Consentino Middle School to Host Fifth-Graders This Fall
By Mike LaBella, The Eagle-Tribune, North Andover, Mass.
Jun. 13–HAVERHILL — The debate as to where Tilton Elementary School fourth-graders will attend fifth grade this fall may be finally over.
At last night’s School Committee meeting, Superintendent Raleigh Buchanan said he had to change his mind after recently telling Tilton parents their children would not be attending Consentino Middle School for fifth grade.
Buchanan said the decision to send children to Consentino and create new fifth-grade classrooms there was because of extra space at Consentino and a lack of space at Tilton, which currently serves kindergarten through grade four.
Tilton students usually attend Silver Hill Elementary School, but now that Silver Hill has become a Horace Mann charter school, the only way a child can enroll is if he or she is attending Silver Hill already, was at another school and had a sibling at Silver Hill, or through two public lotteries that took place in March and April. Buchanan said he had nowhere else to place children aside from sending them “across the river.”
“I have to make a decision on the timing and resources I have available to me,” Buchanan said. “I don’t like being a yo-yo superintendent, but sometimes I have to change my mind.”
Mayor James Fiorentini, chairman of the School Committee, reminded members that Haverhill’s middle schools once had grade five classes and that they were transferred to the new elementary schools.
“One wing was grade five and six and another was grade seven and eight,” Fiorentini said. “When we took grade five out of our middle schools and put them in the new elementary schools there were people who objected.”
School Committee member Joseph Bevilacqua had his share of objections to Buchanan’s decision, saying he “continues to receive e-mails about flip-flopping.”
“Parents have said to me there is a lack of credibility,” Bevilacqua said. “This points to the inability of the School Department to determine exactly what is happening.”
School Committee member Susan Danehy said she “didn’t like the word flip-flopping.”
“When more information comes in, you can change your mind,” she said. “We needed a program change at Silver Hill. Unfortunately, this is an unforeseen consequence.”
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