A new school year has begun for the children of Londonderry, but with it brings some unexpected issues – especially for Moose Hill School, whose increase in numbers has caused space constraints and resulted in their library being moved from a classroom to shelves of books in the hallways.
School District Business Administrator Peter Curro presented the issue at the Sept. 12 School Board meeting along with Kindergarten Director Bonnie Breithaupt to address community concerns about the placement of the books, as well as possible solutions and a glance into the bigger problem of growing enrollment.
Last year, Moose Hill ended the year with 286 students and now have 279 students – that number is expected to grow by the spring. The LEEP Program is responsible for the majority of the growth; last year they opened with 116 students, this year with 123 and the LEEP program is expected to grow to 170-180 students by June 2018.
In May of 2017, it was determined that the room designated for the library had to be converted to a LEEP classroom to account for the significant increase in students.
The books are now located in the hallways near the nurse’s office. Now, instead of students going to the Library Room, the library assistant goes into the classrooms to talk about books and read stories, afterwards taking the children in the hallway to browse for reading materials.
“This is the best solution we have for mimicking the library setting,” said Breithaupt. “In this way we are still able to instill the love of reading in children.”
Breithaupt and Curro want to leave the books where they are for the remained of the school year so as not to disrupt the routine process that is so important for children in kindergarten. According to Curro, this temporary solution allows students to stay in the classroom they are currently in and still gives them the option to browse Moose Hill’s book collection and make their own choices on what they would like to read.
Other possible solutions would be to do Library on a Cart – where the books are stored away and the librarian chooses what books to present to the children – or dropping the half-kindergarten class in the pm session, relocating students and teachers to bring class sizes up from 17 to 19 students.
Board Member Nancy Hendricks is not opposed to moving around the students because of the amount of students that would be helped versus the amount of students that would have to be moved.
“256 could be using a library, but we have 17 students we could conceivably move elsewhere,” she said.
Breithaupt countered with, “They are just now getting into a routine, and for you to disrupt that routine, you’re disrupting their educational process.”
While Hendricks realized this, she said “there are no good options here and everyone is going to feel the pain.” Ultimately, to her “a library in a hallway is unacceptable.”
School Board Chair Dan Lekas wanted to focus in on the bigger problem: where they are going to put the children if enrollment increases as projected.
Curro explained that they are thinking about leasing a “nice office trailer” for next semester to open up more space, with the goal for next year to introduce module classrooms.
In the past few weeks there has been discussion of the Capitol Improvement Plan, and part of the plan is to allocate $12 million to renovations in the school district. Potentially, these modules and any other expansion projects for the kindergarten school could fall under this category.
Board Member Steve Young commended the school for coming up with a “yankee frugal” solution to the library issue. Since Moose Hill was designed to be converted into a middle school if needed, the hallways were made wide enough to fit lockers, giving plenty of room for the book shelves.
“I’m not happy about it,” Young said, “but it’s a solution better than increasing class sizes.”
Young did want everyone to keep in mind, however, that while “all kindergarten parents are taxpayers, not all voters are kindergarten parents.”
No hard consensus was reached, but for now the library will continue to stay in the hallways with future exploration on how to encompass library space and the growth of enrollment.