001thank you so um I'll call the this special school committee meeting of f with Public Schools uh to order for March 6th so thanks um everyone for joining us um just a reminder that the meeting's being recorded and telecast thank you to fctv and thanks Ryan um it's also available by Zoom um like our regular meetings so if you know people that couldn't make it tonight they can still watch it um watch the recording it'll be it's usually posted the day after our meeting so thanks to the um building needs task force first of all for their efforts back in the fall that got us to this point um their response to the community requests for additional data uh as we considered the proposals for navigating the future resulted in identifying nesda um to connu
002to conduct the research and compile the report on fouth and Falmouth public schools that they're sharing with us tonight so quick Logistics um so we have originally said that we would post everything to the website tomorrow but um Dr door and Ryan were able to get it done quicker so let me where's my I want to show you how you get to it so if you go to um the district tab under on our website it we're having technical issues which is why I'm doing this so remedially so but if you go down to navigating the future you'll see it right there but if you go to the actual page it might not not appear because web issues so um but everybody will have full access to the complete report when I click on it
003it automatically downloads so I don't know if it will do the same for you or if it'll just pop up in a in a browser where you can see it you'll also be able to see on that same page um a spot where where you can enter your questions and Sharon came around with the little cards the QR codes if you just have your phone with you so you can scan that code or go to this link and it will um it will drop you can drop in all of your questions that you have either tonight or that you might have between now and our community Forum um what else am I supposed to remember to say um uh I just want to remind everybody that this is a chance for us to hear the
004presentation from nesdc that we're going to then follow that up with the building needs task force and with the school committee following their own path um for discussion there's not going to be discussion tonight that we'll wait until we've all had a chance to take in the report digest all the information in it um it's quite long as you just saw how long it took to download um and we're not in any rush for any of this so you know because nothing's happening for some time we have plenty of time to be thoughtful and thorough as we read the the data that's in it and then bring our questions either through that feedback form or through the school committee meetings the building needs and then the community Forum on April 3rd I think that was
005all I was supposed to say I'm going to stop share and I just wanted if you don't know about NASDAQ already it's the New England School Development Council that was the group that was identified for this study it's an organization that offers Services related to strategic planning special education audits Dropout prevention collaboration and shared services short and long range planning that includes enrollment forecasting capacity um and more than and even more and their senior staff associate care excuse me Karen luk is with us uh tonight to share the report thank you Karen for being here she's an educator who's worked in primary and secondary Ed higher ed she's been an assistant superintendent for teaching and learning and an assistant superintendent so she knows exactly where we're where we're coming from in all of our questions
006so um I'm going to turn it over to you Karen and hopefully you'll be able to share your screen get started thank you very much thanks Karen so as um hopefully everybody can see um nzc has been around for over 75 years and thank you um chair Welch for that wonderful introduction um nzc is pleased to have worked with the fouth public schools on this report um a welcoming engaging learning environment where we were um well accepted by the leadership team by the staff at each School even the students as they interacted with us um when we viewed the school buildings so I'll go over the whole report um in just a minute but I wanted to acknowledge my colleagues Judy Puchi who is uh was one of the Consultants who came to do some
007of the facilities reviews and Dave deusi is our executive director so that you'll see the table of contents I'm actually showing the actual report and we'll work from this today um so the first part we'll talk about the scope of the report so the scope of a best educational use of facilities is to prompt we look first at a demographic study and then we look at um that demographic study is um information pertaining to State and local population Trends and that's important because those population Trends influence School enrollments so we look at birth rates at and the relationship to the kindergarten enrollment we look at local real estate and housing Trends um we update a 10-year enrollment projection report and the district asked us to do an updated 10-year Elementary School enrollment projection report which
