Sprunica Elementary students can expect to stay at their school, at least for the next school year.
The school board on June 2 authorized Principal Abbie Oliver to hire a third kindergarten teacher.
That will address the immediate concern about 60 kindergarten students enrolled in next year’s class.
Then, administrators will “continue to study enrollment as they break down by buses in the fall for Sprunica and Helmsburg and Van Buren,” Superintendent David Shaffer told the board.
In May, the board had discussed possibly changing elementary boundary lines to rebalance enrollment among the three elementaries.
Next school year, Sprunica is projected to have 271 students — 92 more than Van Buren Elementary School and 77 more than Helmsburg Elementary School.
Hiring a third kindergarten teacher is prompting Oliver to move classrooms around so that all of the kindergarten students will be near each other. She plans to create new classroom out of a smaller learning area, half the size of a regular classroom.
This isn’t the first time another teacher was hired to deal with large class sizes.
Sprunica’s incoming third-grade class is so large — 67 students — that it required a third teacher who will follow that class to the fourth grade.
At the June 2 meeting, Shaffer suggested the board also consider putting a freeze on additional in-district transfers to Sprunica, but to not apply that restriction to children of current and new teachers. Another exception would be to allow siblings of current students to transfer as class sizes allow, he said.
One option Shaffer had suggested in May was to redirect a few buses from Sprunica to Helmsburg.
But this week, Shaffer said that would not help significantly with the Sprunica kindergarten enrollment and would add more students to the 51 incoming second-graders at Helmsburg.
