Thoughts on School Size
I think we need to be careful when talking about the “right” number for the size of an elementary school. Neighborhood schools are a highly valued aspect of the Newton school system. If we want to keep this as a foundation, and keep in mind the trauma to schools, families, and neighborhoods caused by redistricting, we need to be flexible regarding the best size for each individual elementary school. As neighborhood student populations rise and fall, we need to be able to accommodate everyone.
As an example, Bowen Elementary School, where my children go to school, has grown from approximately 330 students when my oldest daughter was in 1st grade in 2002, to about 440 students this year. Physically, the school could not handle the larger number of students in recent years—in response to this problem, Bowen added a modular and got creative with what it already had. No one wanted to send their child to another school or redistrict families on the borders of the district—nor could the latter be done quickly enough without a huge amount of upheaval.
This is a scenario that plays out across the city in different schools in different years. It is not a problem that goes away— it just jumps from one place to another. The only way to be prepared for such times is to add enough extra capacity in the schools as we rebuild or renovate. We can talk about how much excess capacity is “right” (and perhaps that number is different for each community), but it is important to recognize that flexibility needs to be a key characteristic when determining the size of the schools.
To me, the real issue is not the final size of the school—it’s having the resources to meet the needs of all the kids in the school. A school of 500 students can provide an equally excellent education as a school of 250 students if there are the extra resources to support the larger number—more supervisory staff and education support, for example. But one principal (without vice-principals) or one literacy specialist for each school—no matter what the size—creates a different experience for the children. We need to find the resources to fix this problem.