small schools rock!! (or so i think!!) help me convince the town!

[vtgirl]

here's my dilemna. our town (actually 2 towns - but its a long story...) wants to shut down our *very* small school. we have 3-6 kids in each grade K-6. the classes are arranged K,1,2, then 3,4, then 5,6. each class has their own classroom.

i am hoping that someone here on MDC has articles or information that promotes the theory that small class sizes in early elementary benefits children.

is there anyone with persuasive information that i can use to help our cause - which is keeping my town's very small school open.........

the voters (pop.300 - less than 80 come to vote) tend to think that we should consolidate all the small schools and be done with the whole "village school" concept but the problem is that I disagree. i have a soon-to-be 2nd grader and i feel she and her classmates benefit greatly from being in a very small school and i would not change it for anything. am i just biased? my kid went to montessori preschool for 2years and i appreciate the value of older students *mentoring* the younger ones and i love the idea of her being close to home. and then there is her teacher who i just love.

ok. i know i am biased because i love the school and i want to keep it going (for its 206th consecutive year) you might,too if your kid went here because it's so awesome and yet we have had to fight EVERY year for the past 3 years to keep this school open. i know the parents before us had to fight, too.

so, please, is there anyone out there with solid data that small schools are better for kids in the long run? i have done a search but came up with nothing really convincing. this might be our last year. i hope my child will have the privilege of going to the village school for another 5 years but it's not looking so good. any thoughts?

[je309]

I don't have any specific info for you but wanted to offer my support. I do have plenty of friends who are early education majors and they all agree that small class sizes in early grades are ideal. I am very much in favor of smaller classes although the class my dd is in is nowhere near that small! Our public schools here have 25 kids per class with one teacher. I chose to send my dd to a private school for several reasons, one being that the classes are quite a bit smaller. She has 16 kids in her class, with 2 teachers in the room.

I have honestly never heard of a class that has 3-6 kids in it but if you love it and it works for you, then I hope you can find a way to keep the school open. I wish you the best of luck!!

[Mallori]

What are their reasons for wanting to close the school? I'm betting their reasons are financial. Building maintenence, staff salaries, utility costs...that's going to be a hard battle to fight considering so few students go there.

OTOH, I'm not going to disagree with you about the benefits, esp. when you have a happy child who is thriving. I would fight for that too.

What a difficult situation. I'd be interested in hearing how this turns out.

ETA: I'd hit it from a historical perspective, what a loss to the community it would be. And if you succeed in keeping it open this year, I would involve the school in the community as much as possible. One of the things that I actually liked about my kids previous school was their involvement. The kids were each assigned into groups called a "buddy family" (children from each grade in each "family") and every so often they'd walk around the neighborhood and visit 'shut-ins' or the elderly, pass out flowers or crafts. The elderly loved the children coming and would give them small treats sometimes and the kids benefited learning from them. Involve the school in any community function you can think of, or find a way to make new ones. This could be a lot of work in the beginning to get it off the ground, but it's got a lot of perks to it too. And when the community has a vested interest/benefit from it, not just the kids who attend, it's going to be harder to shut it down. HTH.

[kmeyrick]

The sad fact is that it is not cost efficient and therefore, highly unlikely the town will take advantage of this gift.

Would parents consider applying for a charter school? Charter schools tend to have smaller class sizes, about fifteen instead 27 or something like that. Perhaps you can research that.