Tuesday, April 29, 2008
K-8 Master Plan, Today's Election
In preparation for today's election, I read the Reporter's Q&A with all of today's candidates. There will be no endorsements from this site, don't worry. However, I'm very glad that Maureen Thomsen pointed readers to the town's K-8 Master Plan, thus accomplishing more than the Reporter has all year in one sentence. With just that move, she's earned my vote - albeit there's only two people running for two positions, so that's not a huge accomplishment in and of itself. That said, here's my brief summation and opinion of the 3/11 Master Plan, feel free to argue and bicker my points, as well as provide your own thoughts, news and commentary, in the comments.
Basically, the Master Plan boils down to 3 major options, with slight variances in each group: Do we want to organize our town with neighborhood schools, grade-level schools or consolidated (read: huger) schools. Educationally, the first option is definitely the best model. From grades K-4, it's shown that not only do class sizes make a huge educational difference, but school sizes do too. After around the 4th or 5th grade, both school size and class size become less important, as access to better and broader classes become far more meaningful than the sizes of a class or building.
The Best Option for Swampscott: To that end, the N1 (first option of the neighborhood group of plans) is by far the best option for the students of this town. It would ultimately cost the town about $10 million more than the other plans, but what's $10 million when the other plans will all cost the town upwards of 45-50, after state reimbursement. If we're going to spend the money, let's do it right.
The Best Option for Clarke-School Students/Parents: Other "neighborhood" options involve closing Hadley, which can mean a variety of things. N6 was a great option for selfish reasons - since the increase in school size would be almost entirely absorbed by Stanley/Hadley students (Clarke having a modest 270 students compared to Stanley at 680 in that scenario, both K-4 schools in the option). N6 is still a good option for the town, because the class sizes would still be small and it would save $10 million compared to N1, but it's not the best option for the students who would be sent to the new Stanley, in that hypothetical scenario. The other neighborhood options only get worse from there, for everyone, though many of them are still better options than the ones below.
Intriguing options: All of the grade-level options were interesting in that they would certainly bring complete parity to Swampscott schools, since the entire town would send students of particular grades to particular schools, but ultimately there are three reasons why the current grade-based proposals in the Master Plan don't make sense and would be unpopular: First, the school housing grades 1-4 would be huge, almost 700 students, meaning there'd be no educational gain. Second, building a Super Stanley, to house those 700 students, wouldn't represent any meaningful savings compared to other options. Most importantly (for the voters who would pass this, anyway), it would mean an extra trip for Mom and Dad, or an expensive bus system to be paid Mom and Dad yearly. Creating a grade-based system is certainly intriguing, but these options need tweaking.
Bad options: Consolidation. The consolidation plans aren't going to save anywhere near as much money as people would like, for the simple fact that such a plan would require a town bus system that ultimately would come out of the pockets of parents, and certainly deprives this community of it's biggest plus: an actual community feel in its public schools. Even worse is the fact that construction costs would be just as large as any of the other projects and even more disruptive since these would be large-scale projects. Consolidation would also mean operating two very large K-8 schools, which is just a bad idea from an educational standpoint, as well as fostering a greater likelihood of disparity.
The Master Plan
Basically, the Master Plan boils down to 3 major options, with slight variances in each group: Do we want to organize our town with neighborhood schools, grade-level schools or consolidated (read: huger) schools. Educationally, the first option is definitely the best model. From grades K-4, it's shown that not only do class sizes make a huge educational difference, but school sizes do too. After around the 4th or 5th grade, both school size and class size become less important, as access to better and broader classes become far more meaningful than the sizes of a class or building.
The Best Option for Swampscott: To that end, the N1 (first option of the neighborhood group of plans) is by far the best option for the students of this town. It would ultimately cost the town about $10 million more than the other plans, but what's $10 million when the other plans will all cost the town upwards of 45-50, after state reimbursement. If we're going to spend the money, let's do it right.
The Best Option for Clarke-School Students/Parents: Other "neighborhood" options involve closing Hadley, which can mean a variety of things. N6 was a great option for selfish reasons - since the increase in school size would be almost entirely absorbed by Stanley/Hadley students (Clarke having a modest 270 students compared to Stanley at 680 in that scenario, both K-4 schools in the option). N6 is still a good option for the town, because the class sizes would still be small and it would save $10 million compared to N1, but it's not the best option for the students who would be sent to the new Stanley, in that hypothetical scenario. The other neighborhood options only get worse from there, for everyone, though many of them are still better options than the ones below.
Intriguing options: All of the grade-level options were interesting in that they would certainly bring complete parity to Swampscott schools, since the entire town would send students of particular grades to particular schools, but ultimately there are three reasons why the current grade-based proposals in the Master Plan don't make sense and would be unpopular: First, the school housing grades 1-4 would be huge, almost 700 students, meaning there'd be no educational gain. Second, building a Super Stanley, to house those 700 students, wouldn't represent any meaningful savings compared to other options. Most importantly (for the voters who would pass this, anyway), it would mean an extra trip for Mom and Dad, or an expensive bus system to be paid Mom and Dad yearly. Creating a grade-based system is certainly intriguing, but these options need tweaking.
Bad options: Consolidation. The consolidation plans aren't going to save anywhere near as much money as people would like, for the simple fact that such a plan would require a town bus system that ultimately would come out of the pockets of parents, and certainly deprives this community of it's biggest plus: an actual community feel in its public schools. Even worse is the fact that construction costs would be just as large as any of the other projects and even more disruptive since these would be large-scale projects. Consolidation would also mean operating two very large K-8 schools, which is just a bad idea from an educational standpoint, as well as fostering a greater likelihood of disparity.
# posted by Ryan @ 1:10 PM 