008I will share for you we'll also do an enrollment forecast which is any expected student yield from any new residential construction that's currently under construction I'll talk a little bit about that so we looked through the US Census we looked at the fouth Town data we looked at um Housing and Urban Development we contacted the family town planner and um local raur we also did a Facilities Review of East Falmouth Mullen Hall North Falmouth and T ticket elementary schools to plan for facilities that are the right size for their intended enrollments and to develop some options for consideration of next steps and those options for consideration are just the the starting point and we'll go over those in just a minute so it's a specific approach so we we look for why are we doing
009this to to provide a better understanding of the long-term future of each building and options for consideration maybe to inform some budget planning it's a three-pronged approach again the district enrollment projections and Community demographics the facility utilization study and options for consideration so let's delve into the demographic information so we look at population trends for Falmouth in particular and you can see from 1990 to 2000 the population increased 16.8% in that time frame and you can see it's been in the 31 32,000 time frame from 2000 to 2022 so it's stabilized over the past 20 years so then we need to look at the median age of the population so here's a chart that looks at United States Massachusetts Barnesville County and Falmouth and the way to read read this chart is to look 2022
010excuse me is here just for um reference 2020 when you look at that over the United States the estimate of the median age of the population is 38 in two months look at fouth it's 55 and 7 months Barnesville County a little bit lower 53.7 the thing to look at here is also over time over the past 20 years the median age has increased by 10 10.7 years and so we can see that the median age and the population in fouth overall is aging we look also at the New England's pk12 enrollment Trends and it's important to look at it in the context of the United States to the New England states and so when we look at Massachusetts it's at mine at the percent of change over the next six years would be 7.2%
011similar to um New Hampshire and similar to Vermont so if we look at the population Trends by age span what we're doing here is we're looking at the school age population and then all of the ages of population and you can see the school age population um ages 5 to n are usually those students who are in kindergarten to grade four and you can see that that has declined by 1.2% over the past 10 years ages 10 to 12 which is the Middle School ages have declined by 1% and the high school ages have uh declined by oh no excuse me yeah by 1% and the high school ages have declined by just a fraction which is indicates stability at that age like breakout but you can see that because these numbers are diminishing in
012the future the high school numbers will start to decline and that plays out in the um historical enrollments and the projected enrollments curiously we look at the other age breakouts we look at under five because these are the kindergarteners that are coming up so these are students who have not entered your schools but are those potential uh felm of students and you can see it's been relatively stable so we think in the future that the kindergarten will remain relatively stable in in interesting the under 18 which is the typical school age population in this the this 10-year time frame has declined by 2.8% while the um 18 to 64 has has declined by 5.5% and again over 65 has increased by 5.2% so what we're noticing in uh both the overall population and these population
013age Trends is the fouth population is aging from there the number of K12 students per housing unit is another interesting data point to look at what is the percentage of homes in fouth that house students that are in K12 no not all these students could could necessarily go to FMA they could be in private enrollments but this is a public enrollment and then the K12 students per household we know that in the state of Massachusetts um even though the um population has increased by 9% here the K12 students per household has decreased by 3% but if we look at fouth overall the population of the public K12 enrollment has decreased by 32.9% and the K12 students per household is decreased by 18% so there are fewer um schoolage children um currently living in Falmouth in
014order to determine um who your projected students are we look at the births and these are provided by the the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and you can see here um in this line graph the blue is Falmouth the green is the state of Massachusetts you can see the births are declining and when births decline so does the population in kindergarten which leads to a decreasing population um for future uh K12 K enrollments so the birth to kindergarten relationship one factor that is extremely important to look at is of all those births those students then enroll in fouth public schools and you can see typically it's true there sometimes there are more students who enroll than there were births indicating that there are people who have moved in but it's relatively stable which is an important part
015of um assuring a robust [Music] kindergarten from here we'll look at real estate Trends NASDAQ has found over the years that um there are a lot of people who are downsizing and realtors that we interviewed in fouth um also supported this but what's important is if there is a three or four bedroom home that's vacated by somebody who has moved on um is most likely to be purchased by families with children and so the school enrollments are greatly influenced by the number of real estate sales and we can't quantify who's going to move into those homes when they go on the market but we do recognize that it's an important Trend to consider so we looked at the Warren group and I and I'm going to focused from 2014 to 2024 the median sales price
