Millville closing R.D. Wood Elementary to save money

MILLVILLE - The city school system is dropping a budget ax on its oldest institution — R.D. Wood Elementary School.

Superintendent David Gentile broke the news to the families of students at a 12:30 p.m. meeting Friday in the school's cafeteria. The school will close at the end of this school year, he said.

Staff were alerted at a confidential meeting Wednesday, but rumor of a closing started circulating immediately.

Gentile told The Daily Journal the district faces a 2017-18 budget gap of about $3 million based on its current anticipation of state aid. Closing Wood School would save a little more than $1.8 million, including transportation costs.

Nineteen positions at Wood School will be eliminated, including teachers and other staff, Gentile said. However, contractual seniority rights means the affected staff may be located to other schools rather than laid off. Gentile said an unspecified number of other layoffs districtwide are probable.

The Friday meeting was open only to parents, but attendee Judith McFarland streamed the event on Facebook Live.

Gentile, on the recording, tells parents it was with a "heavy heart" that the district had decided to close the school.

"Let me be absolutely clear, 100 percent clear, on this," Gentile said. "Your child is going to continue to receive  an excellent education in Millville. It's important to us that you understand that."

Gentile said Wood School won't be closed entirely. The alternative school now using leased space at the former St. Mary Magdalen Regional School across the street from Wood School will be moved in, at an annual savings of about $50,000 to the district.

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Outside the school, parents handled the news with varying degrees of frustration and surprise.

They said Wood School's attractions for them include a longstanding exceptional closeness of staff with students and families, a proximity that allows most students to walk to and from class, and a heritage that sees many current students following in the footsteps of their parents and even grandparents.

Moms and dads also questioned the economics of the move, since students necessarily will need to be bused to other elementary schools. How the students will be distributed among Millville's other four elementary schools is to be determined.

"It's a shame," said Lisa Greene. "And then they're going to spend money on buses to come for them."

​The district is scheduled to disclose its preliminary 2017-18 budget at Monday night's Board of Education meeting. As proposed, according to the meeting agenda, it would spend $103,262,365 and would raise $12,007,842 through school property taxes. The budget for this year, as adopted last May, called for spending $104,093,275 with local taxes supplying $11,772,394.

The district decision is not entirely surprising, given budget dialogues in the last several years. The district has not seen its state aid increased over that period.

Last year while drafting the 2016-17 budget, school board members and staff discussed the possibility of closing one elementary school to reduce costs. This coincides with a significant decline in the elementary student enrollment across the district.

The small enrollment at Wood School was cited as an example: the student population is less than 200 children, where traditionally it has been closer to 300.

Wood School, at 700 Archer St. in the Third Ward, holds kindergarten through fifth-grade classes. It celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2015, and it is the city's oldest school.

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Gentile said Wood School was selected for closing because of its small student population, the age of the building and its lack of a gymnasium.

"One of the things we thought was important is that the building does not become vacant in the sense that the neighborhood depends, I think, on that being open in many ways," Gentile told The Daily Journal.

He said that is one reason why to shift the alternative program into the school. But the district also wants to find other uses for it, perhaps as a place to obtain social, medical or other educational services. "We're looking for the right partner," he said.

Gentile noted that, by district estimates, 24 percent of children in the neighborhood that feeds Wood School go to a charter school or a private school instead.

Thomas and Judith McFarland attended the meeting with Gentile. Their four children went to the school and now they pick up their granddaughter.

"And I love this school," Thomas McFarland said. "It's a neighborhood school and the teachers, many of them, live here."

"I really find it a very positive influence in the neighborhood," Judith McFarland said.

Thomas McFarland said he feels the city has "abandoned" the Third Ward, citing the prevalence of rental properties and serious crime. Drug sale activity is out in the open and constant, residents say.

Lisa Green, who has children in first and fourth grades, said parents were told the district did not have enough money to keep the school operating. She said she hasn't had time to think about where her kids would like to go to school now.

"I like it (Wood)," Green said. "It's easy going. The kids just walk home from here. I like it, too, because it's so close to home."

Her view of the staff?

"They're beautiful," Green said. "I always talk to them about my kids."

The news came as a shock to Jessica Maldonado. She had just moved to Millville and wasn't aware of the meeting or the rumor.

"This is a good school," Maldonado said.

Anne Greene could not believe the district would  opt to bus so many children out of the neighborhood if it is short of funds.

Greene suggested using the school for groups, such as Police Explorers. She really would like to see the police force use it as a station.

"And they (police) can help us as residents to get crime out of our neighborhood," Greene said. "Third Ward literally going down."

Carrie Huff said many people living in the neighborhood are without vehicles to transport their children. She grew up in the neighborhood.

"When I came here it was 2,000 percent different," Huff said.

Huff credited the school with instilling values in her older son, reinforcing what he learned at home. Her daughter, also a Wood School graduate, is in Richard Stockton University, she said.

Mary Anne Wurtzel, who is Greene's daughter, worried about the difficulty Wood School students will have when dropped into schools outside the neighborhood.

"It's a whole different culture and they're going to be the new kids," Wurtzel said.

According to the school history, Wood School is named after businessman Richard Wood. His family's business at the time, Millville Manufacturing Co., donated the land for the school.

Joseph P. Smith; (856) 563-5252; jsmith@gannettnj.com