NORFOLK — Residents of Norfolk and Colebrook are leaning toward a collaborative arrangement between each town’s lone public elementary school, as opposed to consolidating the two schools into one and to prevent one of them from closing.
The towns recently formed a committee comprised of officials from both towns to explore options for addressing the continued decline of student enrollment and the increased costs to educate them. The committee met for the first time Thursday night at the Botelle School’s Hall of Flags.
The meeting was intended to give residents of both towns a chance to express their thoughts, concerns and questions about the future of the elementary schools. At least 100 people attended, not including those who were watching online.
Botelle School — closed on Tuesday because the town did not have road salt — enrolls 61 students and has a per pupil expenditure of $39,348, compared to an enrollment of 116 students and a per pupil expenditure of $23,237 more than 10 years ago, according to data from the state Department of Education. Colebrook Consolidated School also has 61 students but a per pupil expenditure of $33,964, compared to an enrollment of 91 students and a per pupil expenditure of $17,734 a decade ago. Both towns send their students to Northwestern Regional High School in Winsted. Northwestern is part of the Regional School District No. 7.
Ten years ago, the towns voted on a plan to merge the two schools at Botelle but Colebrook rejected it by a wide margin. Both towns had to approve the plan for it to go forward.
Most of the people who spoke at Thursday’s hour-long meeting live in Norfolk.
Jenna Brown of Norfolk said she doesn’t hate the idea of consolidating with Colebrook but does hate the idea of closing Botelle and “sending all of our kids outside of our town lines. So if the only option is that, I’m fully against it.
And the reason why is very simple. If we don’t have our school, we have nothing here for our kids. The library and the playground are great. But other than that, the town of Norfolk has nothing for its young families, and this town will die without Botelle School.”
Brown said a few things need to happen to resolve the problem: 1.) create more affordable housing opportunities geared towards bringing families to town; 2.) see if Botelle can attract more out-of-town students who would pay tuition to attend; and 3.) the town needs to be more fiscally responsible and start favoring its younger population. “Because right now, the town is borrowing from the left pocket to pay for the right, and the easiest way to make up for the shortfall is to kill Botelle,” she said. “Our children and young families should not be the ones to pay the price for the town’s poor budgeting. The selectman’s office needs to do right by the young families and kids in this town and make young families trust you again.”
Committee member Jessica Listorti of Norfolk replied in part to Brown’s comment that it is unlikely that the town would be able to create enough affordable housing for the longterm.
“If you look at the houses for sale in Norfolk and Colebrook right now, in Norfolk, there are three — $500,000, $2 million and $9 million. People buying those homes are not sending their kids to Botelle School. It would be a wonderful dream for there to be more housing options but we don’t have it. I think there’s two houses for sale in Colebrook, and one is for well over a million dollars.”
Andrew Bakluski, a member of the committee who lives in Colebrook and is an assistant principal at Regional School District 7, said this is an opportunity to improve student performance.
“If we did combine our resources and we were working in one space and we didn’t have to support two facilities and we didn’t have all the ancillary costs that come with that, we could, in fact, improve, I think, greatly, the education.”
Walter Godlewski, a committee member who is on the Norfolk Board of Education, said sharing a superintendent may be a “fantastic way to start collaborating.”
He also suggested the idea of having the schools split in to one for the lower grades and one for the upper grades. That way families can become accustomed to traveling the 5 miles between the schools.
“We’re building a community,” he said. “We’re moving away from us vs. them, to all of us.”
Then, four or five years later, the towns can evaluate how that’s working out, Godlewski said. Enrollments may still be declining, “but together, we trust one another. We’ve created this, and maybe then we can talk about how it’s in all of our best interests to close one of the two schools.”
Norfolk Board of Education Chairman Virginia Prisco said the towns have discussed the upper and lower idea in the past and it “didn’t really work out.”
Larry Hannifan of Norfolk said another option is combining the schools through a contractual agreement. He said he has heard that regionalization is “almost impossible to get out of.” Instead, for example, if Colebrook has a lot more third-grade students than Norfolk does, then Norfolk could send its students to Colebrook for a year, and Colebrook would not be obligated to take Norfolk children once that contract expires.
Norfolk resident Chris Gomez suggested holding an anonymous poll of the students.
“Let’s see what the kids want to do,” he said. “It’s the only thing that matters here. We are not going to put convenience before our children any more.”
Jane Shahmanesh of Norfolk said this issue has more to do with money than doing what is in the best interest of the children. She said she wants to know how much money the town would make if it “shipped off” the children of Norfolk to Colebrook, whether town officials have talked to any one about alternative uses for the school, whether the town has sought “professional opinions” about the devaluation of land when a town doesn’t have a local school, and whether the town will lose even more young families if the school closes.
“Everybody has to be involved,” she said. “This can’t be something that we kind of, sort of, may be discuss every 9 or 10 years.”
First Selectman Matthew T. Riiska said the committee will meet again in a few weeks.
Feb 21, 2025
Kurt Moffett
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