PORTSMOUTH — The city School Board is moving forward with a plan to use one or two modular classrooms at Dondero Elementary School this fall to help address overcrowding.
The board voted to move forward with the proposal at their meeting Tuesday night, despite opposition to the plan raised by some city councilors, including the mayor and assistant mayor.
School Board Chair Nancy Novelline Clayburgh said the board “discussed it in depth and voted to continue to support” the approach of installing the modular classrooms at Dondero, one of three public elementary schools in Portsmouth, along with Little Harbour and New Franklin.
She acknowledged during an interview Wednesday that “the City Council was not pleased with the idea of the modulars.” But. she added, “We are going to go ahead with it.”
Asked how she expects Dondero parents will feel about the modular classrooms, Novelline Clayburgh said, “It’s not an ideal situation. This is what we have to do but I think they’d prefer something else. Modular units are better today than they were 20 years ago.”
She does not believe students whose classes are located in the modular classrooms will see the quality of their education suffer.
“Not in any way. My own three kids did go to modulars and for the kids it wasn’t disruptive at all,” she said. “Teachers don’t like to have them.”
Decision to use modular classrooms 'unthinkable,' assistant mayor says
Assistant Mayor Joanna Kelley believes the School Board “should have started their conversation about redistricting” the city's elementary schools as far back as 2019.
“Our community makeup is shifting in terms of who lives where,” Kelley said during an interview Tuesday. She noted enrollment has increased at Dondero Elementary while declining at Little Harbour School.
She contends the School Board failed to address the shifting student populations at the the city’s three elementary schools, which led to the modular classrooms at Dondero. “It’s a lack of responsibility in terms of what the School Board should have been doing."
Like other city councilors interviewed, Kelley stressed the City Council only has the authority to either accept or reject the school district budget. The School Board makes all the policy decisions related to how the schools run.
“My big issue is that this is not a new issue. We were discussing this in 2019,” Kelley said. “It’s unfair in the way it’s been ignored.”
Putting students in modular classrooms while others are in traditional ones “can feel like inequality in education,” Kelley said.
“It’s unthinkable to me,” Kelley added.
She also questioned the cost of the modular classrooms, which she said come in at around $100,000 a year.
During a budget workshop earlier this week, Kelley said she was “a little disappointed” and “a little upset at what we’re looking at potentially to be a lot of stranded costs indefinitely that I personally feel are put out there because we don’t want to have some of these uncomfortable conversations about redistricting.”
Room at Little Harbour
Mayor Deaglan McEachern stated he has “concerns when it comes to placing a modular unit at Dondero.”
He acknowledged “these are School Board decisions,” but hopes “they’ll look at everything available to them.”
“There is space at Little Harbour,” he said and suggested the School Board could see if there’s some parents who would want to voluntarily move their kids from Dondero to Little Harbour to ease congestion.
“A lot of good things come when we make sure all of our classrooms represent all of Portsmouth before we do a modular classroom,” McEachern said. “Especially because we do have space at Little Harbour.
He understands why the School Board wouldn’t want to move too quickly on redistricting, but said there are better options than modular classrooms.
McEachern stressed he doesn’t want to see the board “create two different classroom environments.”
“The waste of money is not insignificant,” he added.
Redistricting Committee slated to hold discussions
Novelline Clayburgh, the School Board chair, said the district never looked seriously at the idea of seeking volunteers to move their kids from Dondero to Little Harbour.
“Parents would have to drive their kids to the other schools,” she said. “That puts a stress on families.”
She said the board plans to have the district’s Redistricting Committee start meeting regularly.
Novelline Clayburgh hopes they can bring a redistricting plan forward in the “next six to 12 months.”
“You want to give families time to adjust to the fact there might be redistricting. It can be an emotional journey,” she said. “We did it years ago. It was difficult. Some parents didn’t want their kids to go to a different school.”
She noted that the School District recently redistricted the relatively new Parsons Woods neighborhood off Peverly Hill Road.
Any elementary school students living there will now go to Little Harbour, she said, when in the past that area was part of the Dondero school.
She believes the modular units will be used as fifth-grade classrooms, but that decision hasn’t been finalized.
Two years with modulars or more?
Kelley asked if there was “an end date” for how long the modular classrooms would be used, Superintendent Zach McLaughlin said, “I would say no. My goal is, my hope is, no more than two years,” he said during the budget workshop.
He explained that since 2013 the school district has seen a decline in enrollment of about 222 students in total.
“What’s happening is there’s uneven growth where we’re seeing families settle in the community. At the moment, at least anecdotally, it looks like families are having a hard time buying into the boundaries of Little Harbour,” he said. “Most kind of incoming family activity is happening in the Dondero district, tends to be down Lafayette, that’s where we’re seeing that growth in terms of students and families.”
He acknowledged as the school district begins to work on redistricting “we’re trying desperately to try to figure out how to project where are our new families are going to come from.”
He stated that the modular unit will give them the option to add one to two classrooms at Dondero.
The modular classrooms will “alleviate some of the pressure we’re feeling on the square footage at Dondero,” McLaughlin said.
In terms of the future redistricting, McLaughlin said, “I don’t want to redraw lines and get it wrong.”
The right demographic mix
Dondero “really felt the strain” this year in terms of rising class sizes in kindergarten and fourth grade, he said.
“It was the two places where we were 20-plus, 24 in some cases in the fourth grade,” he said in terms of number of students per class.
He added that the school district is “trying to get a demographic mix so it’s not hey Dondero is the school where everyone lives in apartments, and Little Harbour’s the one where you’ve got the three story house, and New Frankllin is a combination thereof.”
“That’s what we want to avoid. It's not just getting the numbers right, it’s also getting a demographic snapshot of who those families are going to be,” he said.
Even if enrollment grows over the summer because of the development along Lafayette Road, McLaughlin said the modular unit gives them “a buffer.”
“We have too many kids in some classrooms in Dondero and we’re out of classroom space,” he added.
Not ideal for students, teachers
City Councilor Kate Cook said if there are modular classrooms at Dondero, she hopes it’s “a very short enterprise.”
“Currently our challenge isn’t space, it’s distribution of population,” Cook said during an interview this week.
The increasing enrollment at Dondero, and to a lesser extent New Franklin, are happening “because it’s more affordable to live closer to Dondero and New Franklin than Little Harbour.”
She stressed “we don’t want students to spend time in modular classrooms long-term. It’s not ideal for students or teachers."
She suggested giving parents who live in neighborhoods close to the Little Harbour boundaries the option to voluntarily send their kids there instead of Dondero.
“That way you’re pulling students out of Dondero that’s overcrowded,” Cook said. “Let’s give these parents and students that opportunity. We might be able to solve some of the challenges without having to go through a full process of redistricting."
Dondero Principal Kate Callahan could not be reached for comment Wednesday.
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