Evesham Township School District Superintendent John Scavelli Jr. has once again presented the board of education and members of the public with a stark choice: keep Evans Elementary School open, or close the school for the 2017–2018 school year, reassign its students and realize $1.4 million in savings.
As he’s done at multiple meetings over the past several years, Scavelli once again cited the district’s declining enrollment figures as the reason to consider the closure.
Scavelli noted that while district enrollment once rose as high as 5,436 students in the 2002–2003 school year, that number has dropped by nearly 1000 students to 4,440 students in this current school year.
Scavelli said those numbers were also supported by the most recently released birth data statics from the state Department of Health, which shows 18.2 births per 1,000 Marlton residents in the year 1990, then 14 births per 1,000 Marlton residents in the year 2000 and then 9.8 births per 1,000 Marlton residents in the year 2012.
Scavelli said development in the township has slowed and changed in recent years, and so the township is no longer seeing hundreds of house being built and attracting families who have children.
“Our eighth-grade classes leaving are bigger than our kindergarten classes coming in, and that’s been happening over several years,” Scavelli said.
Scavelli said enrollment numbers in the coming years are also projected to continue declining to 4,080 students by the time of the current farthest projection of the 2020–2021 school year.
Scavelli also attested to accuracy of the projections, noting that past projections matched eventual enrollments within a 98–99 percent accuracy level. Scavelli said current projections also include any planned developments known by the township’s planning and zoning boards.
“If it’s luxury apartments; it’s not going to generate kids. It’s just not going to do that.” Scavelli said.
If Evans closes
Should Evans close, Scavelli said students would be reassigned to different schools based on their sending zones.
Evans students living in Heathrow, Pheasant Run, part of Cambridge Park, Delancy Place and Tanglewood would go to Beeler Elementary.
Evans students living in the Tara subdivision and those north of Marlton Parkway in Sagemore, part of Willow Ridge, Dominions West, Arrowhead, West Main Street and part of East Main Street would go to Jaggard.
The learning disabled programs at Evans, along with those students living at London Square, Marlton Hills, Camelot Apartments, Evesboro West, Westbury Chase, Hearthstone, Allison and Nieuw Amsterdam Apartments and Marlboro, would go to Van Zant.
Evans students living south of Marlton Parkway in Glen Eayre and Euston Road South would go to Marlton Elementary. Marlton Elementary would also absorb current Jaggard students south of Marlton Parkway in Willow Ridge, Willow Ridge Apartments and Ardsley Walk.
With school attendance zones based more on closer geographic locations, Scavelli said more students would attend middle school with all their elementary school peers and transportation efficiency would be improved.
Scavelli noted that according to the state Department of Education Facility Efficiency Standards, all of Evesham’s school buildings fall below their student capacity levels and would continue to do so even if the school consolidation plan was to move forward.
Scavelli also said if staff members were moved proportionally to the students as is proposed, there will be no relative impact on class sizes at any of the schools.
Scavelli said the closure would reduce the staffing leveling throughout the district by 25 employees, with the loss of one administration employee, 10 professional employees and 14 support employees. However, Scavelli said the district has averaged 14 teacher retirements and 11 support staff retirements per year since 2010, which would cover many of the reductions.
Scavelli said if the Evans closure were to go through, Evans Principal Nick DiBlasi would also continue with the district.
Van Zant Principal Rosemary McMullan is retiring from the district effective in October, and Scavelli said the district would appoint an interim principal to her position until Evans closed and DiBlasi could fill the role.
If the board approved the closure of Evans, Scavelli said the district has no plans to sell the school and would instead look to other potential uses and revenue-producing opportunities for the building. Scavelli said some of those uses might be renting classrooms to private schools for students with disabilities, local colleges, local church groups and tutoring or renting the school’s all-purpose room and kitchen for large events.
Regarding the private school, Scavelli said the district has had ongoing discussions with a group for several years, dating back to when the group was looking to possibly utilize empty space in Marlton Middle School where the district’s tuition-based daycare is now located.
“They have an interest in maybe forming a program for low-functioning autistic children, but there’s nothing definite,” Scavelli said.
Scavelli said the next BOE meetings are scheduled for March 17 and April 28, and he said he hopes the BOE would discuss the 2017–2018 consolidation plans at those times.
Reaction to the closure
Although there were a few, mostly elderly, citizens at the meeting who said they lived on fixed incomes and would welcome any tax break closing Evans might bring, the majority of residents who spoke at the meeting were parents and students against the closure.
Several parents questioned the difficulties students might face academically, socially and emotionally when moving to another school. In response to those fears, Scavelli said the district was able to get through a similar situation when it moved students from one middle school to another about five years ago.
“No one is saying that’s going to be easy, but with the staff’s help and the parents’ help, everyone did a phenomenal job helping those children through,” Scavelli said.
Scavelli also said the district would do everything possible to help families and students make any transition as smooth as possible.
Resident Jenn Mihalecsko said she believed some members of the public had a misconception that if Evans were to close that school taxes would go down, which she did not believe was the case.
Scavelli noted the Evesham district was similar to most schools districts in that 82 percent of the district’s budget goes toward paying the salaries and benefits of employees, and so the only way to ever truly guarantee taxes would stay the same from year to year would be to ask employees to agree to an indefinite wage freeze.
Some residents also questioned what would happen if Evesham’s enrollments reversed course and started to rise over the next 10 or 15 years and Evesham was left with the need of another school.
Scavelli said that if Evans were maintained for other purposes as the district planned in the event of a closure, he said he believed there was no reason why the school could not be reopened if need be.
However, Scavelli noted that turnover of older to residents to younger residents was already occurring within the township, and a previous district study showed that even in optimal turnover conditions, data still supported a decline in enrollment for the community.
When asked if Evans could close for next school year instead of two school years from now, Scavelli said the district was prepared to handle that as well if that was the direction the board decided move in.
