Florence Terrill, community schools specialist at H.H. Garnet Elementary School, spoke to the Board of Education about possible solutions for the school’s overcrowding at its July 18 meeting.
Florence Terrill, community schools specialist at H.H. Garnet Elementary School, spoke to the Board of Education about possible solutions for the school’s overcrowding at its July 18 meeting.
ROCK HALL — Overcrowding at H.H. Garnet Elementary School in Chestertown was, once again, a topic for discussion at the Board of Education meeting Monday night.
The Citizen Advisory Committee reported on the issue at the school board’s June 13 meeting.
According to that presentation, there are 358 students at Garnet. Galena Elementary School has 268 and Rock Hall Elementary School has 195. Kent County Middle School has 392 students. Kent County High School has 560.
Much of the June discussion focused on class sizes, classroom dimensions and possible solutions, including revoking some out-of-zone requests, where parents ask that their student go to a different school than the one they are “zoned” to attend.
At the conclusion of last month’s discussion, the board asked for more information on the breakdown of how many out-of-zone requests there are for each of the three elementary schools and for cost estimates on portable classrooms.
On Monday, Superintendent Karen Couch said there are 23 out-of-zone requests for Garnet and 18 total requests to the other two elementary schools.
She said that if the school system rejected out-of-zone requests, it might “force some families to leave.”
“Staff too,” added Dan Hushion, supervisor of human resources.
Supervisor of Student Services and Secondary Education Tracey Williams said some of the out-of-zone students have been attending Garnet for several years.
“We can’t just think of it as numbers because that’s a big shift for those kids to completely change (schools),” said board member Francoise Sullivan.
Parents are usually informed of the result of their out-of-zone request the first week of August, Williams said.
A double portable building — which would provide two classroom spaces — would cost about $300,000, Couch said, including purchasing, transportation and setup of the unit; electric; security measures; classroom equipment; and any site work that needs to be done, including adding a sidewalk or landing pad or special ramps.
Couch asked the board to take into consideration, “where would we get the money to purchase the portable unit, that’s the first thing, and then where would we put it.”
Garnet is “landlocked,” with lots of other buildings surrounding it.
Board member Trish McGee asked if purchasing the portable classroom could be related to COVID.
Sullivan asked if the county had remaining American Rescue Plan Act funds available for something.
“I don’t know if it’s worth making a plea to (Chestertown),” McGee said of the town’s ARPA funds, some of which are being set aside for community projects. “They may think it’s an investment worth making. It certainly can’t hurt to at least make a request.”
Couch said the school system would check internally to see if there were any additional funds.
“I’m struggling with what the tipping point is, other than the school seems like it’s not designed for modern-day instruction,” said board President Joe Goetz.
“I don’t have an answer,” Couch said.
Board Vice President Nivek Johnson said there were “a plethora of problems” that required “deeper” investigation.
During Monday’s discussion, the board talked about options for Garnet, including moving the Judy Center, which provides early learning program for pre-school children and their families; moving storage, food service and maintenance to another building; renting classroom space elsewhere, in a portable building or a church; converting part of the media center space into a classroom; putting the primary grades upstairs and the intermediary grades downstairs, where there are larger classrooms; moving the behavior room to Rock Hall Elementary School; and more.
Garnet Principal Brenda Rose attended Monday’s meeting to discuss the options presented. She said many of them were not feasible or would require renovations.
Some of the options would not provide a fast enough solution.
“We’ve got short-term fast needs that we have to get answers quickly,” Goetz said. “We also have to consider long term … we have to look at this in steps so that we can get answers quickly so that we can get to parents ultimately but also internally as to what’s going on so the building can move forward. That window is getting short and it’s getting shorter each time we move forward.”
Rose said classrooms are shuffled year to year so that those teachers with large classes can be in the larger classrooms. There are not classrooms designated for a specific grade level.
This year, there will likely be one less fifth grade class, freeing up one classroom space.
Couch and a group of central office administrators will meet with Rose to talk about more solutions this week. The discussion will be brought up again at the board’s retreat Tuesday, July 26.
Three people spoke during the board’s second public participation session, all about Garnet.
Community Schools Specialist at Garnet Florence Terrill talked about the equity within the schools, saying classrooms with 24 high-needs students require more support.
She provided other options for the space capacity issues, including moving the behavior room to Rock Hall Elementary School.
Terrill’s three minutes were up before she was able to finish her comments, but McGee encouraged her to submit her comments to the board so they could hear the rest of her suggestions.
Frank Rhodes, a parent of KCHS students, suggested putting portable buildings at the middle school for future use.
He added that the board would be able to find the money for those units if they put together a good plan.
“If you keep going around in circles like this it’s going to take forever,” he said.
Barb Reed said, when there are behavioral issues, having out-of-zone permission allows parents to send their kids to another school within the county before putting them in private school.
Board member Trish McGee is also the editor of the Kent County News.
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