016in 2014 was $375,000 for a single family in 2024 the median sale price was $735,000 that's quite an increase but the number of single family homes that have been sold and condo that have been sold except for one year anomaly here have been relatively stable so we're looking forward to the to um the single family homes in Falmouth increased to an average of 489 over these years but an average median sale price of 500 um a little north of $500,000 so the realtors that we interviewed supported those findings from the Warren group the demand for real estate in Falmouth is exceeds the number of listing even though the number of days on Market have increased between three and five weeks homes that cost between 5 700,000 sell most quickly although some may need renovation first
017time home buyers are being pushed out of the market due to Rising prices and Realtors are seeing more second time buyers dominated by retirees and some families the Realtors noted that compensation for employment in the general vicinity does not support the purchase of homes in a FM with which average above $800,000 it's just difficult to to do the financing for something like that residents over age 65 are downsizing and selling their three and four bedroom homes and purchasing those condos and due to a Seaside location the town of Falmouth has has experienced some challenges um and the town supports a number of committees including the short-term rental working group and the Housing Development working group also supported by my conversations with the town planner Mr corick so the real estate market remains strong despite the
018rising interest rates and Falmouth is a great place to be geographically has the longest coastline in the state um there's a lot of land develop with high value high demand and choice views that create real property wealth it's there's Woodland backland natural habitat so it's it's a wonderful place to be housing detail it's important to we look at the stability of the housing detail in Falmouth and this chart talks specifically about what we look at specifically here is the owner occupied it's important that the the larger percentage of the housing is owner occupied so when we look at the total housing units and the percent of owner occupied it's increased from 277.50 per to in 2020 79.2% and even further 84% in 2022 and the average um household size of the owner occupied is between
0192.3 to 2.34 so it's usually families with children the rent are occupied the number of these are com yearround rentals um is has decreased from 22.4% to 20.8% in 2020 down to 16% these are the seasonal use vacancy rates the rental V vacancy rates are minimal so the bedrooms per house is also something that we look at out of your housing stock when you look at this pie chart the number of three four and five bedroom homes that um that could house children uh families with children is 73.4% of the housing stock and this is just a summary of all that I just uh mentioned the next aspect is looking at residential construction projects so we reviewed the information submitted by the town planner and we look at three different categories approve projects currently under
020construction approve projects not currently under construction and project in the approval pipeline it's important to communities to know that this construction project is currently under under construction and what how many children might be enrolled in the fam withth public schools due to that so we'll note a projected student yield only for those projects that are currently under construction we will provide a potential student yield for the approved projects not currently under construction and the projects in the approval pipeline only because sometimes our experience has shown that they're not built or they're delayed so we can't determine we can't we don't want to impact the school enrollments by saying this is what's going to happen but we can say there's a potential how do we calculate that student yield we think about what are the potential
021number of schoolage children who might occupy that new housing it's distributed over a 3 to five based period based on the anticipated occupancy and we assign the student yield to grade levels without knowing the actual age of the potential students and the smaller the number of student yield it's the more difficult it is to forecast the enrollments so what do we do so we look at the number bedrooms per unit and just as a as a rule of understanding one-bedroom units do not have an impact on student enrollment two bedroom units have a minimal impact on student enrollment and three bedroom units will have an impact on student enrollment as these are typically purchased by families with children we look at the density of the area we look at the housing cost and then we
022take what we determine is that projected or potential student yield and we know that most people move when their uh their children are in at the elementary age so we assign the bulk of that potential or projected student yield to the um Elementary age students 60 to 70% 20 to 30% would be middle-age students and 10% High School age students depending on your configurations so um Mr Jed corack was extremely helpful with um G giving us some great information about the projects um that are currently in Falmouth um but he also shared the um mixed residential and Commercial overlay districts that creates flexibility for the development community and residential development of 20 units per 40,000 square fet that the town approved to the senior care retirement District which added Workforce housing as an allowed use
