Newport's newest school already bursting at the seams

 NEWPORT — The Claiborne Pell Elementary School is a victim of its own success.

 Built as a 21st-century answer to the city's badly deteriorating elementary schools, this modern slice of brick and glass in the north end of the city attracted an oversize enrollment a year after it opened. It was built for 890 students, and with an enrollment of 950, Newport sends 67 pre-kindergarteners to an elementary school in Middletown.

 Newport was one of the first districts in Rhode Island to adopt what's called "newer and fewer," a concept currently championed by Gov. Gina Raimondo in her sweeping school construction proposal, which calls for spending $500 million on school construction and repairs over the next decade.

 Rather than throw money into patchwork repairs of disintegrating buildings, Raimondo is encouraging districts to consolidate students in new or extensively renovated buildings.

 Newport's Pell School is a telling example of what can go right — and wrong — when a school district embarks on a major reconfiguration of its school system.

 The short answer is that even with the best-laid plans, communities can't always predict how many students will show up when the ribbons are cut and the buses roll.

 "Is there such a thing as a good problem?" said Superintendent Colleen Jermain, who thinks that's what the Newport school system has at Pell. She was hired in January 2014, five months after the school opened. "Be prepared for your community to embrace a new school. And when you give them what they want, they will come."

The decision to close neighborhood elementary schools and build a new school on the grounds of the Sullivan School was over 15 years in the making.

By the early 2000s, it was clear that Newport had to do something drastic about its failing elementary schools, three of them dating back to the late 1800s. The heating systems were loaded with asbestos, roofs leaked, window sills were rotting and the floors were buckled.

One school was dubbed "Camp Underwood" because its tiny modular classrooms seemed better suited to a summer camp than a school.

At Cranston Calvert Elementary School, students used the auditorium for gym classes, exercising between rows of old wooden seats.

At Coggeshall Elementary School, the library and computer lab were in the basement.

At Sheffield School, there was no playground and no privacy in the nurse's office.

Meanwhile, enrollments were declining.

Faced with a million-dollar budget shortfall in 2005, school leaders seriously questioned whether the district could afford to preserve its beloved network of neighborhood elementary schools, six in a city of only 7.7 square miles.

Jack Ambrogi was hired as superintendent in 2005. He closed two schools right away, despite a hue and cry from parents, who embraced the idea that children should walk to school — although, in fact, many were already being bused across town to better integrate some schools and consolidate special-education services.

"I got death threats in the mail," said Ambrogi, now retired and living in Florida. "It was an extraordinarily difficult situation both logistically and politically to close so many elementary schools.

"My first step was to show that the buildings were in horrible, horrible disrepair," he said, "and that the cost to maintain them from a personnel and operating perspective was ridiculous ...."

Pat Kelly, a School Committee member at the time, said he and his colleagues spent 2009 and the first half of 2010 talking about options.

One proposal called for building two new schools on either side of town, but Kelly said that plan would have led to segregation, with low-income and mostly minority students restricted to the north end.

Working with construction consultants, the committee eventually agreed that it would make the most sense, financially and academically, to build one new school on the site of the rundown Sullivan School. The proposal called for a single building that would hold two schools — one for kindergarten through second grade and the other for grades 3 through 4.

But parents, particularly those from the more affluent and whiter south side of town, put up serious opposition.

Although it wasn't said publicly, some parents were worried about sending their children to a school populated mostly by children from lower-income families, Ambrogi and others said. That concern was couched as parents worried about lengthy bus rides for their little ones.

"Three things finally sold the project," Ambrogi said. "It was the best thing educationally for the kids. It was financially viable. And it would indeed save taxpayers money over time."

 One of the biggest drivers behind the move to consolidate was the projected decline in enrollments.

Consultants projected a 21-percent decline in elementary enrollment over five years, starting in 2008, and a 34-percent drop over the next 10 years.

Buried in the consultants' findings, however, was a word of caution. They wrote, "It has been Whitehall's experience that when a new school is opened, the number of students increases from what was projected in the customary ways .... This fact must be kept in mind."

But few heeded that warning.

School Committee member Tom Phelan was one who did. He disputed the enrollment projections because, at the time, the city was rebuilding two low-income housing developments in the north end, and Phelan was convinced that Newport would wind up with more families upon their completion.

"No one listened to me," Phelan said.

Meanwhile, a group of parents complained to the state Department of Education, claiming that the new school's design wasn't flexible enough to accommodate a possible influx of new students.

