Padalino’s plan was presented to the school board last week. In its current incarnation it would close three more elementary schools, with Anna Devine, Sophie Finn and Zena all to be shut at the end of the 2012-13 school year. They would join Meagher, closed a few weeks ago, in bringing the total number of elementary schools down from 11 at the beginning of the 2011-12 school year to seven in just two years’ time.
Efforts to “rightsize” the district also include the likelihood of moving the fifth grade into the district’s pair of middle schools, partly to accommodate the elementary closures, Padalino said, and partly because the hope is that the district’s graduation rates would rise if students spend more time in their pre-high school building.
According to Padalino, a K-4, 5-8, 9-12 makes the most sense for Kingston, especially when compared to other models under consideration. Padalino said that keeping things exactly as-is would fail to address academic issues in Kingston, a district with an overall dropout rate of 29 percent, a percentage which rises dramatically in various minority, economically disadvantaged and student with disabilities subgroups. The dropout rate among Kingston’s African-American student population is 53 percent. With Hispanic and Latino students, the percentage is 40 percent. Among economically disadvantaged students, the rate is 41 percent, and among students with disabilities it’s 73 percent.
In addition to disappointment from some parents living in the attendance boundaries of the potentially impacted elementary schools, other parents have expressed considerable concern about incorporating the fifth grade into the middle school, despite assurances from Padalino that efforts would be made to keep them segregated from the older students as much as possible. Laurie Naccarato, president of the Kingston Teachers Federation, joined in the discussion.
Naccarato said a committee of teachers read research and developed questions regarding redistricting and grade reconfiguration, but were never officially included in the discussion.
“This is totally unacceptable, as we are the people who have dedicated our lives to the teaching of our students,” she said. “Many of us have spent the bulk of our professional careers and personal lives here. Our children and our students will be directly impacted and yet we were not included. But rest assured, we will be blamed when students are unsuccessful or lost.”
Naccarato said she was skeptical of claims that moving fifth graders into the middle school would have a positive educational impact, and suggested it had much more to do with money.
“We recognize the financial constraints of the district, and if this is a strictly financial matter then please tell us that, but don’t try to persuade us or the public that this will benefit the children,” she said, adding thatKingston’s own history shows trying to move kids up too early hasn’t necessarily yielded positive results.
“Twenty-five years ago, the sixth grades were moved to the junior highs to form middle school and the ninth-graders were sent to the high school,” she said. “We saw a fallout immediately in large retention rates and failures in the ninth-grade which have continued. The sixth grades today still operate in the same way. They are separate entities from the seventh and eighth grades in the middle schools. The worst attributes of middle schools have trickled down, but the best of elementary has not bubbled up.”
Naccarato said it was unlikely that the teachers’ union would back Padalino’s plan in its current configuration.
“We cannot support a proposal that will negatively impact our students and their development,” she said. “No child should be forced to leave childhood at 10 years old. At a time when we are trying to create smaller learning communities for our high school, why would we break that bond for our elementary children?”
Though no official timetable has been discussed, Padalino said he hoped the redistricting plan would be finalized before the beginning of the 2012-13 school year gets under way in September to allow students, teachers and the community to prepare for the changes.