023that was an amendment and lastly as the town in the cave cot a currently dealing with significant housing crisis the select board has made housing a top priority in the next 5 years strategic plan so I'm going to go over the approved projects currently under construction so you can see them listed here summer 48 one bedrooms 16 three bedrooms Liberty green 51 bedrooms remain reminding you that the the 51 bedrooms will not have an impact on student enrollments and the 43 two-bedroom units will have minimal impact on student enrollments but the 11 three bedrooms will The Village at Brick Hil and you'll see the others so we calculated it based on the we did the projected student yield for those projects under construction we did the impact to enrollment over the next two to three
024years because all of these projects will be completed this year so depending on the timeline and and the way people will move in grades K to four you would see an impact of 19 to 24 students grades 5 to 8 10 to 12 students and grades 9 to 12 3 to 4 students remembering we assign student yield to grade the spans without certainty of the actual age so here are the approved projects not currently under construction and you can see them all listed here sum are one-bedroom single room units three bedroom units and there's the potential student yield of all of those units K to four 27 to 33 students grades 5 to 8 13 to 16 students and grades 9 through 12 5 to six students and then these are the projects in the
025approval pipeline some two two one two and three bedroom units listed and there's the potential yield um and it's noted as potential as our experience has shown that these some projects are sometimes not approved and then we look at the Housing and Urban development this list does not necessarily match what we know about what's happening in Falmouth but this is what was reported um to the Housing and Urban Development by the town of Falmouth and it shows that the single family um unit uh building permits here 24 they were 57 2023 94 148 you can see the difference as um the years have passed you know leaner years here and the same for multi-units it's just another piece of information to support the construction projects so now we'll move on to the enrollment projections now
026that we've looked at the demographic um lens of Falmouth we've looked at the um construction that's happening in Falmouth so let's look at the enrollment projections and just a a little tutorial on how we do our enrollment projections we look at we take a modified cohort component survival technique to prepare them so we look at the bursts as they relate to kindergarten enrollments and I've showed you that we look at um student migration in and out of schools and we review the St stability of grades 1 through eight in andout migration of students we take all of the historical data 10 years of historical data from felth and we look at the percentage that's calculated so from kindergarten if you had a 100 kindergarteners and they transition to 104 first graders that's a a ratio
027of 1.0 4 so it's a 4% increase for that one year we look over 10 years so I'll spend time looking at the one-ear ratio take an average of the two two years together three years together four years together and so on so we we take those ratios and we apply them to think about what's most indicative of the future gr growth pattern for each pair of grades each pair of grades has a different ratio that's chosen based on our most um reasonable set of assumptions regarding the births the migration rates the retention rates the rate so we apply them to the projections going forward and I'll show you that in just a minute and then to know that enrollment projections are more reliable in the first three years and less reliable in the out
028years we give a 10-year enrollment projection for planning but that the first three years we know because those are students are currently enrolled um the the kinder and and the first graders and the second graders not so let me explain our enrollment I'll make this a little bigger so if you look here here's the birth year for the historical enrollment so in 2009 there were 257 births skip to kindergarten you enroll 289 kindergarteners so there's a different ratio here a different ratio here and then from kindergarten to first grade there were 289 kindergarteners you transition 287 first graders and so on we look at the bottom here for the grade spans pre 4 K to4 and this is districtwide 5 to 6 7 8 9 12 and then overall a 10year enrolling projection and when
029I just said that we we look at three years out over the past 10 years grades K to 12 enrollment declined by 20.1% so let's look at the projected enrollment for the next 10 years again you can see in 2019 there were 180 births which transitioned to for this school year five years later 202 kindergarteners a a bigger ratio of birth to kindergarten and so on and as we look here here's pre 4 5 to 6 7 to 8 9 to 12 it's balanced here across in the 200s with a smaller class at the at the 12th grade level here's the three-year Mark where I said these are the most reliable and these are for planning when you look at the births we don't these children have yet to be born so here's the 174
