. This year, 642 students are enrolled in the school, with only 616 students expected to be enrolled at this time next year.

At North School, the current enrollment of 569 students is expected to drop by four students this year. However, the distribution of students and class size issues would mean that the school would lose its reading resource room next year, Greenberg said.

“These are all considerations we took into account when we did our utilization study,” Greenberg said.

At South School, this year’s enrollment of 598 students is expected to drop to 572 next fall, allowing the elementary district-wide program for students with emotional handicaps to move into a full-size classroom. The program currently has 10 students.

Greenberg noted that the South School numbers reflect the space that will be available at the school once construction projects are completed.

Costs of the new construction are estimated at $4.2 million and include the addition of nine permanent classrooms, two new guidance offices, two special education rooms, a new main office, a new special education office, a fire sprinkler system and a new fire lane. In addition, renovations include updates to the nurses’ office, faculty room and kitchen. Two new parking areas will add 50 spaces to the school’s current inventory.

All of the construction at South School is should be completed by January 2009.