Jennifer Bartsch, Rugby

To the citizens of Rugby:

I am writing this letter in support of the proposed Ely Elementary expansion.

I moved to Rugby in 1995. I attended fourth through sixth grades at Ely, and I have many fond memories of elementary school in our community. I feel a certain level of nostalgia whenever I walk into Ely Elementary. Nostalgia is good but it should not interfere with needed change because of the fond memories and the way things used to be.

This year will be my fifteenth year teaching kindergarten at Ely Elementary. Prior to my first year in 2007, kindergarten was an every-other-day program. This worked then, but my first two years of teaching, things changed, I began teaching kindergarten four days a week. This required another room and another teacher for the 40 some kindergarten students enrolled. In 2009 our district made the move to full-time kindergarten to meet the needs of our students and the changing demands. Basically, we needed more time to teach everything that our five- and six-year-olds needed to learn while keeping in mind the importance of play and learning social skills. Our administration also took notice of the impact class size can have on early childhood education; of my fifteen years teaching kindergarten, seven of them have been years we have needed three classrooms due to the number of kindergarten students. The number of students entering kindergarten each year can be unexpected; finding space for an additional unexpected classroom is stressful.

Change is constant and our staff is often making adjustments that seem like quick fixes for lack of space; this forces us to make compromises. In prior years, our students had the opportunity to transition to special classes like Life Skills and Technology. Now these rooms are being utilized for grade level classrooms and special education areas. Since then, our students are moving around less and less which is concerning. Research states that kids need to move to learn. It may seem like a minimal compromise; however, after spaces such as the computer lab and life skills classroom have been taken away, we have eliminated a transition, an opportunity to move around the school, and now students are staying in their classroom space more and more during the school week.

I would also like to mention that the average elementary classroom is 900 square feet; each of our rooms at Ely are only a little over 600 square feet. We are crammed in smaller classrooms, and even though, in the past, the number of students utilizing this space made sense for the size of our school, it doesn’t anymore. Teachers are trying to meet all the needs of our students; academic, behavioral, etc. I believe we need more space to do so. With an increase in student needs, small group work is an effective strategy teachers use to help each student be successful at their individual level. Additional shared spaces would allow the opportunity for more movement and cooperative small group work. I encourage you to speak to the elementary teachers and staff who will be working through this important change for our students and our community. Please consider voting yes on December 1st.