This year, on Nov. 8, Amherst voters will have an opportunity to ensure that the children of Amherst have an exceptional learning environment far into the future. A yes vote on Question 5 will allow the town of Amherst to proceed with a much-needed plan to build new co-located schools to replace the deteriorating and inadequate Fort River and Wildwood elementary schools.
Fort River and Wildwood Schools no longer meet the needs of our evolving community. Both schools were built on the outdated notion of “open classrooms,” which lack internal walls separating classrooms. In most spaces, one class can easily hear all of the instruction occurring in the room next door. As adults, we can filter out some of this noise, but to a child, this can be an insurmountable task. This learning environment is inadequate for every student, and even more so for our most challenged children.
The proposed co-located schools are designed to allow teachers and students access to the most current technologies, including assistive and adaptive technologies that support students of all abilities. In addition, the school is flexibly designed, ensuring that as new technologies develop, our modern school can keep pace with these changes.
Health and safety is at the forefront of concerns when it comes to our children. Both buildings have a history of serious mold overgrowth, troubling indoor air quality problems, roof leaks, and poor temperature control. The layout of the current buildings also poses safety and security risks. As the offices are located internally and far from the entrances, it is challenging to control who has access to the school.
While Amherst has always been on the cutting edge of including all students, student populations looked very different in the early 1970s than they do now. Every day, we welcome students who are English Language Learners, have various learning disabilities ranging from mild to severe, have emotional and behavioral disabilities, and have physical disabilities. Some of our students currently attend specialized programs that are only offered in one school. The new co-located schools would allow all of our children to attend a school with their peers, rather than be bused to the one school that houses their specialized program.
Under this plan, Crocker Farm is situated to become an innovative and progressive Center for Early Learning. Teams of teachers and parents have already begun to look at similar strong school models for ideas on how to deliver instruction to kindergarten and first grade students that is developmentally appropriate. Consolidated resources at the early childhood levels allow teachers this unique opportunity to rethink how we teach our youngest students.
Further, the prospect of expanding our preschool offerings is an exciting one, and would allow the schools to work toward closing the achievement gap. It has long been known that access to high-quality preschool programming launches children ahead of their peers in the elementary years, yet these programs are often not affordable for low-income families. The School Committee has committed to expanding these offerings at Crocker Farm upon the completion of the new school.
The proposed new schools would allow Amherst to provide its young people with facilities that are designed to take into account their various learning needs and requirements. It will have appropriate spaces for instruction in the arts. It will even have such modern facilities as a “maker space,” designed to provide a location to conduct inquiry projects in the sciences and engineering. Finally, unlike the two schools that it will replace, they will have classrooms that are filled with natural light and it will make use of the natural environment by incorporating outdoor learning areas. It will also take advantage of modern construction techniques to make it a LEED Silver Certified Building.
It is imperative that Amherst not miss this opportunity. Delaying this project for an unknown time period will surely result in increased construction costs, a possible loss of state funding, and millions of dollars spent on simply keeping Fort River and Wildwood safe for operation until the buildings can be replaced.
As teachers in the elementary schools, we and many of our colleagues wholeheartedly support this project and urge the community to vote yes on Question 5 and ensure strong public schools for the next several generations.
Timothy Sheehan is a teacher at Fort River School in Amherst. This column also was submitted by Anna Bartolini, a teacher at Crocker Farm School, and Christopher Eggemeier, a teacher at Wildwood School, both in Amherst.