030is a provisional number because all of the recorded births from 200 2023 have not been um published from the um the state of Massachusetts so we take a rolling fiveyear average to predict here so these numbers could and can change so right now they're stable we're showing that stable because we took the five years so over the next three years kada 4 enrollments are projected to decrease by 92 students or 8.4% grades 5 to six enrollments here are projected to decrease by 13 students or 2.75% grade 7 to8 are projected to decrease by 39 students which is 8.2% and 9 through 12 is it projected to degrees by 46 students which is 6.5% as the students move through the grades so you can see the decline in the the Aging of the population the declining
031of the school year school age um population is having an effect here this chart shows um in a in a line line graph the historical and projected enrollments over time you can see you're up at 3500 now at between you know the 23 37 and you can see the corresponding data at the bottom we were also asked to do elementary school by School enrollment projections and we did that we'll start with East Falmouth and you can see here over the next three years the PK to 12 enrollment so it starts here 2425 to 293 is set to decreased by 3.3% Mullen Hall is 2425 let me scroll up a little bit is um from 364 to 335 is the three years out and that's projected to decline by 7.96 per or 29 students and at
032North Falmouth from 303 students to 254 declining by 49 students or 16.17 per. and then T ticket um decreased by 1.69% or three students over the next three years so the stability of grades 1 through eight is important to consider because that tells us of the stability of the the um Core group of grades in schools we do grades one through eight because kids do choose different um High School options so if if um fouth had 16 00 grades 1 through 7 students you would expect to get 1,600 grades 1 through 8 students what we noticed um in school years 2017 to 2022 there was an out migration of students in these age in this uh grade spans of an averaging 30 students curiously what we noticed for school year 23 24 and 2425 the
033district has seen an immigration of students averaging 14 and let's hope that continues that means you've kept this the the 1600 grades 1 through 7 to 2 through eight but you've added an average of 14 students over those two years so here's the enrollment forecast we took looked at all that we talked about the student yield it just we're just going to include the projects currently under construction so when you look at the projections above K to four holistically as a district include 19 to 24 students over the next 2 to three years years 10 to 12 middle you know grades um eight grades 5 to 8 and then 3 to 4 grades 9- 12 and this is just a summary of all that I have said that you can review so then we look
034at the school facility review as I said before we we reviewed the four Elementary School the key facility information was reviewed with the administrators in each of schools and the district leadership team and Al though we didn't do a capital asset assessment we reviewed the per pertinent facility maintenance and Capital Improvements needed uh information provided by the district we looked at three aspects of each School physical programmatic and operational variables the physical you'll see are instructional spaces core facilities major systems and maintenance site information and handicapped access programmatic is the educational program and offerings the schedules the teams and class size and then the operational utilization and efficiency of spaces for staff and specialized programs including the administrative the support staff and instructional administrative technology as each of those areas supports student learning and it
035supports the Educators and leaders in order to be able to provide that student learning environment so how do we calculate facility space utilization we count the classrooms and using the P perspective of the School principal who's scheduling the building and we calculate a potential current facility utilization by multiplying the district's maximum class size number by the number of classrooms so the maximum class size is determined by the district prek is 15 K is 18 students grade 1 is 20 grades two to three are 22 students and grade four is 24 students and it's multiplied by the number of classrooms using the current grade configuration so the facility space utilization considers a review of the the classroom spaces the core specialized facilities and other areas so we did a review of the district schools and I'm
036going to begin with East Falmouth elementary school I'm going to go through East fouth Elementary School highlighting certain areas and then we'll go quickly through the others um just identifying key ideas so in East fouth it's grades prek to four the site acre Bri is 18.38 Acres it was built in 1958 with an addition renovation in 2002 53,500 Square ft there are 21 interchangeable classrooms and the October 1st um 2024 in R was 33 students so here are the instructional spaces that you'll see 21 PK to four classrooms one special ed Support Services classroom one art room one music room one OTP classroom noting here that it's a portable classroom that was added 23 years ago and nzc notes that portable classrooms are usually temporary structures and are typically replaced after 20 to 25 years
