Facing classes as large as 28 students, the teachers and staff at Cunniff Elementary School have turned the school’s art and music rooms into classrooms to split off a set of students and relieve crowding at the Westside school.
Principal Mena Ciarlone told the School Committee Monday that the Cunniff has experienced unusual mid-year growth, and mostly in the upper grades – third through fifth.
“The past two weeks we have noticed an increased enrollment, two stories each week in the upper grades.,” Ciarlone said. “Enrollment became a worry and class sizes were extremely high.”
One of the fourth grade classes has 28 students and the other had 26. Ciarlone said it is only set to get worse. She recently learned about one more child enrolling this week and two more after February break.
School Committee member Candace Miller said she has heard from parents of children in the large classes, and they said their children are feeling stressed.
Any class above 25 starts to feel crowded, Ciarlone said, especially in the upper grades where older kids with their larger bodies must fit into the room. She and her staff had to work out a plan to deal with the growing classes.
Offices and other non-classroom spaces around the school have already been turned into teaching areas. Now the school uses the music room two days a week and the art room two days a week for a group of 12 fourth-grades – six from each class – and a teacher.
“What we do is a fourth-grade teacher travels with the students across the school,” Cirarlone said. “It accommodates teaching and learning in a smaller setting.”
The new configuration helps with the crowding, but is not without worry for Ciarlone and Cunniff’s teachers.
“We want to make sure students do not feel uncomfortable with the new model and get used to having six students from their class that they will not see for four days,” Ciarlone said. “But, I could see the sense of relief on the teachers’ faces that they do not have to get around to 26 or 28 students.”
While she commended the Cunniff staff’s work to find a solution, School Committee member Eileen Hsu-Balzer said it cannot be a permanent solution.
“What you described – I don’t like,” Hsu-Balzer said. “And you don’t like it.”
A parent inquired about using two rooms in the basement of the Cunniff, but they are not really usable, said former School Committee member Michael Shepard.
“It is below ground, and there is open water in parts of the room,” Shepard said. “It would cost a fortune to fix. There is also mold, humidity issues, and there is no sprinkler system … the cost adds up quickly.”
Problem Could be Growing
The Cunniff is not the only school facing crowding problems. The enrollment projections for the Hosmer School show the fourth grade could have classes with 24 or 25 students, because the school has five third grades but only four fourth grades.
Principal Robert LaRoche said the Hosmer does not have any other rooms which could be used for classrooms.
Miller asked if the new students looking to enroll in the Cunniff could go to the the Lowell School, which has fourth-grade classes of 17 and 18 right now. Fitzgerald said she tries to meet families’ requests to get into the school of their choice. She also does not want to get into a discussion of redistricting the town’s schools, because they can be fraught issues.
The students keep coming, and could come at an even faster rate in the near future. The Cunniff has had nine more students come since the beginning of school in grades 3-5, and Ciarlone said three of the five new students in the fourth grade came from the new apartments on the westside of town.
When the buildings were being built, Superintendent Jean Fitzgerald said the district was told to expect no children or few of then to come from the new developments, because most of the units are two- or one-bedrooms.
School Committee member Elizabeth Yusem said she is worried about planning for next future.
“One of the main issues is we don’t know what’s coming at us,” Yusem said. “We are not sure if any towns have experienced this. Most towns have one or two large parcels being developed, but we have lots of acres being developed.”
On the Westside of town, there are new developments with 200-300 units that have been built and are now occupied, such as Repton Place, Watertown Mews and Riverbend off Pleasant Street and Bell Watertown off Waltham Street. East of Watertown Square there are two more large projects going up – Elan Watertown and the Hanover/Cresset project at 202 Arsenal Street. Other smaller projects have been approved or are in the planning stages.
Short Term Fix
For next year, Hsu-Balzer said she only sees one option.
“We have a whole lot of kids and it doesn’t matter what is happening in the building, we have too many kids,” Hsu-Balzer said. “In the short term I see ending up have to use the trailers (temporary classrooms). It is the only solution I see for the problem we have now.”
The School Committee and administration will have to figure out if the School Department has the money, or if it needs more money from the town.
The School Committee and the Town Council need to work together on a long-term solution, said Town Council President and School Committee member Mark Sideris.
“The problem is not going away. We can’t be cutting up offices and putting students in places where they shouldn’t be taught,” Sideris said. “The surplus schools – we would love to have them but we don’t have them.”
The space issues will be discussed further at the next Building and Grounds subcommittee meeting, which has not yet been scheduled, said School Committee Chairman John Portz.
They will discuss the short-term fixes, including coming up with a request for proposals for the work, and a long-term plan for all of Watertown’s schools. On Tuesday the School Committee did vote to request the Superintendent write a Statement of Interest for a new high school – the first step to getting into the Massachusetts School Building program and get some state funds for the project.
Other discussions will be the possibility of moving grades from elementary to middle school, for instance, or having all students in one grade housed in one school.
That is the school most in need of renovation or replacement, according to a facilities study commissioned by the Watertown Public Schools. Fitzgerald said it is not likely they would switch the focus to rebuilding or expanding an elementary school. If Watertown is selected to be part of the state’s program, however, state officials will look at all of Watertown’s needs and may say the need is not at the high school but at another level.
When Windsor Village was built in Waltham, we were told there would not be any impact on the schools as most units were one or two bedrooms. After about five years, Northeast Elementary had to have one school bus just for Windsor Village. To think all the new units will not impact the schools is naive.
This is a direct result of overbuilding. Where did we think these new children would end up? And yet we are still building…
What’s the plan? Can’t be something 3-10 years out. We need resolution for our children NOW.
Why not move the school administration offices to the old police station and use the uppers floors the Phillips school for students? Perhaps have all the 5th graders there as a transition to the middle school? Or pre-k – kindergarden there, as there is a playground at the senior center they can use.
I’d take my kid out of that mess and put him in private school on Main St. in Waltham.