Mast Way K Fait Accompli?

It looks like the board is going to be asked to approve the Mast Way K plan at the recently added school board meeting tomorrow, August 21, 7pm.   You may recall the plan is to send all Kindergarten students to Mast Way, in order to equalize the enrollments at Mast Way and Mohariment.  According to a comment on Oyster River Community's Facebook page, staff has been informed that this is a reality for the upcoming school year, commencing next week.

The idea was first floated by the superintendent at the July 17 school board meeting.  I vaguely recall Principal Harrington being asked to call all K families.

The agenda for tomorrow's meeting has basically one item:

Consideration of Elementary/Middle School Enrollment and Options. 
Since the close of school in June 2013 the elementary schools have had forty-one (41) new student’s register. Mast Way Elementary is up twenty-two (22) students, Moharimet Elementary is up nineteen (19) students, and Oyster River Middle School is up forty-nine (49) students.

There's no mention that there is also expected to be a huge 9th grade class this year, around two hundred compared to usual 160 or so.  If our enrollment projections are wrong, we need to fix them before making decisions on tuitioning.

I have written about the elementary reconfiguration on a number of occasions (April 18, April 25, May 2, May 16, July 26.)  I found one reference to Board Member Turnbull asking the date for implementation be moved up from FY15 (school year starting August 2014) to FY14 (school starts next week).  I apologize to my readers for not realizing and emphasizing that this was coming so soon.

If you want to comment about the change before it's approved, show up at the school board meeting tomorrow (Wednesday) by 7pm.  Be on time -- public comments are at the beginning of the meeting.  (There are also comments at the end, but by then it will be too late.)

If you can't go (or even if you can), you may sent the board a note at orcsdsb@orcsd.org.  Please note that anything you send to that address will be a public document, and a paper copy will be placed in the public folder at the SAU office.



There's lots more to say about tuition based on the August 14 meeting, but I'm going to save that for another post.  Teaser: It looks like the Newmarket superintendent is trying to torpedo the deal. The meeting and fallout have been covered pretty well in the mainstream media (1 2 3).