Kindergarten consolidation due to decreased enrollment

The plan for the coming school year, according to Superintendent Jeannine Nota, is for kindergarten students registered at Chester Barrows to move to the Edgewood Highland, due to a decrease in kindergarten enrollment at both schools.

Nota said the decision was based on student population, and kindergarten enrollment across the city, particularly for Barrows, was “significantly less” than last year, when there were 700 students.

“We constantly look at our K-12 enrollment based on student population,” she said. “Every year we look at how student population affects staff. And decisions are made based on student population.”

She said that due to budget timelines and the fiscal responsibilities of the school department, layoffs and staffing decisions must be made starting in January, to give enough time for notice to the teachers and to prepare for the next school year.

“What we’ve realized is this year the kindergarten registrations at Barrows, Rhodes, and Edgewood is low,” she added. “So we moved the Barrows students to Edgewood.”

Although the plan now is to keep a Rhodes kindergarten and to have a combined kindergarten at Edgewood Highland, Nota said all the schools across the district are constantly evaluated right up until August.

“Some folks are feeling that this is directed towards one or two schools and it’s not,” she said. “We do this every year. This has happened all over the city, it’s not unique to those schools.”

She said that the school department “constantly” looks at enrollment numbers every week and make staffing decisions based on them.

“If we notice that all of a sudden there are 50 more students registering for kindergarten, we’ll change plans,” she said.

She said that although kindergarten registration opens in February, families continue to register right up until school starts. Kindergarten registration can be done on the Cranston schools website (cpsed.net) or by calling 270-1550.

She said that Warwick has had a similar issue in enrollment because of population decline, though she said that she doesn’t think a lot about why it’s happening, but rather makes responsible decisions when it does.

“We’ll take as many customers that come to us,” she added.

Janice Ruggieri, chairwoman of the school committee, said that there are contractual deadlines every year, and this sort of consolidation of kindergarten classrooms is not new at all.

“Every year it’s the same process, it really depends on the enrollment numbers,” she said. “Sometimes it’s low, sometimes it’s high. It goes up and down, and it just happened to be really low this year. It’s an anomaly, we hope.”

She said that the combined kindergarten registration number for Barrows, Rhodes, and Edgewood is just 60 students at this point.

“Classroom openings and closings happen every single year,” she said. “It’s not a new thing. Sometimes it goes back up in August and it’s possible we make a different decision at that point.”

Ruggieri also said that Fielding Nair International, the private firm the school department has hired to evaluate the entire district, is in the process of collecting data and will make recommendations for how to go about school consolidation in the future. She said there is a meeting schedule in the beginning of July, which will begin the evaluation process. And from there they’ll have community meetings to get feedback from Cranston residents as well.

She said that the only change for the coming school year, as of now, is for the consolidation of Barrows and Edgewood.

“We’re going to start working on plans for the future,” Ruggieri said.