Kindergarten Classroom Added at Regency Park Elementary

All kindergarten students who are supposed to go to Regency Park Elementary School in Plum will do so this upcoming school year.

Plum School District officials have announced a second kindergarten classroom will be added at the school.

Before the addition, 25 students were admitted into Regency Park and the 14 remaining students who were registered for kindergarten would have been sent to Pivik Elementary.

District assistant superintendent Timothy Glasspool said sending those 14 students to Pivik would have created the need to add a fourth kindergarten class there, so it made more sense to add the class at the school the students should have been attending in the first place.

The two classrooms at Regency will have 19 and 20 students, which is comparable to kindergarten class sizes across the district, Glasspool said. The classrooms at Pivik and Holiday Park have 21 to 22 students.

The district also has been approving transfer requests for students in higher grade levels who should be at Regency Park instead of Pivik, Glasspool said. The transfers, however, depend on how much room there is in the existing classrooms so all of them might not be granted.

Parents who send their children to Regency Park have been very critical of the decisions made for the school.

The school has had only one kindergarten classroom for about three years, though more students should have been attending. During the registration process, the first 25 students to enroll in kindergarten at Regency Park were ensured a spot at the school and the others were sent to other schools.

Because of this process, parents registering their children for kindergarten would wait in line for hours to ensure a spot at the school.

Parents have been concerned about the future of the school since February, when a study of custodial and maintenance services by Frombach Consulting in Brentwood suggested closing the school after stating that operating costs for the school—which has the smallest enrollment with about 295 students—were higher than the other four elementary schools in the district.

School board members have publicly said they haven't discussed the possibility of closing any school in the district. Glasspool echoed those sentiments.

Parent Lisa Callaghan, who has spearheaded an effort keep the school open, said the addition of a second kindergarten classroom is a step in the right direction.

"I was very pleased to hear it," she said. "It seems like a step in the right direction, but we still have a lot of work to do."

Callaghan said she's disappointed all the transfers weren't granted, and she hopes the district addresses registration concerns.

"I feel like we have to keep pushing," she said. "Adding another kindergarten classroom isn't going to make all the issues go away."

Glasspool said officials still are reviewing the registration process at Regency Park. Though decisions for the 2012-13 school year haven't been made, he said two kindergarten classrooms could remain at the school if enrollment is the same as this year.

"We always have to see what the numbers look like," Glasspool said.