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Date: 10/20/2021
AMHERST – The Amherst Regional School Committee held off on a vote to move the sixth grade students in the region to Amherst Regional Middle School (ARMS) at their latest meeting on Oct. 12.
During the School Committee meeting on Oct. 5 the Amherst Elementary School Committee voted 4-0, with one member absent, to adopt a recommendation by Superintendent Michael Morris to have sixth graders move to the middle school for the 2023-2024 year. This would change a long running foundation of K-6 Elementary schools in Amherst.
Discussions for the new Amherst Elementary School building proposal have picked up in recent weeks as the decision to build a new elementary school was correlated with the decision made for where sixth grade students would be attending class. While the town of Amherst is looking to make this move, other towns in the region are not sold yet.
Amherst Superintendent Dr. Michael Morris said in the latest meeting that he has spoken with each elementary committee in Leverett, Pelham and Shutesbury about what their plans are for their sixth grade students. Because each elementary school has their own school committee in the region, Amherst’s decision to move their sixth graders into the middle school has no impact on the other towns’ decisions.
According to the superintendent’s impressions from his discussions with the other elementary school committees, Pelham, for example, is taking a wait and see approach, and Shutesbury was firm in not being interested in discussing moving their sixth grade students from their elementary school into ARMS.
Based on the most recent meeting, reluctancy for other towns comes from a few factors.
Regional School Committee member Gene Stamell of Leverett raised the question of how integration of students from the surrounding towns of Amherst would go in a middle school where the sixth graders of Amherst already had a year together in the new school, during a challenging time as a growing child.
Sarahbess Kenney, Regional School Committee member from Pelham, expressed her concerns for sixth grade students being in the same school setting as eighth graders who vary much differently both physically and emotionally than their younger counterparts.
While a seen as a valid concern, many schools across the state and country use and have used a 6-8 model and have found ways to ease the adjustment for younger students. In this instance, sixth graders would likely have their own hallway for all classes at ARMS, as originally designed in the middle school.
Not only are their concerns for the social wellbeing of students, but there is also the question of how the curriculum changes as well.
One example brought up was how Amherst has a different math program than the surrounding towns, and with the move it would be exclusively a 6-8 math curriculum throughout the middle school in the town of Amherst. What does that mean for students in a K-6 curriculum who then join ARMS in seventh grade?
Morris responded to these concerns expressing that social concerns are valid, but if regional students would normally go to ARMS starting in seventh grade, there would still be a disconnect with the students who are residents of Amherst, and the students from surrounding towns. Academically though, Morris acknowledges the points being made were valid and would take time to figure out going forward.
“There are definitely things to work out, but there is a system. We will lean on the expertise of others [who had dealt with similar moves of grades in the past],” Morris said.
Morris also mentioned how creating a 6-8 middle school in the town would also be beneficial to middle school students as their curriculum would widen. One example he brought up was the opportunity for a modern woodshop class called Makers Space could be available as one of the electives that could be offered in a 6-8 middle school.
ARMS already has an original woodshop classroom, but currently it is off limits as the town would need to do some renovation of the room and bring it up to modern safety codes. This would be something seventh and eighth grade students would not have access to without a 6-8 middle school.
Agreements on curriculum depend on the decisions by surrounding towns on if they want to incorporate their sixth grade students into ARMS. If that is the way they decide to go, Morris said there could be a reopening of the regional agreement the four towns have to be consistent with the new changes.
This is also a reason for Morris recommending the change to come for the fall 2023 year, as a gap year would allow for these changes to be made more easily ready for a shift in schools like this. This would also allow time to come up with an integration plan for students with disabilities and finding proper staffing for what would be needed for vulnerable groups as such in the move.
While Morris indicated he is not trying to sway the other towns from their own decisions, he stated that as the Amherst superintendent, he believed this to be a necessary move that would benefit students .
“It’s exciting to utilize this time to re-envision what we want the middle school to be, even if your town isn’t sending your sixth grade students to the middle school,” Morris said during the Oct. 12 meeting.
The town and the Amherst School Committee have discussed and created possible plans to help solve the issue of space and infrastructure within the Amherst elementary schools over the course of the last few years. Before a building could be approved, a decision has to have been made on if sixth graders will continue in an elementary school setting or move to the middle school and allow a merger of elementary students from Fort River and Wildwood schools in a brand-new elementary school building.
The decision to move Amherst sixth graders into ARMS comes after not only the recommendation of the superintendent, but also this plan was the only one supported by the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA). According to the MSBA, to have both elementary buildings replaced by the 2026 school year requires a 575-student school with a K-5 model. The decision to go ahead with replacing both schools made the most sense to the superintendent as leaving behind one elementary school for the other when both have similar problems would just put those students at a disadvantage.
Proponents of a new school building have made the case that a new facility is needed and the current ones, specifically Fort River Elementary and Wildwood Elementary, are outdated and have been starting to show their ages. Add a worldwide pandemic and regulations inside the school only add to the challenges faced.
According to a power point presentation from Morris, space issues were intensified with health and safety regulations for COVID-19. Each school has lost 12 classroom spaces, there has been loss of space in the cafeteria for lunches, some specials teachers have lost their instructional spaces and teachers have had challenges finding spaces for pull-out ELL, SE, and reading/math intervention services. These are all blows to the foundation of public schooling.
Currently, classrooms at these elementary schools are divided in quadrants. The school rooms are large, open classrooms, something that since has become outdated and not appropriate for current education models. Also, the school did not have the same number of students enrolled per grade. Now, schools have been using dividers as a place holder to split the larger rooms into smaller classrooms, or quads.
This solution has worked only to an extent, as the dividers are not the same height as the ceilings of classrooms thus causing noise from classes sharing a divider to sometimes overlap with one another. A new school building would have proper classrooms built that reflected not only the towns current student enrollment, but the enrollment also of future students.
This is not the first time new facilities for the public schools have been addressed. There was a building project for Wildwood in the past decade and that building committee proposed that the town combine both Wildwood and Fort River in a new school building. The MSBA had approved the plan to replace both school buildings with a new building. That building failed to get the proper debt support, leading the town and Amherst School Committee to go back to the drawing board.
"We have two failing buildings that are about the same age, have very similar but different issues, and it’s a long process to get accepted in the school building funding,” Amherst School Committee chair Alison McDonald said.
Two years ago, the Amherst School Committee embarked on a community engagement process to identify options that everyone could agree on.
“The community did support this idea of trying to address both buildings in one project, we didn’t want to leave one building behind, then ask that group of families and students to accept sub optimal facilities for their learning,” McDonald said. “We can’t accept a building project that does not provide needs for all students.”
There were two choices available for the town in deciding how to solve this issue. “Option A” as it’s been referred to, sees Fort River Elementary replaced and a max enrollment of 320 students and remaining in an elementary school setting of K-6. “Option B” would see a change in the grading structure with 6th graders moving to Amherst Regional Middle School, and a new building to replace both Fort River and Wildwood Elementary schools with a max enrollment of 575 students. Option B was the choice made and now that an option is chosen, the town can finalize candidates for the construction of the new school based on what the new buildings enrollment will be.