Community Reacts to the School Closure Proposals [Poll]

If the Naugatuck Public School District went ahead with a proposal to close Central Avenue Elementary School, as a way to plug a $1.4 million budget gap, then that would leave the east side of the borough with only one K-4 school, said borough resident David Ranno.

“I’ve been in Central Ave. and it is one of the oldest schools in town, which is understandable,” said Ranno, who has a son in the third grade at Central Avenue. “But to only have one elementary school on the east side of Naugatuck, which in my belief is more populated than the west side of town, to me is not fair. It’s not fair to (the parents) and not fair to my kid.”

Ranno’s comments were just one of many voiced on , and our Facebook page, about a proposal made public Wednesday on potentially closing Central Avenue and Prospect Street schools in the 2012-13 school year.

Board officials during a finance subcommittee meeting on Wednesday as they reviewed the upcoming school budget.

'Naturally Devastating'

Central Avenue School’s principal, Evelyn Gobstein, said Superintendent John Tindall-Gibson came to her school earlier in the day Wednesday to discuss the issue and the budgetary numbers. It was tough to take in, Gobstein indicated.

“Naturally it’s devastating news even in the fact that it’s a proposal,” Gobstein said. “We’re a pretty strongly knit family here, so whenever you get news like that you’re kind of taken aback by it.”

The closures are on the table because the Board of Education is trying to address a $1.4 million budget gap that was opened up after the district used up $1.7 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding that was allocated to towns and cities two years ago.

On top of the gap, the borough is facing rising costs in employee salaries, health care and other projects. As board Chairman David Heller indicated, there’s always the challenge of “balancing student needs against the ability of local taxpayers to fund our educational system in a down economy.”

In total, the savings in closing both schools would be roughly $1 million for Central Avenue and $500,000 for Prospect Street — the latter of which only operates as an early learning center. The 230 students at Central would then be reassigned to other neighboring schools, while the Head Start program would potentially move into St. Hedwig School’s former building, .

“We have some proposals that are under consideration and I don’t really know how this is going to play forward,” Gobstein said. “We are just trying to absorb the information and kind of process it through.”

'But Why Central Avenue School?'

No decision has been made and the education board is set to review the proposals during a budget workshop on March 27.

But that didn’t stop parents from reacting to the potentially bad news. Many wrote their opposition to the proposal in our comments section and on Naugatuck Patch’s Facebook page.

Ranno told Patch in an interview that a large concern for both he and other parents is overcrowding. Even though Tindall-Gibson has said enrollment has been dropping over the past 10 years across all Naugatuck schools, Ranno said he still expects that, if his school were to close, there would be a possible 30-1 student-teacher ratio among the other elementary schools just to accomodate the Central students.

“Anywhere you bus these kids you’ll start seeing overcrowding in these classrooms,” Ranno said.

Michelle Grella, president of Central Avenue School’s Parents and Educators Together group, said there will be a meeting with parents and Tindall-Gibson at 7 p.m. on Monday, March 12, to address some of the concerns. Already, attendence is predicted to be high.

Grella said the reaction she has seen from fellow parents at the school is “why Central versus other schools.”

“What we’re seeing is there are other schools on the chopping block in the past,” Grella said. “Why is it us? We have a cafeteria, we have a gym, we’re handicapped accessible; they spent a couple of million dollars a few years ago to put a brand new roof on the building.”

The other concern among parents is, like Ranno indicated, the transportation of having to bus students to schools that are much farther than Central Avenue — schools like , and .

“I understand what they say they want to do,” Grella said. “But I think we want to know why they weren’t prepared for this $1.4 million loss and why more steps weren’t taken ahead of it to be prepared for it.”

Mayor Robert Mezzo has said in interviews with Patch that there has been preparation for this looming budget gap, but the issue is that any excess in the district’s operating budget has already been trimmed completely by Business Manager Wayne McAllister.

The mayor also said that school officials were well aware that this budget gap was coming, which is why they didn’t spend the $1.7 million in allocated stimulus funds on hiring many new teachers or staff during the past two years.

Teachers Union Spokesman Reacts

Tindall-Gibson had said that it’s possible there would be some staff reductions if the school had to close. But he also said that hopefully all of the savings would be garnered just in the potential school closure, sparing any teachers from losing their jobs.

Charles Marenghi, vice president of the Naugatuck Teachers League, said that from the union’s perspective “we’re pretty much cut down as small as we can go.”

Two years ago, the school district saw 15 percent of its teaching staff reduced through both layoffs and early retirements to combat a budget deficit in 2009. Marenghi noted that reduction made sense at the time because it reflected the decreasing population of students.

But, if it came to laying off even more teachers under this potential closure, Marenghi said he didn’t think the system could “run with any less than what we have.”

“We’d really like to see the details before we have the thumbs or thumbs down on that,” he said.

“I empathize for the town leaders,” Marenghi said. “I know it’s difficult. It’s been a foregone conclusion that they’ll be in the hole (with the $1.4 million). Everyone kind of knew that.”