• Space is not efficiently used at Adams
• 34 primary classrooms are currently used for all team teaching and language instruction.
• There are 11 secondary classrooms [5 for special ed, 2 computer labs, 2 to house teacher support staff, 1 for health ed, and 1 with unknown use].
• Click here to see the Table 2 details.
• Average class size is less than 21 for 640 students [for the the 34 rooms].
• For the largest largest rooms [1,394 and 1,513 sq. ft.], average class size is 20.
• 9 of the 34 classrooms are empty for periods 4, 5, 7, and 8, and 16 of the 34 classrooms are empty for period 1, 2, 3, and 6.  This is because only one teacher uses each classroom.  This arrangement made sense when teachers taught every period, but teachers at Adam and Baldwin now have three non-teaching periods.
• For more efficient space use at Adams, we could reserve 25 of the 34 rooms for all teaching needs, leaving 9 rooms available for other use.  We could use the two largest rooms to provide 2,907 square feet of office space for the 34 displaced teachers, and we could use another two rooms to expand the cafeteria by 1,541 square feet.  This leaves 5 rooms still available for other use.
• Educational Consultants of Connecticut (ECC) described the space in 6 school buildings.
• Bill Quirk analyzed space use at Adams.  This study is not complete  He recommends a full space use analysis for all 6 buildings.
• It's unlikely that Adams will be overcrowded in the future.
• The 34 primary classrooms can handle 716 with class size of 22-23.  CT DOE worst-case enrollment projection (grades 7-8) is 716 in 2010-11.
• 01/11/03 Update:
• There's a "Vote Yes" florescent lime insert in the January 9, 2003 issue of the Guilford Currier.  It says that the current capacity of Adams is 580.   Where do they get this figure?  If we just consider the 30 Adams classrooms that are in the 616 to 957 square foot range, and we assume average class size of 24, these 30 classrooms alone can accommodate 720 students, with average classroom size of 756 square feet.   That's 256 square feet more than required by the State of Connecticut, and 15 classrooms (including the 2 largest ) aren't even used.
• When discussing Baldwin, this insert says that the "original building" had a capacity of 500.  Do we care about original capacity?   If we just consider the 30 Baldwin classrooms that are in the 551 to 997 square foot range, and we assume average class size of 24,  these 30 classrooms alone can handle 720 students, with average classroom size of 711 square feet.    That's 211 square feet more than required by the State of Connecticut, and 5 classrooms aren't used.  Not quite the capacity of Adams, but 50% more than the  misleading "original cacacity" figure.
• It's unlikely that Guilford's schools will be overcrowded in the future.
• The October 30, 2002 Town of Guilford Build Out Study has been incorrectly used to promote fears of future school overcrowding.  Using 5 basic assumptions, this study concluded there are 2,286 potential house building lots in Guilford.   It said that all lots will be used in 20 years, if lots are used at the rate of 116 per year.  But this just tells us that 2,286 divided by 116 is about 20.
• We're interested in predicting school-age population change.   This is a complex function of many variables.  Available building lots isn't a key variable.  Consider the fact that at least 2,000 more building lots were available in 1978,  but the seven Guilford school buildings now house 311 fewer students than they accommodated in 1978.   The total number of students was 4,227 in 1978.  Now it's 3,916.
• Actual build out, over the next 20 years, is another complex function of many variables.  Migration trends are key, but there are other factors.  For example, as lots continue to be used, the remaining available lots become less and less desirable.  The Build Out Study made no attempt to predict actual build out!  It never mentions anticipated population changes.
• As new homes are built, who will buy them?  The Build Out Study offers no information about the type of home buyer we should expect over the next 20 years.   It is expected that we will have a slight overall increase in Guilford's population over the next 15 years, but this is because of a projected increase in senior citizens.   A slight population decrease is actually expected for the age 5 to 19 group.
• The most recent population projections from the Connecticut Office of Policy and Management  predict a Guilford population decrease of 686 for the age 5 to 19 age range for the period 2000 to 2015.   The projected decrease for the 10 to 14 age range is 313 for the same 15 year period.
