Budget cuts, enrollment woes cloud Alternative School future
The Sharon School Committee will decide this week whether to close the nearly 40-year-old Sharon Alternative School next fall, an issue resulting from district budget cuts and enrollment problems that some say makes the school no longer sustainable.
With cuts to the budget, many classes districtwide, especially in grades 4 and5, have swelled, while classes at the Alternative School have remained relatively low. That has been a point of contention in the town: Supporters of the Alternative School argue the importance of having a “choice’’ school, while opponents are concerned that the school, which has about 75 students, is unfairly taking resources away from others in the district.
School Superintendent Barbara Dunham presented her concerns about the Alternative School, housed at East Elementary, last Wednesday, and asked the School Committee to make the decision, said School Committee chairman Glenn Allen. The committee meets again this Wednesday.
The Alternative School is “a cooperative learning community based on the belief that children who experience and share the excitement of thinking and ideas will acquire a love of learning,’’ according to its website. This year it transitioned to a multiage format to address budget and enrollment problems in a way that was consistent with the school’s philosophy of grade integration, said Emily Smith-Lee, cochairwoman of the Alternative School board.
But, said Dunham in an e-mail before last week’s meeting, “While the concept of the Alternative School is admirable, the manner in which it is operating is no longer possible in a district pressed for funding.’’
Alternative School supporters, however, argue that school officials need to give the new program more time.
“This is the first year of the restructuring into [multiage] and because of that change in the first year, it’s understandable that there’s a lot of fluctuation but . . . it has the potential and opportunity to blossom into something that’s really a wonderful experience for the children and the educational system,’’ said Brooke Bloom, who has a child in the school.
Dunham described as a “turning point’’ the decision this summer to put fourth-grade classes on hold, giving Alternative School parents time to decide on the new multiage format. Alternative Parents had until the first day of school to decide whether to stay or drop out. District officials ultimately decided to keep the grades 4-5 multiage class in the Alternative School with 17 students, while the rest of the district has 24 to 25 in each class. Some of the classes were capped at 25, forcing other students to go outside their regular schools.
“To date, I was defending this smaller class size [in the multiage format] that we were trying to get off the ground. Going into next year, faced with more cuts, this no longer works,’’ Dunham said. “All in all, the principals report they do not want a repeat.’’
Smith-Lee said little attention is paid to the fact that the grades 2-3 section is larger than other second and third grades in the district, and expected to grow. next year.
“I think we could deal with all of [the] issues if there wasn’t this kind of fundamental resistance [to the school], which is unfortunate,’’ she said, adding that all of the issues that Dunham said were not solvable came before the Alternative School board for the first time only recently.
Dunham said at that meeting she and the board discussed possible solutions to each of the problems. For example, to deal with enrollment fluctuation, they considered having parents sign on to the program for the full five years at the start. However, it is not possible to have parents sign off their right to opt out of a voluntary program, she said.
“When I met with the board . . . I described the program as balloons popping out of a box - push one solution in and another pops out. The end result was that the big solutions that would solve the concerns of the principals did not work,’’ Dunham said.
Allen said Dunham’s administrative issues are something to give consideration to, but he does not know whether the best way to address them is to close the Alternative School or give it more time to work out these matters.
If the School Committee closes the school, the next step will be helping the students in the program transition to a regular classroom format next year. Bloom said the disintegration of the Alternative School would be an unfortunate town loss.
“A lot of people come to the town because they love the opportunity to have a choice in schools. It’s really heartbreaking and a shame that they’re thinking about closing it,’’ she said.
Kate Augusto can be reached at k.augusto11@gmail.com. 
