No Spring Street Kindergarten Classes for Fall

The following release was sent by Superintendent of Schools Joseph Sawyer:

As superintendent, I am excited that your children will be joining us for kindergarten next year. I will be sending you a detailed letter with your specific assignment over the next few days, but I wanted to make you aware of some important news relative to our plans for kindergarten next year.

First, because of a variety of factors due to our budget situation, we are consolidating different student groups which will free up some additional space at the next year. I believe this is going to enable us to add two additional sections of full-day kindergarten at Beal. I also anticipate we will have some additional slots to add from the wait list for the full-day sections as well. This is great news, as we will then have many more families who will be able to access a full-day experience. I expect that we will begin contacting families on the waiting list over the next few days.

Second, because we will have more space available at Beal and due to the small number of overall registrations from the attendance zone, all kindergarten students from the Spring Street area will attend Beal next year. Full-day students from Spring Street were already scheduled to be at Beal, and all Spring Street half day students will attend the afternoon session along with students from the Coolidge and neighborhoods (half day students will attend in the morning). These assignments are being made because we will not have a sufficient number of half-day students to require a full-time kindergarten teacher at Spring Street and because this also allows us to ensure reasonable class sizes across all attendance zones. It is important to note that we have housed half-day sections at Spring Street for the past few years because we did not have sufficient space at Beal, so we are returning to our normal situation with this change. Another benefit of this is that Spring Street half-day students will now be eligible to be bused to daycare centers in the Coolidge and Paton zones as well as the Spring Street zone.

Please look for a letter in the mail with your child's specific assignment.  If you have questions about that assignment, please contact Diane Abbott, the district's registrar, at dabbott@shrewsbury.k12.ma.us or 508-841-8320.