Editor’s note: This article has been updated to correct the misattribution of a remark by one parent speaking at Wednesday’s meeting to Brelyn Vandenberg.

By Gretchen Webster

WESTPORT — Parents of the 51 children likely to be redistricted from Long Lots Elementary School next year again asked the Board of Education to allow their children to stay at the school when new boundaries are drawn for the town’s elementary school districts.

The parents, who at earlier school board meetings and via an online petition have pressed their case, renewed the request at a “Community Conversation on Redistricting” meeting Wednesday at Staples High School.

They said the impact of redistricting on their children would be worse if they are reassigned to Saugatuck Elementary School, as proposed under the recommended redistricting plan, than the impact on the crowded school if they remain.

The parents questioned the enrollment figures in the redistricting options outlined by Supt. of Schools Thomas Scarice, who in a memo to the school board before Wednesday’s meeting recommended the board not agree to “grandfather,” or exempt, the 51 students from the redistricting scenario he has proposed take effect next year.

The redistricting plan would reduce the number of classes at Long Lots by only one or two sections by moving the 51 students to Saugatuck, which has a far lower enrollment. Long Lots now has 584 students, while Saugatuck has 386.

A second phase of the plan would move about 36 Kings Highway students to Coleytown Elementary when a newly built Long Lots opens.

The favored Option A1 plan would reduce the number of class sections at Long Lots from 29 classes to 27 by having new kindergartners and other students new to the school in the 2025-26 school year attend Saugatuck School, as well as the 51 students to be redistricted, according to information on the Board of Education website. The “Grandfather All” plan keeping the 51 students currently at Long Lots would not reduce the number of class sections at all, Scarice said.

“Grandfathering all current 51 LLS students to be redistricted means giving up the buffer that could likely be needed. Additionally, the school is currently overcrowded and needs immediate relief. For all these reasons, I recommend that the board act prudently and err on a conservative side by adopting Option A1, transitioning 51 students from LLS to SES for the 2025-2026 school year and beyond,” Scarice  wrote in his memo opposing the parents’ pleas.

The impact of moving their children is not worth the small reduction in the number of classes at Long Lots, several parents contended. “It seems like a very limited benefit,” Eric Garfunkel, a Long Lots parent, told the board.

But it’s not the lack of classrooms in the school that is the only problem, board Chair Lee Goldstein told the group. “It’s not just about sections, it’s also about density,” she said.

Long Lots currently also has two modular classrooms, but the leases are set to expire and not expected to be renewed.

Scarice said there are several spaces that are overused in Long Lots School, especially for students getting special education services. He said in one classroom that is smaller than most, there are three special education teachers who must work together with their individual students. Plus, the computer lab was converted into a science lab, and there is no longer an art room at the school. 

Although most of the parents at the meeting asked that their children be allowed to remain at Long Lots through fifth grade, one mother, Michelle Friedman, of Marc Lane, agreed with school officials that Long Lots is too crowded.

“Our family is in favor of this plan,” she said. “I come to this as an educator who has worked in three different schools in this district. The students [at Long Lots] are not able to receive the same education as in other schools” where classes are smaller, she said. Friedman also was concerned about long lunch lines at the school preventing children from having enough time to eat, and that construction of a new Long Lots on the same property will prove a distraction for both students and teachers.

But most parents attending the meeting, which they had requested, said they feel the redistricting plan is unfair because of the small number of students involved.

“These 51 kids are not the reason for this overcrowding,” said Julie Gartin, of Dover Road. Moving such a relatively small number of students out of Long Lots is “a drop in the bucket compared to the impact this will have on these kids … Maybe it’s that this redistricting plan is not going far enough,” she said.

“The potential harm [to redistricted children] is too significant to overlook,” Brian Young, of Jason Drive, told the board. “We can alleviate this solely by redistricting the incoming kindergarten classes … we can make this work.”

Scarice said school officials have to consider future enrollments as well as current overcrowding at Long Lots. The Long Lots population has been growing faster than the town’s other elementary schools, he said, especially for students entering kindergarten and first grade.

Officials feel Long Lots enrollment also will be pushed upward once the new school is built — currently estimated to be completed in 2027, a year later than originally planned. They cited statistics from area school districts that show that when a new school is built, enrollment increases.

“I believe that there are going to be more kids, not less,” Scarice said.

Some parents attending the meeting asked the school board to find out how many of the affected families are willing to have their children redistricted, suggesting that perhaps enough of them would agree to leave to solve the crowding problem. “Would you poll us to see if we want to stay or go?” Brelyn Vandenberg, of Dover Road, asked the board. “It would ease the burden if some wanted to go.”

Another speaker asked school officials, “Do you have a child in this school?” Goldstein replied, “I have 600 children in that school.” The parent, who described Long Lots as “thriving,” answered her by saying, “My child is one of 600 in that school, He matters, he’s not a number or projection on a piece of paper …,” prompting Goldstein to respond, “None of the kids are projections … nobody suggested the kids are not happy.”

Scarice wants the school board to make a decision on redistricting sometime in November. The school district needs time to begin planning for the transition in the 2025-26 school year. 

Redistricting students will also require that some teachers be reassigned, he said.

Freelance writer Gretchen Webster, a Fairfield County journalist for many years, was editor of the Fairfield Minuteman and has taught journalism at New York and Southern Connecticut State universities.