"Part of our point was, 'If you build it, they will come,'" said Drew Carey, a member of the parents' group. "We said, 'You haven't scaled for this to be flexible. The notion that you should plan for a larger population wasn't taken seriously. The School Committee was so worried that the demographics were dropping."

In November 2010, Newport voters approved a $30-million bond to build a single elementary school for the entire city.

But even before the school opened, School Committee members began to worry about its capacity.

The latest projection showed that 890 students — not the 842 that the school was designed to accommodate — would be enrolled on opening day.

The district successfully appealed to the Department of Education for two more classrooms, but by the time Pell opened in August 2013, it needed six more.

How did this happen?

Several school officials blame the Department of Education for forcing Newport to build a school that was too small.

"We didn't have a choice," Ambrogi said. "The state dictated what they would pay for based upon the forecast for student enrollment. They would only pay for a certain number of classrooms."

Newport had always had small classes, Kelly said, but the state called for larger classes, with 24 students per class. That meant a design with fewer classrooms. If Newport had balked at that restriction, the district would have lost its state reimbursement — 35 percent of the $30-million bond. 

A number of elements — some of them unexpected — contributed to the district's underestimating enrollment.

In 2008, Rhode Island became mired in a prolonged recession, which put private schools out of reach for some families.

A Catholic elementary school closed unexpectedly.

Newport had successfully rebuilt the aging Thompson Middle School, which was hailed as a success.

And when parents saw how bright and well-equipped the new Pell School was, they decided to send their children back to the public schools.

Still, most people agree that Pell is a vast improvement over the patchwork of timeworn elementary schools the district had been sustaining.

Now, all elementary students, rich and poor, have access to the same high-quality education, access to the arts, access to specialists, field trips, and not one but two playgrounds.

"This wasn't just about newer and fewer," said state education Commissioner Ken Wagner. "Their [remaining] four schools were on different sides of town with different levels of affluence. The new school was a huge equity boost .... All kids came together and had access to the same high-quality education. Newport did an amazing job for all of its kids."

"All of our kids are together, from pre-kindergarten classes to grade 12," said School Committee member Jo Eva Gaines. "They build relationships with one another from their earliest experiences. There is no 'my school is better than your school.' ... We say there is one Newport, but there are actually two Newports: the mansions and the neighborhoods with 67-percent poverty. But in school, they are all our kids."

Today, Newport is grappling with the unexpected fruits of its success.

The Pell School ships its youngest children to a vacant elementary school in Middletown, an arrangement that must end by 2021 because the Middletown district will need the building again.

 The career and technical school has become so popular that Superintendent Jermain has to move her administrative offices out of that complex in June.

Once again, the city is embarking on a discussion of how to reconfigure its schools. Everything is on the table, Jermain said, from expanding Pell's size to redesigning the middle school to include new grades.

Meanwhile, the School Committee is gearing up to ask voters to approve a bond for a new high school in November. Rogers High School is at the top of the state's list of high schools that are in such terrible shape that a new school would be less expensive than renovations. 

What lessons can be learned from the Newport experience with "newer and fewer?"

Don't trust enrollment projections, school leaders say.

Build flexibility into new schools so that more classrooms can be carved out of other areas if necessary, says Carey, the parents' group member.

"Have a thick skin," Ambrogi says. "Listen to everyone and then do what you believe is right."

"I'd say we're a victim of our own success," Gaines said. "But it's a good dilemma. It means parents have confidence in the public schools."

— lborg@providencejournal.com

 (401) 277-7823

Rearranging the space

A school district is a good candidate for this approach if it has numerous small schools that need major repairs. The state's consultants say it makes more sense to consolidate schools and invest in new construction.

Nine school districts in Rhode Island have more than 60,000 square feet of surplus space, based on 2020-2021 projected enrollments: Burrillville, East Providence, Foster-Glocester, Newport, Portsmouth, Scituate, South Kingstown, Tiverton and Westerly. 

The Rhode Island School Buildings Task Force has recommended additional state aid, called bonuses, for districts that embrace "newer and fewer" projects that include:

• Replacement of a building that needs substantial repairs.
• New construction or renovation that increases the use of classroom space in a building from 60 percent capacity to 80 percent. This encourages schools to make better use of existing surplus space.
• New construction or renovation that consolidates space and reduces serious overcrowding.
• Consolidation of two or more school buildings, within or across districts, into one building.

SOURCE: R.I. School Buildings Task Force