School System to Remain Intact for Now

By a unanimous vote, members of the Long Range Facilities Planning Committee decided Tuesday night that it did not have enough information to recommend the closing of a school in Stratford.

With the vote, the majority of people in attendance broke out into applause including a standing ovation.

The meeting began with a brief presentation from Philip Michalowski, principal at Milone & MacBroom, the consultant company that has been working with the committee. Michalowski summarized the potential savings of closing one or more schools, as follows:

    Lordship: $684,000
    Franklin: $786,000
    Nichols: $1,342,000
    Wilcoxson: $ 1,000,045

Closing Honeyspot would produce a negative savings, he said.

"To come up with these numbers, we sat down with staff" and school officials and recreated a staffing model based on moving all the sixth grades out of the elementary schools and into Wooster, Flood and Stratford Academy-Johnson House.

As the crowd murmured nervously in anticipation of a decision, Committee Chair Joseph Crudo then opened up the discussion to the committee by adding, "We've talked about a lot of issues since November. I would like to open up the discussion to the floor."

Michalowski fielded a question about staffing and was asked how staff at one school that may be closed was figured into the equation if some of those staff, at Nichols school for instance, would simply be relocated to another school. How were those staff applied to the savings formula?

Michalowski said that in general it was true that the larger the staff at a school reviewed the greater the savings would be, an answer that did not satisfy some members.

He was also asked a question about school bus transporation and how that figured into the cost savings. For instance, one school (Franklin) has only one bus of students with 90% of the students walking to school. How was that figured into the savings formula?

Michalowski said that there was "not a way that I’m comfortable with" in generating a savings number based on transportation costs. "It's not an easy thing to calculate without knowing exactly which school is being closed becuase it's based on the routing and seats in the available buses" and without knowing specifics about which students would be attending where, any attempt to calculate savings based on inprecise information would not be reliable, he said.

"What was concluded was that you spent [a certain amount] to bus students and in our analysis, transportation [savings] is not going to tip the balance" one way or another. "It's like rearranging the chairs on a deck," he reiterated. "We had no way to calculate that."

That answer prompted one member to reply, "if we close a school with a large number of walkers, I would like that [cost savings] detail if possible."

Committee member Robert Cody then seemed to capture the mood of the entire committee with his comments.

"Looking at the data is quite confusing," he said. "I don't understand how you can close a school [Honeyspot] and it would cost you more.

"And I respect the comments about transportation – if you close a school with a lot of walkers" it seems that there would be a corresponding cost factor that was not evident in the analysis, he said.

"… if we’re going to close a school, we need to know definitatively, not only financial implications but also the effect on the community.

"I don’t feel we have the data we need to make the decision to close a school," Cody said, although he did not entirely rule out the possibility that closing a school may be in the best interests of the town going forward.

"We demonstrated that by moving sixth graders that we have the space to close a school … but we don’t have that data here in my opinion.

"So I propose a motion that at this point we do not close a school but instead continue the process. Moving the 6th grades to the middle schoos is the right move," he continued, recalling the time when the Town Council decided to stop the town collection of leaves.

"We  stopped collecting leaves, but it didn’t affect the community in the long run. But making a wrong decision about closing schools can have a lasting and detrimental effect on the community.

"I think it’s the right thing for this committee to look at closing a school, but we don’t have the data right now."

Cody said he favored continuing the committee and its work. "Perhaps we do some scenarios and look at all the detailed scenarios possible so that we know exactly what we’re dealing with. I understand the economy is difficult but unless we hear from the town or the state, we need to continue to move in this direction [of eventually closing a school].

"But we owe it to ourselves to do it right and I don’t think we should close a school at this time," which generated a strong show of support from those in attendance.

The vote to not recommend a closing did not come before an impassioned statement by Supt. of Schools Irene Cornish.

"… I want to believe that our elected officials are reasonable and intelligent people who understand that if we don’t support the schools it will have a negative effect on our school children, and not only that, our property values.

"I speak as a superintendent but also as a mother myself. What do we do as parents for our children, -- we give them shelter, food and I hope love. But we also give them a quality education and that’s what I’m asking we continue to do in this community and that’s why I cannot vote for closing a school because I think it’s the wrong decision and sends the wrong message.

"... a modest 2.6% increase will cost the average homeowner $8-9 a month … my taxes and your taxes will go up … but I cannot vote to close any school ... we have built something wonderful in Stratford and I don’t want to be a party to unravel it."

A second motion to recommend to the Board of Education that it abandon the current plan to build a new Honeyspot School failed by about a 2-1 margin.

Afterward, Town Council member Jason Santi said,  "I believe the Committee made the right decision not recommending to close any schools. Now the fight to properly fund schools moves to the Town Council level," he said, where opinions are split on the mandate from Town Hall for the education budget to come in with a 0% increase.

"Also I am glad that most committee members recognized the need for the building of a new Honeyspot School and voted against that shortsighted move to not build the school," Santi said.