Principal: We don’t want to lose students

PRINCETON — Melrose Elementary School Principal Ernestine Battlo wants to hold onto all of her students next year.

Facing the loss of the school’s media center, a population boom in the area and the use of every inch of available space at the small Mercer County School, the Board of Education is considering redistricting that would send the Wyndale community’s students all the way to Athens School.

The school board publicly discussed redistricting Melrose’s service area in December 2012, mulling the idea of sending all of Wyndale’s students to Athens School. Superintendent Dr. Deborah Akers advised board members at that time that redistricting Wyndale offered the only feasible solution to Melrose’s crowded condition that she could see.

Battlo said this week that the Board has promised at least one informational session within the next four to six weeks.

“We love our students, and we love our staff and our community,” Battlo said, encouraging the parents to voice their concerns and recommend solutions to the overcrowding problem at Melrose. “...It’s not 100 percent sure redistricting will occur. Believe me, none of us want to lose anyone. We are just heartbroken that we could lose any of our students, any of our families.”

The proposed move to Athens is one many parents hope to avoid, and they weighed the options Tuesday during a Local Schools Improvement Council session.

The Board of Education worries, however, that the school has already turned every available classroom into educational space. The media center, for example, became a kindergarten classroom this year, and books have been wheeled to individual classrooms on carts. Battlo said teachers also gave up a teacher’s lounge, a move that the staff is “OK with.”

Battlo predicted that next year’s class alignment should allow for a split fourth/fifth-grade class, which would alleviate the situation that forced the media center to turn into a classroom, provided that the attendance in the new kindergarten class only requires two kindergarten class in the fall of 2013.

Amy Belcher, a Wyndale mother of three young children, seized that piece of information.

“There’s not going to be a need for additional classroom space?” she asked of Battlo, who agreed, but pointed out that there could be a need for a third kindergarten class, which would put the school back to existing without the media center if redistricting doesn’t occur.

School choice is another factor parents think could factor into the population at the school. Melrose Elementary met its Annual Yearly Progress required on WESTest scores last year. Since both Straley and Mercer schools failed to meet their mandated AYP for two consecutive years, Melrose has become a school of choice, meaning that any parent of a Straley or Mercer student may request that their child go to Melrose, no matter which district he/she lives in.

“That doesn’t really seem fair to the residents of Wyndale,” one mother on hand for the LSIC session said.

Melrose’s Debbie Bailey reported that only one student who attended Melrose this year was there due to the required school choice.

Battlo said that the school also must accommodate foster children, who routinely move in and out of school districts, sometimes multiple times per year.

Since the media center seems to be the biggest sticking point for the Board of Education, Belcher asked Battlo if the school system could move a modular building no longer in use at Athens School to Melrose to serve as either a classroom or a media center.

Battlo said she had discussed similar ideas with central office personnel.

“The feedback that I got was that it was not in good condition,” Battlo said.

The principal encouraged parents to keep considering the options and to attend the public input and informational sessions offered by the Board of Education.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” she said.

While several parents attended Tuesday’s meeting, many chose only to listen. Belcher, who attended with her husband, Jason, and Mori Williams, who was on hand Tuesday with his wife Terri and daughter Lauren, have been among the most outspoken parents opposed to the transfer.

In a letter received by the Princeton Times Tuesday, Williams wrote, “I was outraged to hear that Deborah Akers and the Mercer County School Board are wanting to ship the children of the Wyndale Subdivision to Athens Elementary as opposed to Melrose Elementary. Wyndale has been in the Melrose School district since the first home was built.”

He demanded facts about the population attending Melrose and the areas from which they come.

“First, while I realize that the simplest thing to do is pick a spot on the map and say, ‘Send these people there, case closed,’ but how about actually discussing the situation with the people it will affect?” Williams wrote. “Further, have you asked why Melrose is getting crowded? Why Athens isn't? Maybe it is not simply a population shift; maybe there are other reasons? How many children does this affect? How many children are attending Melrose that actually live in Wyndale? How many do you expect in the next five years? How many children attend Melrose that are not in Melrose's school district? I have seen nothing along the lines of information where this has even been studied or discussed, but this is what I would be finding out. And as a resident of Wyndale and father to a child that will soon be entering elementary school, these are the questions that I demand be answered.”

— Contact Tammie Toler at ttoler@ptonline.net.

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Principal: We don’t want to lose students

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