• According to a major study by Northeastern University's Center for Labor Market Studies,  Connecticut experienced a significant out-migration during the decade of the 1990's.   This out-migration reduced the supply of young and well-educated workers.  Since 1990, all population growth in Connecticut is due to foreign immigration.  A high fraction of these new foreign immigrants are undocumented and not likely to settle in Guilford.
• Finally, parents of school age children will likely choose Madison (best in the state for academics).
• There's another dimension to the space utilization problem.   We're not taking advantage of space currently available in the elementary school buildings.
• For example, if we return to the pre-1988 Guilford model, Adams and Baldwin will again be grades 6-8 middle schools, and Cox, Jones, Lakes, and Leete will again handle grade 5.   Purported capacity problems will then vanish, because current 10-year enrollment projections predict worst-case totals of 1,036 for grades 6-8 and 1,823 for grades K-5.  But Adams and Baldwin currently handle 1,270, and the four elementary buildings accommodated 1,854 as K-5 schools in 1978, and we've added capacity since that time.    ECC says that the capacity is 1,884 for the four elementary buildings.
• Research shows that each school building transition disrupts the social structure in which learning takes place, thereby lowering achievement and participation for many students.   The first transition is particularly difficult.   By returning to the more traditional grade-span model, we eliminate one building transition and wisely delay the first transition by one year.  To avoid additional transitions, we should redistrict gradually over six years, as we work to balance the load for the four elementary school buildings.
• What will the BOE’s project cost?
• The base price keeps changing.  We don’t know what we can realistically expect for state reimbursement.  We don’t know what it will cost to solve the difficult problem of access from Route 77, and we don’t know the 20-year cost of bonding for either the base project or the renovation of Adams.
• Future maintenance and renovation of Adams is a major hidden cost
• The annual base maintenance cost is currently $183,000.
• The annual cost for maintenance employees has not yet been stated.
• The cost to renovate Adams for future use has not yet been stated.
• What about the educational merits of the BOE’s project?
• It’s fundamentally about an imagined ideal environment for the latest fad, isolating a team of 5 teachers and 100 (or less) students in a “pod” of 5 classrooms.
• Recall that we paid the price for the last fad, open classrooms, when we were forced to build dividing walls at Cox and Adams.  Pods are the logical opposite of open classrooms.   Will we eventually want to escape from the inflexibility of pods and remove walls?
• We’ve already isolated students in narrow 2-year grade spans, with Baldwin for grades 5-6 and Adams for grades 7-8.   Now we are to believe that it’s a good idea to isolate students of the same age in classroom pods, further removing then from the orienting social context.   But there’s no research showing that team teaching in pods leads to an improvement in educational outcomes.  There may be associated negative results, because weak teachers benefit the most from such maximum isolation.   As currently structured, a sixth grade math teacher doesn’t have to face the 8th grade math teacher who wants to know why students don’t know how to add fractions.
• Let's recognize that we have a serious problem with educational outcomes
• Click here to see Table 1.  It shows how Guilford ranked on the math and science portions of the 2002 CAPT test. We’re 15th out of 17, down with 4 school districts that have more to contend with, when we consider the Table1A details of their demographics.  Madison, also in our demographic group, ranked first in the state for science and third in the state for math.
• We're not fooled by comparisons of Guilford test scores to state-wide averages.
• Let's focus on improving instruction
• Many have spoken eloquently about the need to invest in teacher training and student materials.  For example, the mathematics curriculum revision committee recently published a draft summary of the revised K-8 mathematics curriculum for Guilford public schools.  This is an excellent document!    Let’s invest for the optimal implementation of this kind of curriculum, not drain funds away for unnecessary construction.
• 01/10/03 Update:  Here's a bit of edu-logic to ponder.  The following quote is from the "Are we building a new school and not buying new books?" section of the florescent lime insert in the January 9, 2003 issue of the Guilford Currier.
• "The funding source for books and new school construction are totally different.  New books are purchased with General Fund Dollars and included in the annual budget.  School construction is bonded over many years and is not part of the school budget."   Don't you love it?

Click here for Bill Quirk Replies to the Guilford Board of Education
Click here for Bill Quirk Responds to First Selectman, Carl A. Balestracci, Jr.
Click here for the Guilford CT Public Education Home Page