037but we also know Falmouth has continuously maintained these structures and then there's one reading classroom which is also a PO a portable classroom the core facilities the cafetorium um is a full kitchen has handicapped ACC the gymnasium has one teaching station for a full-time physical education Health educator and the library media center has a maker space and a full-time librarian the administrative offices are a principal's office assistant principal special building administrator office one main office with two administrative assistants a conference room a nurse's office and a teacher lunchroom workspace and then this the spaces for support staff that support the learning of the students the adjustment counselors psychologist English language development educator uh bcba speech and language special Educators teaching assistance and the safety monitor it's instructive administrative technology is one: one for K grades
038K to four Educators have laptops the classrooms have interactive projection devices the Wi-Fi access is reliable and um special plans health records grading and attendance are computerized um handicapped access access is is um prominent with lever door handles and closed fist bars restrooms are available um the rout travel does require stairs and a chair lift is available and in the site information parking and event parking is noted as needs Improvement there's a plan to add parking spots um field and play space and area for pickup and drop off storage is adequate and major systems again did not include a capital assessment but we did review the pertinent major systems and plumbing is noted as needs Improvement um the original Plumbing prone to pinhole leaks with repairs done in sections as those leaks develop and the
039flooring is reported as needs Improvement but replacement in the swing schedule for the sum of 2025 Ruth H roof HVAC electrical system wall Windows doors and walls are all noted as satisfactory so here's East Falmouth we this is the current facility space utilization reminding that we take the the the number of preschool classrooms nine times the district um class siiz number of 15 is 135 two kindergartens three grade ones five grades two and three two grades four for maximum capacity of 389 students knowing that the enrollment was 303 students so there is ex excess capacity I want to note this footer um maximum capacity is subject to change increasing or decreasing if the grade configuration changes so for example if next year you need um more grade 3es that you would uh excuse me more
040grade one ones and less grade twos this would decrease by two so you could see that the number would change but this is based on the current configuration Mullen Hall here's the facility profile built in 1931 with an addition renovation in 2003 22 interchangeable classrooms with 364 students here are the instructional spaces um here's the 20 interchangeable one Cape Cog Coalition one self-contained special education classroom which adds up to the 22 art music digital literacy and computer signs the reading classroom and others configuration for the cafeteria gymnasium and Library there are the administrative spaces the support staff instructional administrative technology ADA handicapped access site information and storage and the major systems and maintenance so if we look at the current facility space utilization based on this current configuration ation the maximum capacity is 452 students
041with an October 1 enrollment of 364 students so there is excess capacity at Mullen Hall then we'll look at North felth grades K to four built in 1963 audition renovation in 1988 19 interchangeable classrooms the October 1st 2024 enrollment was 303 students see the 18 interchangeable classroom one self-contained special ed art music um classroom shared by Educators otpt cafeteria gymnasium Library there are the administrative spaces similar to the other schools the support staff instructional administrative technology ADA handicapped access the information storage in the major systems and maintenance the roof is reported as needing Improvement and will be replaced in the summer of 2024 Plumbing HV AC is reported as needing Improvement but things are fixed as noted so here's the current facility space utilization so four kindergarteners so a maximum capacity of 388 students October
0421 2024 en roll and 303 students here we talk about some facility space considerations dedicated classroom space for the reading teacher English language development and special Educators and then te ticket a k four School built in 1967 addition renovation 2003 current enrollment 236 students as of October 1st and the number of interchangeable classrooms 17 so here are the 14 interchangeable classrooms K to 4 three self contains special EDG classrooms three full-time Educators the special education Support Services classroom art music otpt and others and there is also portable classrooms here um for the music room and the um the reading classroom and again fouth has continually maintained these structures but nesc usually they're usually temporary structures that are typically replaced core facilities the administrative spaces the support staff instructional administrative technology Ada handc cap access site
