“If you proposed a preferred plan of asking 95 students to go to Steinert, why would you then disincent them to not go by not providing transportation?” the woman asked. … I think we found not the perfect solution, but I think we have found a solution that parents can live with.”Ī woman at the board meeting suggested the district not providing transportation creates a disincentive that discourages parents to opt to send their Kuser-area eighth-grade children to Steinert in the fall. “We recognize that there is overcrowding, and we want to begin at the beginning. “I am not a demographer, and we are hiring professionals to tell us that,” Ficarra said in response. One man who attended the school board meeting told Ficarra that the district has “seven other schools that are more crowded that Nottingham.” The idea to have Kuser-area eighth-grade students attend Steinert instead of Nottingham came about because Kuser Elementary School has a growing student population that has contributed to Nottingham’s overcrowding, Ficarra said. Parents said, ‘Please don’t.’ We are honoring that, and we are moving the kids who we can move, who want to move, and we are putting in place plans to restructure and reorganize based on scientific data, which we don’t have available to us now,” Ficarra said. “We have an entire new central staff, and we’re recognizing the problem, and we put it on the table and we came forward with some ideas about moving children immediately in September. I don’t believe that we have too much support for that,” Ficarra said at the board meeting. It is not going to be solved overnight unless you start moving kids out of high school and switching people around. “We have a major situation that we tried to play with it as best we can. That demographic study should be completed in the fall when the 2016-17 schoolyear begins, Ficarra said. That’s why we are looking at a demographic study, which will take the entire geography (into account).”įicarra said the district has hired a demographer to help it determine the long-term fix to the overcrowding problem at Nottingham and under-enrollment at Steinert. “I make no pretense of solving the problem tomorrow or by September, even if we moved the entire group. “This is an attempt to solve that problem,” Ficarra responded. “What are you going to do about the inequities created between Nottingham and Steinert because of the overcrowding, like study halls?” a woman asked Ficarra at the May 25 school board meeting. Any Nottingham High School student with an eighth-grade sibling who lives in the Kuser area also would have been given the option to attend Steinert under the proposal.īut the plan that the Hamilton Township Board of Education adopted at the public meeting is one that will allow Kuser-area parents of eighth-grade Reynolds Middle School students to send their children to Steinert next schoolyear instead of Nottingham, but those parents would be responsible for the transportation unless Ficarra decided to provide busing service. The plan would have sent current eighth-grade Reynolds Middle School students who live in the Kuser Elementary School area to Steinert instead of Nottingham. At the same time, Nottingham’s population has been growing. The school district’s overall student enrollment from grades pre-kindergarten through 12 has actually decreased by 15 percent in the last 10 years, going from 13,546 students enrolled in 2006 to about 11,530 students enrolled in 2016, according to district and state Department of Education data. The demographic changes in Hamilton Township from 2006 to the present are so puzzling that Hamilton Township School District officials said they needed to hire a professional to understand the population trends. Steinert has the most classrooms and used to have the largest student population out of the three, but the demographics have significantly shifted to the extent that Nottingham now has the most students enrolled despite having less classroom space than Steinert and Hamilton West. The Hamilton Township School District has three high schools – Steinert, Hamilton West and Nottingham – but only Nottingham has an overcrowding problem. Ficarra said at the May 25 Hamilton Township school board meeting. It is something that has been around for a while,” Interim Superintendent Thomas J. “The overcrowding at Nottingham is not something that happened yesterday. HAMILTON > Nottingham High School, which sits at the corner of Klockner Road and Hamilton Avenue, has long suffered from overcrowding.
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