In an e-mail distributed on the Portsmouth school district listserv this evening, Superintendent Susan Lusi said that she would be asking the school committee to once again consider closing the Elmhurst elementary school located in the southern end of town. While this had been discussed last year (see here, here, and here), a projected budget gap was closed, granting the school a reprieve. In her note to the community tonight, Lusi notes that the budget gap this year is significantly larger, and that other factors are in play as well, all of which will be discussed at an upcoming meeting next week.

I want to share an important update with you regarding our on-going budget discussions and the fact that I will be asking the Portsmouth School Committee to revisit the possibility of closing Elmhurst School at the end of this school year.

The Finance Subcommittee of the School Committee will be meeting on Wednesday, April 7 at 5 PM in the PHS library. At that meeting, I will be doing a presentation and asking the subcommittee to consider closing Elmhurst School at the end of this school year. The Finance Subcommittee discussion will be in preparation for a discussion at the full School Committee meeting on April 13.

Closing Elmhurst would mean that grades 4 and 5 would be moved to Portsmouth Middle School and our PK-3 students would attend Melville and Hathaway.

As you know, this is not the first time I have made this recommendation. I am making this recommendation again for the following reasons:

We are projecting a large budget gap for the coming school year and an even larger one for FY ’12. While the savings from closing Elmhurst will not be enormous and will not fully close our gap, there will be significant savings, and the savings in year 2 (FY ’12) will be larger because the one time moving costs will no longer be in play.

A couple of factors are changing from this year to next. First, Dr. Martin is retiring from her position at Hathaway School. This means that we would be trying to attract a new principal for a position that might not last very long, because we will have to close Elmhurst soon, if not this year, due to its major facilities needs and our declining enrollment. This is concerning because attracting good people to what might be a temporary job is not easy. Second, Newport County Regional Special Education has notified us that they will be moving their offices to Middletown. This means that we will not have the $26,000 of rental income the region currently pays us for its office space at Elmhurst for the coming school year.

Even if Elmhurst is closed, moving the School Committee’s facilities plan forward will be vital for three reasons: 1) to have full-day K; 2) to have PK-4 elementary schools; and 3) to have the repairs all of our buildings need eligible for state reimbursement. Our $350,000 facilities warrants are only approved for state reimbursement through FY ’11, so after this coming year, none of the work we do to our schools will be eligible for Housing Aid without an approved facilities plan.

More information on the above will be presented at the upcoming meetings, but I wanted to give you a rough outline of my thinking in advance.
— e-mail distributed on PSD listserv

Full disclosure: I am an appointed member of the Facilities Committee.