Classrooms Bursting at the Seams
When the bell rings at 1:29 p.m. at the Springs School, signaling the end of sixth period, students from the fourth through the eighth grade immediately flood the hallways. With just two minutes to get to their next class, at least 300 students at any given moment dodge classmates who are opening lockers, rushing by or taking their time, and perhaps horsing around. This was the case even after custodians at the start of the year put down a line of green tape on some of the hallways’ floors to encourage students to stay to the right when going in either direction.
To a recent visitor, the scene was reminiscent of a stampede or like rush hour on Montauk Highway in July. But the crush is commonplace at the school, where officials say growing enrollment has put pressure on a building that is aging and bursting at the seams.
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Melissa Knight, a fourth-grade teacher in her 16th year at Springs, said she had seen the school evolve. “I don’t feel we’re a small school anymore.” She added, however, that the public’s view of the school as a small one did not seem to have changed.
Ms. Knight is among many teachers who say the school, which was built in 1931, needs more classrooms and additional spaces for students to learn in.
“We’ve had to get really crafty,” said Ms. Knight, who has 26 students and a co-teacher to help out. “We got donations from different companies to make our room better for the kids,” she said, adding, “You don’t have a lot of room to move within the classroom. The kids don’t notice it, but it really is a struggle.”
The school’s music room is not handicapped-accessible. Because the art room cannot handle all the demand, the teachers often pack materials on mobile carts and push them to other classrooms. The school’s common room is an all-purpose space where indoor recess takes place, teachers lead small group lessons, staff can often be found eating lunch, PTA events are held, and where many other activities take place because they do not fit anywhere else.
Other problems include a crammed gymnasium and the lack of a dedicated computer room. The school had a computer lab, but it had to be converted to a regular classroom this year. At one point, Alec Baldwin, the actor who lives in Amagansett, donated a baby grand piano to the school, but the PTA had to raffle it off because there was simply no space for it.
To house some of its youngest students, the school relies on exterior buildings, including the Springs Youth Association building and two portable buildings added decades ago as temporary structures.
Lindamarie Kirby, who teaches first grade in the youth association building, said her students lose precious learning time because they have to travel to the main building for certain activities.
“It depends on the day — shoes to be tied, weather conditions. It could be 10 minutes off a period, conservatively,” she said.
Eric Casale, the school principal, said overcrowding was now at a point where he is worried about safety, as well as the security of the students in the outbuildings.
In case of an emergency, “we could have as many as 1,000 people here to evacuate. It’s at a critical point,” he said.
Jessica Vickers teaches what are called reading “intervention” classes in a classroom that has been divided into three smaller rooms with temporary Sheetrock walls. Her area has no windows, while the adjoining teachers, who provide services like physical or occupational therapy, have windows but no door leading to the hallway. Students walk through Ms. Vickers’s classroom to get to the other two rooms. Ms. Vickers said distractions abound and space to store materials is hard to find.
“When there are so many different types of services going on in the same area, that’s when it can be a challenge,” she said. “I give this staff a lot of credit. We kind of bend over backwards for each other,” she added later.
A number of other classrooms have been similarly divided. A former custodial supply room now houses the copy machine; the original copy machine room is now the guidance counselor’s office. The school social worker’s office is the former foyer of the original school building; the school psychologist’s office used to be a closet.
Adam Osterweil, who teaches seventh-grade English, said, “If you looked at the square footage of this building per child, the number would be dramatically different than any other school, but at the same time, if you walked around the building, you would see a lot of happy children. We make it work, and the children feel supported here. . . . Yet if we have to open up one additional classroom, we don’t have an answer to where that’s going.”
Mr. Casale’s latest enrollment report shows Springs with 740 students in kindergarten through eighth grade, with three more pending registration this week. This is up from 722 students last year, most notably due to the closing of the Child Development Center of the Hamptons. Another 37 students are in prekindergarten at the Most Holy Trinity Catholic Church school building in East Hampton. Enrollment ranges from 67 kids each in the sixth and seventh grades to 97 in the fifth grade.
Springs has 370 lockers for students from the sixth through eighth grades, with only about a dozen unassigned this year. The school ran out of lockers in 2000, and kids shared them until 2002, when the school’s new wing opened. If the school runs out of lockers this year, there will be one key difference: There is no new wing under construction.
According to a January 2016 long-range planning study by the Western Suffolk Board of Cooperative Educational Services, enrollment in Springs grew 30.5 percent, or by 167 students, between 2005 and 2015. The study predicted the school would peak at 739 students in 2019, but it already has surpassed that figure. The study projects a drop to 687 students by the year 2025. For its 2015-16 school year projection, the BOCES study was 98.5 percent accurate.
Right now, according to John J. Finello, the district superintendent, average class sizes are at or below the school board’s target size of 25 students.
A Line Is Drawn
The idea of school expansion has drawn a clear line in the community. Time and time again at school board meetings, a handful of residents speaks up to say there are people in the community on fixed incomes who may not be able to support the bond the school would need to finance a major capital project. They question the potential size of the project, which, in preliminary discussions, has included a second gym and as many as 16 new classrooms. They also question the hiring of an architect, who apparently is to be paid on a sliding scale of up to 5 percent of a project that has not yet been capped at a certain dollar amount.
Often absent from the meetings are those who support expansion. One person who supports a referendum is Alicia Wiltshire, whose four children went through the school. “It’s long overdue. They’ve been using every creative and imaginative way around it to not put the burden on the community. They desperately need space.”
Scott Faulkner, a parent of two who was a member of the facilities committee, which in 2015 was charged with making recommendations on space, said, “It should be a foregone conclusion that it needs capital improvements. I don’t see how anybody could go into that school and think otherwise,” he said. He went on to call the school fantastic and the teachers great. “I give credit to the people who teach there — they don’t let it get to them,” he said.
Chris Tucci, a parent of four who said he was a cautious supporter of expansion, also said it was getting harder and harder to verify that the district is expanding at the rate projected or that it would expand much more.
Mr. Tucci works in the building industry and said families seem to be priced out of the local housing market, with second homeowners coming in instead. However, the school “is ultimately crowded as it is, and you really have to figure that it’s a possibility that it could expand more,” he said. He suggested that if the school builds to accommodate enrollment growth but then sees a drop, the new space could be used to decrease class sizes and bring the prekindergarten back from Most Holy Trinity.
“I think it has to be given some really deep thought,” Mr. Tucci said. “Moreover, they have repairs to make anyway. If they make those repairs while they’re expanding, it should bring the dollar amount down on those repairs.”