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What surrounding resources are we talking about? Mickey Stevens? Where the Vets and Pilgrim (and i assume TG) hockey teams practice after school? McDermott Pool, where our swim teams practice after school? Do we have swimming as part of phys-ed? And I'd assume that most, if not all, of phys-ed classes are taught on school grounds and not on the fields and facilities of Stevens.. I think the Vets Gymnastics team practices there but I assume that's after school too.

You say Pilgrim is run down - walk thru them all and you'll see that all three are. You say it's a smaller building which is patently false. Their fields are not "a mess' though I suppose that depends how one defines a mess. Are they as good as Vets? Nope. They do have tennis courts. If you discount the value of all day K and it's impact on students in light of the new curricullum, then I'd suggest you ask elementary teachers from any city or town if they think it's a good idea. Common Core curriculum is more demanding and what K students are required to learn today was what 1st graders were required to learn many years ago. Study after study shows that the student is pretty well formed, ability or cognitively-wise, by the third grade. A smarter student in the elementary years makes a smarter student in the high school years. Repurposing Vets into a JH saves money and that's already been documented - yes, even after you add in the increased transportation costs - and most all of it comes from reduced staffing because the building remains open and repairs and upgrades still have to be made to it in order for it to stay open. By closing Gorton and Aldrich, we save the cost to operate the building (lights, heat, routine maintainence, etc and that's six figures) and there are further savings in staff consolidation. Those operational, or 'bottom line' savings can go toward the cost to implement all day K and 6-8 middle school. And now, we don;t have to make the investments for final stage of fire code improvements ($2 million plus interest) plus whatever else needs to be done to the builkdings- and those needs were documented as well. That money can be better spent on the two remaining high schools to address the neglect that we inflicted in these buildings and that neglect goes back way back to even the days of the Mr. Shapiro. The fact is that this neglect has rolled down to the current Administration and they now have to deal with it because eventually, you have top pay the piper. 85% of the school budget is salaries and benefits (like most every city and town) and of that 85%, the overwhelming majority of that is teacher salary followed by WISE and Admin. So roughly 85% of the total cost to run any school building is salary and benefits so it stands to reason that when you consolodate/close buildings. most of the savings will come from that 85% figure.

From: All day-K, 6th grade at junior high by ’15?

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