RUMFORD – The SAD 43 board on Tuesday approved hiring an additional first grade teacher and another educational technician to cover unexpected needs.
Although the school year began with fewer students than last year, some class sizes and special needs students were not anticipated.
District enrollment as of Friday was about 1,592, 14 fewer than last year.
At Meroby Elementary School in Mexico the greatest influx was first graders. Superintendent Jim Hodgkin said more families with young pupils moved into the district. Without the new first grade position, class sizes at Meroby will be 22, 23 and 23. With it, they will be about the same as Rumford Elementary School: 16, 17 and 17.
Meroby anticipated the need for more classroom space because most of the 100 or so Virginia Elementary School pupils were reassigned there.
Virginia school became the site of the district’s day treatment program, known as the Pennacook Learning Center Virginia School. Fifteen students in grades K-12, including one from neighboring SAD 21, began classes there last week.
Meroby Principal Scott Drown said that even with the former Virginia students, one classroom remains for the new first grade. Pupil population at Meroby stands at about 320. The school was originally built to house about 400 pupils.
Rumford Elementary School has about 275 students, Mountain Valley Middle School has 379, and Mountain Valley High School had 609 as of Friday.
Student numbers won’t be final for a few weeks.
Hodgkin said the district has relatively high enrollments in the highest and lowest grades, with under 100 students each from grades two through seven.
“The projections given that our numbers would go down are accurate,” he said.
Student population in August 2001 was 1,689.
The creation of an educational technician III position was approved to assist with unanticipated clusters of autistic and behaviorally-challenged pupils at Meroby.
The board also approved hiring Jeannie Walker as an eighth-grade language arts teacher at the middle school, Virginia Burke as assistant director of the River Valley Community Learning Center, which is the district’s after-school program, and Dan Patterson as an elementary mathematics specialist.
Comments are no longer available on this story