By Carol Britton Meyer

The school committee this week voted 4 to 1 in favor of taking the first step toward consolidating Hull’s three schools – housing Pre-K through 6 at Jacobs Elementary School, grades 7 and 8 at Memorial Middle School, and grades 9 through 12 at the high school – for the 2023-24 school year as proposed by Superintendent of Schools Judith Kuehn.

This means that fifth-graders who would normally move on to the middle school will remain at the Jacobs for sixth grade.

The final reconfiguration plan calls for the Jacobs School housing grades PreK to 7 and the high school grades 8 to 12, starting with the 2024-25 school year.

This would leave the middle school building available for possible municipal or other educational uses. Whatever the outcome, the school committee would maintain control of the building.

While the entire school committee expressed support for what members called a well-thought-out reconfiguration proposal, Chair Stephanie Peters and Kyle Conley voiced concerns about why they think it’s too early to implement this first step of the overall plan. While other committee members shared that concern to some degree, Peters cast the only negative vote.

Peters explained that while she is in favor of the consolidation plan as outlined in the MARS Best Educational Use of School Facilities report and supported by the ad hoc committee that studied the plan, she is concerned about making such a momentous decision when Town Manager Philip Lemnios is planning to retire and there could be a change in membership on the select board and school committee, depending on whether incumbents decide to run for reelection this spring.

“I know [consolidation] is the right thing to do,” Peters said. “I’d prefer to wait until the fall of 2024 to implement phase one. If the new town manager or select board/school committee members have a different vision of what town hall should look like [referring to the potential to move town offices to the middle school building], that would put the school committee in a tough position with students and families, and disrupt our vision of making this plan a success.

but there are a lot of unknowns, and I don’t want students to be [negatively] impacted.”

While Vice Chair David Twombly acknowledged that Peters made some good points, he said he thinks it’s time to move forward, calling implementation of phase one an “incremental” step, with plenty of time to work out the full details.

The MARS report evaluated the educational adequacy of the town’s three school buildings with the goal of determining what is in the best interests of Hull Public Schools students. Declining enrollment also played a part in support for the consolidation plan.

Peters referenced a recent meeting involving Lemnios, a select board member, and others related to a possible municipal use of two-thirds of the middle school space, and payment of the associated costs. She and Twombly both attended the meeting, but the others were not present at Monday’s school committee meeting. The Hull Times reached out to Lemnios for more information.

“At this point I can share that we will continue to explore with the school committee and school administration the opportunity to use the first and second floor of Memorial School for general government offices and services,” he said. “This has been discussed for many years as an option to provide for more efficient and effective delivery of services. We will continue our discussions over the next several months regarding possible configurations.”

If the town doesn’t end up occupying a large portion of the building, Peters noted, “we will have to find somebody else to rent the space and pay the associated costs.”

This is really about “cost avoidance,” Twombly said. In his opinion, “the town got the ball rolling to avoid [having to] renovate the town hall.”

If it turns out that the new town manager and select board “don’t have their acts together, we could extend [phase one] for another year,” he suggested. “Sometimes we have to take a leap of faith. There are a lot of checks and balances in place, and we’ve kicked the can down the road long enough – paralysis from analysis. It’s time to move on. If we’re not comfortable down the road, we don’t have to take the next step.”

Conley expressed concern that the school committee might not have enough say in the decision-making process and wondered if the plan could move forward “without making any promises for use of the middle school to any other entities, aside from South Shore Collaborative. We don’t want to lose sight of that building being under our jurisdiction and for the opportunity to use it for more than office space. I’m hesitating because it seems like a fait accompli. I feel a little sideswiped.”

In response, Kuehn explained that sharing use of the middle school if the school committee voted in favor of consolidation “is how we have described [the scenario to stakeholders], particularly a shared school/municipal use.”

Resident Patrick Finn, who served on the school building committee that supervised renovations of the school buildings, urged the committee to vote in the affirmative.

“We have two highly-paid professionals – the superintendent of schools and town manager – working out the details, and we are paying them to help make these decisions and to make the plan work,” he said. “Town meeting approves the school budget, and I’d hate to see what might happen if we don’t keep the ball moving forward after everything has been hashed out.”

Peters took issue with a comment made by Finn that any school committee member not voting to take this first step would amount to “cowardice.”

School committee member Ernest Minelli, who along with Kuehn sat on the ad hoc committee, offered what he called “an olive branch” to Finn, expressing appreciation for his “long history on the school building committee” in the past.

Minelli suggested that a better term might be “prudence” when referring to school committee members who suggested a more cautious approach.

“We can be prudent and work out the details during the next 1-1/2 years,” he said. “I think my fellow members are just doing their due diligence, but I appreciate that you have spoken your piece as part of a community discussion. The more we have a dialogue about this issue, the better the result will be.”

Finn apologized to Peters, adding “but” but never finished the sentence, and that part of the discussion ended there.

Twombly called the decision a “tough” one. “No one wants to close a school,” he said.

Minelli explained that he’s a “big believer” in setting the tone.

“We’ve put in a lot of due diligence, and the principals have done a great job of shepherding the discussion with their staff,” he said. “With consolidation, we have the opportunity to maximize the learning environment for our students across the district, and the building principals plan to fill their staffing needs more efficiently. … There are many moving parts that we can control and about which we can be affirmative and proactive. The more proactive we are, the more the other uncertain components will have an opportunity to fall into place.”

Following the vote, Kuehn thanked the school committee for placing its trust in her and for their “deliberation and thoughtfulness” throughout the process, and offered to sit on any consolidation committee that might be formed.

Kuehn also outlined her plan to talk with school administrators as soon as possible about next steps.

“We have to iron out the details and try to move as quickly as we can, working with everyone involved,” Kuehn said. “It will be emotional for some teachers to leave the middle school since it’s the only place where they have ever taught. We want to do a kickoff event for families and work with students to make it exciting.”

Kuehn added that “our teachers deserve to hear this [news right away]. They’ve been waiting for many years, and it’s not fair to keep people in limbo. I believe that [the overall consolidation plan] is in the best interests [of the HPS].” She added that future steps in the process can be delayed if the town side of the reuse scenario is not finalized in a timely way.

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