043information storage and major systems the plumbing and HV is reported as satisfactory although pinhole leaks caused by sentiment buildup sometimes occur and are repaired so here's the current facility space utilization under the current configuration the maximum capacity is 324 students and the um current enrollment as of October 1st 2024 is 236 students facility space uh utilization dedicated space the speech and language services and dedicated conference room space so this is our the summary of of what we noticed the physical spaces including the class rooms the cafeteria the meteor designed for student learning the district has continued to maintain the buildings with the planned Renovations and the scheduled maintenance again the portable classrooms are usually temporary structures and replaced but fouth I want to reiterate again has continuously maintain these structs structures the programing V variables
044are adequate include specialized programming for students with special needs maker spaces and small small group spaces for instruction the operational variables of spaces for staff and specialized programs are adequate in most schools as noted in the facilities R some schools could be benefit from additional conference space a dedicated space for support staff NASDAQ analysis notes that there is excess capacity at each of the elementary schools which could accommodate additional students or programming additionally it is important to note that this analysis is based on each individual school's current use of addition of existing space additional capacity may be realized if the district prioritize full-size classroom space for grade level classroom and provide smaller space for support services so we've looked at the demographics we looked at the facilities and we've come up with a set of
045options for consideration we use all of that information and it's presented as a bullet up outline um description of each option as well as the listing of advantages and challenges these options are designed to serve as a catalyst for further analysis and discussion this document should not be considered as an end product but rather as the beginning point for future planning option implementation usually takes a minimum of one to two years so let's look at the first option option one consider transitioning one Elementary School to preschool and move all current grades K to four stud students to the other three elementary schools so the grade level alignment becomes preschool at one Elementary School grades kindergarten to four at the three remaining Elementary buildings so what are some advantages locating the preschool at one Elementary School
046affords that continued collaboration and coordination with families and a potential expansion of that preschool enrollment and program um the district has noted that the current f with ag is 3 to four uh popul supports the P potential increase to preschool enrollments grades K to four at the three remaining elementary schools affords more consistent class sizes scheduling which sports student interaction with grade level peers shared resources amongst grade levels and facilitates that collaboration coordination and communication amongst grade level Educators and you could there's a potential to increase support for special ed programming what are some of the challenges consideration by constituents to determine the geographic location of the reconfigured preschool and grades K to four schools some families would need to switch elementary schools there's some costs associated with u moving staff and programs um the
047the to continue to address infrastructure system needs you'd need to maybe restructure and expand some Transportation routes and there is a cost associated with that and there could be some increased uh travel time for elementary students and parents and the possibility of increased congestion at pickup and drop off option two consider transitioning one Elementary School to preschool kindergarten distribute grades one through four students to the other three elementary schools so that grade level alignment pekk at one Elementary School grades 1 through four at the three remaining elementary schools and similar to option one locating the preschool allows for potential expansion of the preschool enrollment at one building but locating the preschool in the kindergarten at one Elementary School affords the creation of an early childhood learning environment um the grades creat G grades one to
048four configuration affords those more consistent class sizes the interaction of students with grade level peers shared resources and the communication and collaboration um around grade level educators it eliminates the challenges it eliminates the grades K to four neighborhood or Community School um the consideration by constituents to determine the geographic location of the reconfiguration excuse me reconfigured grades preschool kindergarten and one to four schools it increases student transitions from 3 to four you need to continue to address the infrastructure and system needs um the transportation routes could have a cost and the increased travel time time and to consider transitioning one Elementary School to preschool distribute grades K to five over the remaining three elementary schools move grade five to the three remaining elementary schools either at the same time or when the renovation to Lawrence
