Colden Elementary School, Rumors and Truth

Late in the summer, I realized that our enrollment at Colden Elementary was low enough that we have only 11/12 students in each of our kindergarten and first grade classes, with under 30 students in each of grades 2-4. This led to my decision to move three teaching assistants from CES to SES. Before making this change, we had five TA’s assigned to CES with an enrollment of 16o students and four TA’s assigned to SES with an enrollment of 553 students. That just didn’t make good sense.

I think that moving the three TA’s may have led to a rumor that I’m hearing that “we have a three year plan to close Colden Elementary”. I want our entire school community to know that we do not have a three year plan to close CES. 

We do need to study our enrollment as a district. We cannot continue to behave as a 2500 student district when we’re a 1678 student district. We are having a transportation study done this year. One of the questions we’ve asked for the study is “can you look at the lines of enrollment to determine if there’s a different distribution that would more evenly place our elementary students at CES and SES?”

We do need to have a discussion about Colden Elementary. The big question: How to balance the desires of our CES families with our responsibility to the taxpayers? I don’t know the answer to that question and I don’t know what we’ll decide to do moving forward as a district. We haven’t even studied or talked about it yet. But we will.

Here’s what I do know.

  1. We cannot ignore or postpone this conversation. It’s my responsibility to lead it. Considering what to do with a beloved school building with declining enrollment is a very difficult, emotional topic. I will retire from SGI some day. When I do, it will have been irresponsible if I haven’t led that difficult conversation.
  2. Families in the enrollment area for Colden Elementary love that little school. Our teachers and principal love that little school. I love that little school.
  3. We will respect those families and employees at CES and make any future decisions carefully and with input from our community.
  4. As our student population declines, our budget cannot continue to increase. We’re required this year to begin to analyze and report our per pupil expenditures, by building. That will give us information to consider about potential cost savings with any closure. I don’t even want to say the word “closure” because again, we don’t know what we’re going to do next.
  5. We are engaging our school community in thought exchanges this year. The first one starts tomorrow. I promise we will devote a thought exchange to Colden Elementary. We’ll give some relevant facts and ask everyone, “what do you think we should do about the impact of declining enrollment on Colden Elementary?”
  6. We will listen to our school community. We’ll study the facts. We’ll make the best decision possible that serves the needs of all of our students and families.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *