Long Hill School will likely get the biggest shake up in a redistricting plan for next school year that will affect 281 elementary school students in Shelton.
The plan, which was presented to the public and the Board of Education Tuesday night, calls for 100 of Long Hill School’s students to be redistributed to other schools.
And Long Hill School is slated to get 110 new students — 14 from Sunnyside School and 96 from Lafayette School, which will close next year.
The changes at Long Hill School are just one part of a city-wide elementary school redistricting that comes as a result of the board’s plan to close Lafayette School next year.
What’s Happening
This year, the district has six elementary schools, that house students from kindergarten to sixth grade.
Next year, one of those elementary schools – Lafayette – will shut down.
All fifth and sixth graders in the city will start attending Perry Hill School, which is slated to open in September.
And the rest of the kindergarten to fourth graders will be redistributed across the remaining five elementary schools.
The changes come as a result of Perry Hill School opening, and state concerns about the higher concentrations of lower-income and minority students at Lafayette School compared to Shelton’s other elementary schools.
Consultant Ross Haber was hired to reconfigure the districts so that each elementary school had similar class sizes.
Parents and school staff members had varied reactions upon hearing the plan Tuesday night. Reaction
Some parents, like Mitali Gupta and Kamal Jain, whose son is now a 2nd grader at Lafayette School, were pleased with the changes.
They said they live closer to Long Hill School, where their son will go next year.
“A lot of things that were not right in the previous 15 or 20 years, they are fixing it, so that is great,” Jain said.
But Elise Brickel said the opposite is happening to her son, a 1st grader at Sunnyside School. Under the proposal, he will attend Long Hill School next year, which Brickel said is farther away.
“I’m just concerned because where my son is right now, we just go to the corner and down a hill to get to school,” Brickel said.
Beverly Belden, the principal at Elizabeth Shelton School, said she looks forward to having more space and classrooms open for music, art and special education. When the fifth and sixth graders move to a new school, each elementary school is expected to have a handful of empty classrooms to be used for special subjects.
“Everything’s on a cart now,” Belden said. “We’re looking forward to having those dedicated extra rooms.”
Board of Education chairman Timothy Walsh said the reorganization was long-coming and that the changes make a lot of sense.
“There’s things that were moved that should have been moved a long time ago,” Walsh said. “This is the first opportunity we’ve had in years to map this out and settle them.”
Impact
The redistricting will shift the schools with higher concentrations of low-income and minority students.
And it will mean the bus schedules have to be reworked.
School officials are still evaluating test scores and poverty levels of the students who will be redistricted, Superintendent Freeman Burr said at the meeting.
Those details help determine how much state and federal money certain schools get.
Because part of the reason to close Lafayette School was due to state concerns about higher concentrations of low-income students, some board members questioned whether the redistricting just shifts the problem to other schools.
“My concern, now that we did this, is the state going to be looking at those schools as they did Lafayette?” board member Paula Ellis said.
Specifics
The specifics of the plan can be viewed in a power point the Board of Education has posted on its Web site, also viewable below.
- Booth Hill School – The school will receive 54 new students: 36 will transfer from Long Hill School and 18 will transfer from Mohegan School.
- Lafayette School – This school will close, and its students will be distributed to Long Hill School and Sunnyside School.
- Long Hill School – 100 students will be transfered to Booth Hill, Mohegan and Elizabeth Shelton Schools. Another 110 will transfer in from Lafayette and Sunnyside.
- Mohegan School – 18 students will be transfered out of Mohegan into Booth Hill School and 21 will be transfered in from Long Hill School.
- Elizabeth Shelton School – This school will receive 43 new students, transfered in from Long Hill’s district.
- Sunnyside School – This school will receive 53 new students from the closing Lafayette School and will send 14 of its existing students to Long Hill School.
NEXT STEPS
The district will hold two more meetings about the redistricting proposal, at which parents and members of the public can speak about their impressions.
The next meeting will be held on Feb. 11 at 7 p.m. at Lafayette School.
The following meeting will be Feb. 22 at 7 p.m. at Shelton Intermediate School.
The Board of Education is also accepting questions and input through a special e‑mail set up for the redistricting: rd@sheltonpublicschools.org.
The district is also updating information about the plan on its Web site.
Here’s a map highlighting the schools, and the proposed changes in enrollment:
View Shelton School Redistricting in a larger map