049Middle School is complete and to close m u Morse Pond middle school so the grade level alignment is preschool at one of the current elementary buildings grades kindergarten to five at the three remaining Elementary buildings again some of the same um advantages um preschool expansion um K to five consistent class sizes scheduling which supports the student interaction with grade level peers shared resources and the collaboration and communication among grade level Educators uh some of the challenges it brings another grade level into the elementary schools you need to realign classrooms when M moving grade five students into the three current element elementary schools there are costs and challenges associated with moving staff and programs the transportation routes and increased travel time consider transitioning one Elementary School to preschool kindergarten distribute grades 1 through five over the
050remaining three elementary schools move grade three to the three remaining elementary schools either at the same time or when the renovation to Lawrence Middle School is complete close morson middle school and this is similar to the option three um but we're putting preschool in kindergarten in one of the elementary buildings and then grades one through five again some of the same advantages here as the previous and similar challenges option five consider reconfiguring elementary schools to specific grade span schools preschool kindergarten to one grade two to three grade four to five across the Forum Elementary School consider moving grade five to the elementary school close morson middle school and move grade six to Lawrence Middle School so you can see the grade level alignment we're doing grade spans here um locating at the preschool of fors
051um at one school of fors the expansion of that preschool enrollment um grade span configuration the K1 the grades 2 three the grades 45 affords more consistent class sizes scheduling which import which supports to student interaction with grade level peers and those shared resources it pro promotes consistency and Equity of opportunities and resources at each school for each grade span um the challenge is it eliminates grades K to4 neighborhood schools they have to determine by constituents the geographic location of those reconfigured schools uh gr spands um and the others as similar from the options before option six when the renovation to Lawrence Middle School is complete close morson Middle School move grade five to the elementary schools and reconfigure elementary schools to include grade five so the alignment here is grades preschool to five at
052one elementary schools and grades K to five at three Elementary School it decreases the transitions from 4 to three it brings another grade level into the elementary schools and realigning those classrooms when moving grade five students into four current elementary schools um continuing to address the infrastructure the cost and challenges Transportation routes all of the things that we've talked about before option seven consider realignment of Elementary School boundaries to more evenly distribute the number of elementary schools across the elementary schools so it's the current configuration grades preschool to four at one Elementary and grades kindergarten to 43 Elementary again when we realign the School boundaries we more consistent class sizes which support student interaction with grade level peers um and the equity and opportunities and resources for students again the challenge is consideration by constituent
053to determine those realigned School boundaries some families would need to switch elementary schools and the costs and uh address the infrastructure option A consider the realignment of Elementary School boundaries to more evenly distribute the number of elementary schools AC students across the elementary schools the difference between seven and eight is we're going to move grade suggest moving grade five to the elementary schools either at the same time when the renovation is uh to Lawrence Middle School is complete and then close mors pond so it's preschool to five at one Elementary and grades kindergarten to five at three elementary schools more consistent class sizes moving realigning the grade five students into current elementary schools the the costs associated with that so we thank the fouth public schools for partnering with nesdc to commission this study um
054it's a thoughtful databased approach um I want to reiterate the options are just those options for consideration um for the Falmouth public schools and as you look through them that you can determine what is the the best um scenario for Falmouth next um so we thank you very much I thank you for your time this evening and it was a pleasure to have worked with um the fouth public schools am I on now yeah um thank you Karen oh now she's gone it's weird because I'm looking this way but she's behind me um thanks Karen we really appreciate you walking us through the report it's a lot to taken um and um maybe we'll have questions as followup if we have any um any pieces that we don't quite understand after we've had a chance
055to read it so as I mentioned um the the link on the QR code that Sharon passed out the link on our website are open if you had questions already that you already know you have a question um or if during the you know going through the report questions arise feel free to drop those questions in there and then the building needs will follow up with their discussion school committee will have our discussions um through in our meetings and then the the public forum on April the 3 at 6 6 at 6m where is it at the high school thank you uh is there a motion to adjourn thanks Melissa second uh we don't have everyone but Mike is also not on all in favor thanks thanks weour thank you guys thanks for so much
056for coming