By Jeffrey Heng, Staff Reporter

The Tredyffrin/Easstown School District is discussing possible ways to manage projected enrollment in elementary schools. This includes strategies like maximizing space usage, expanding existing schools and redistricting.

In 2017, the school board conducted a redistricting process that reassigned approximately 100 students from Devon to either Beaumont or Hillside Elementary Schools in order to balance student distribution.

An October 2022 study at Valley Forge Elementary School found that the building is expected to become overcrowded in the upcoming decade. Superintendent Dr. Richard Gusick views future redistricting as a possible option, although it is not likely.

“It (the 2017 redistricting) was different because it only needed to involve three schools, and it looks like any kind of redistricting that would address the current enrollment disparity would need to involve all five (elementary) schools,” Gusick said.

Another proposition to mitigate enrollment disparities would involve maximizing school footprints. This could include the occupation of vacant classroom spaces or possible expansions of Valley Forge Elementary School in the surrounding land.

“There’s been a lot of commitment from the community to provide resources for our schools,” Gusick said. “We’ve used them to provide great programs with amazing and caring staff, and that’s been attractive for people to come. But, in general, you’d need to be able to expand the current expense model to support the cost of the new school, and the biggest contributor to that are local taxes.”

Four of the five elementary schools hosted live presentations regarding projected elementary enrollment between February and March. Beaumont Elementary School will host the final presentation on March 20. Sue Tiede, school board Education Committee Chairperson, believes these presentations will build engagement within the community and further help to meet the needs of children with special education.

“I think the presentations are important because we want to hear from the community about how we proceed going forward,” Tiede said. “We’re at a point now where we need to think about how we can provide (special education) programs in the space that we have. And it looks that going forward, we may need a sixth building to do that. But it’s a huge decision for the district as well as educational impact.”

A new building could serve to better accommodate a full-day kindergarten program and address student needs in greater depth, according to Tiede.

“We hope that (parents) will come in, ask questions and find out the logic around thinking about this at this time,” Tiede said. “We hope that they’ll come and share their feelings about full-day kindergarten programs. More parents have become dual income working parents, and they would like to have this for their children, so we’d like to hear about that.”

Jeffrey Heng can be reached at [email protected].