News Release contact:
Barbara J. Case, Superintendent of School, bcase@svecsd.org
So far, one clear answer has resulted from the Spencer-Van Etten Central School District Grade Reconfiguration Study: No grades will be shifted to another building for the 2024-25 school year.
The district is working with educational consulting firm Castallo & Silky to conduct research into how to efficiently staff SVE schools to better utilize staff members’ expertise. One of the initial questions the district leadership team posed was whether it would make sense to change the configuration of the high school to a grades 7-12 school, as it had been in years past. It is now 9-12.
Consultant Stephen Bocciolatt is still finalizing the study but shared with the district leadership team that if the district were to change the configuration of any of its schools, including the high school, renovations would be needed. That’s not something the district is ready to do without more information, including community input, Superintendent Barbara Case said.
“We are continuing to work with Mr. Bocciolatt to identify if there are other initiatives in the short- term that we could implement to enhance our students’ experiences, but we need more time and feedback from our community before making any physical changes to our buildings,” Case said.
The district’s strategic plan identifies studying the grade alignment within the district's three schools as part of the plan’s student experience priority area. Currently, the elementary school serves prekindergarten through grade 4, grades 5-8 are at the middle school and 9-12 are at the high school.
Because of its small class sizes across the district, one option the district could consider in the future is to offer some high school electives on a rotating basis, rather than each year, Case said. In that scenario, students would still have more than one opportunity to enroll in a class during their high school career, and time would be freed up in the schedule to introduce new electives into the curriculum.
While the district’s enrollment has declined in recent years, projections the consultant has completed show the current enrollment staying stable for the foreseeable future. Closing a school is not on the table and is not something that the district is moving toward, Case said. The leadership team will be reviewing grade-level cohort size to determine if staffing should be adjusted, she said. If staffing is reduced, the district would prefer to look for opportunities to do so through attrition rather than layoffs.
“At this time, we are saying grade reconfiguration could still be a possibility in the future, but it’s not something we are ready to do now,” Case said. “Because the consultant has identified that any grade changes would require renovation and/or construction, more in depth planning would be needed. We think there may be some other things we could do first that wouldn’t be such a heavy lift and still greatly benefit our students.”
Once the study is complete, its full findings will be shared on the district website, at a board of education meeting and directly with families and staff. A series of common grade configuration questions and answers are available on the district website and more will be added as they come up.
“Once we have the full report, we will then determine next steps, which we anticipate will include opportunities for the community to share their thoughts and concerns with us,” Case said.
The report is expected to be complete sometime this late spring.