MERIDEN — The current Thomas Edison Middle School building will become a school fully operated by the local district starting in the fall of 2021.
Edison is currently run by Area Cooperative Educational Services (ACES) as an interdistrict magnet school whose students hail from multiple communities.
The Board of Education voted unanimously on Tuesday night to adopt the transition plan recommended by its finance committee.
“We have a need for space at the middle school level. It is not the climate right now to approach the city for another middle school, especially since our agreement with ACES has expired,” said Robert E. Kosienski Jr., president of the Board of Education. “So the timing is right. We have this beautiful facility that’s Meriden owned, and we will be running as a traditional Meriden middle school. It’s a savings to the community not having to build a third middle school.
“Ultimately, two years down the road, we will have three middle schools at 750 students each,” Kosienski said. “Class sizes will be down. The three beautiful middle schools will be evenly staffed. It will be a good situation for everybody.”
Board colleague Ray Ouellet agreed, also alluding to a need to reduce class sizes in the district’s current middle schools, which he described as overcrowded.
“That’s really what it comes down to,” Ouellet said. “And if we can run that building as a Meriden middle school at a lower cost, it’s a win-win.”
Meriden School Superintendent Mark Benigni deferred questions pertaining to the status of current Edison staff members to ACES administrators, as they are not district-employed educators.
The majority of Edison’s current students are from Meriden.
The ACES Edison program is focused on science, technology, engineering and mathematics — a grouping commonly referred to as STEM.
ACES leaders previously notified the school’s current families of their plans to relocate into a new building but have not announced a new location yet.
In an emailed statement, ACES Executive Director Thomas Danehy wrote that the agency “is presently in negotiations to purchase a property which will house ACES TEMS.”
Danehy stated he was not at liberty to disclose neither the location nor the terms of the pending deal, but “I can share that the selected site has all of the characteristics, features and trappings that will serve our students, parents, and staff well as we move into the future.”
“As soon as we are able to share more details we will do so. I know the anticipation can be frustrating but when it’s all said and done, I’m highly confident that any of our ACES’ students, parents and staff will be quite pleased with the learning environment and all that it has to offer,” Danehy wrote.
Meriden school officials plan to retain Edison as the school’s name.
The magnet school likely will have a new name, on which the ACES board has yet to vote, Danehy explained.
That transition plan will include new assignments for 33 staff members — including teachers, administrators and reading and math coaches — in schools across the district, according to figures shared with board members in a presentation on middle school planning Tuesday night. The plan will also include the hiring of 15 new staff members, the majority of whom would be teachers, according to officials. Of those reallocated teachers, 26 would be assigned to Edison.
“All Meriden Public School students who are currently at the Edison Magnet School will be able to retain their seats at the Edison Meriden Middle School,” Benigni told the Record-Journal.
Officials project a total middle school enrollment of 2,175 students in grades six through eight in the fall of 2021. Those figures include a projected 552 students who would be enrolled in the restructured Thomas Edison Middle School.
FInancial figures shared in the presentation show the costs to operate Edison as a district school will mirror the current $3.44 million expenses, including tuition payments and special education costs, already budgeted.
The figures include close to $2 million in staffing costs and more than $1.4 million in other operational expenses. Those costs do not factor in possible future tuition payments to ACES for a relocated magnet school during the 2021-2022 school year.
Kosienski described the upcoming transition in operational oversight as “cost neutral.” The school would open as a traditional middle school with a similar curriculum to that of Washington and Lincoln middle schools.
The transition plan does not include drawing new enrollment boundaries for any of the three schools.
Kosienski noted enrollment for the middle schools is open choice, with no plans to establish enrollment districts around any of the middle school buildings.
“We would hope that the Meriden families stay with Thomas Edison,” Kosienski said.
mgagne@record-journal.com
203-317-2231
Twitter:@MikeGagneRJ
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Meriden school board votes to assume full control of Edison Middle School - Meriden Record-Journal
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