HOULTON, Maine — Big changes are in the works for students in the RSU 29 school system starting next fall.
The school district is moving forward with its plans to close Wellington Elementary School in Monticello and has been hard at work trying to figure out where to place those 71 students inside Houlton Elementary School.
To accommodate the additional students, two portable classrooms will be added to the elementary school campus this fall. Those leased units will house the school’s computer lab, library and other “special” centers, which are currently located inside the main building of HES. Those spaces will be reconfigured into classrooms for students so that no regular instruction classrooms will be housed in the modular buildings.
However, RSU 29 Superintendent Mike Hammer said the district is also considering shuffling its grade levels to make more room. One proposal calls for sending third-graders to the nearby Houlton Southside School, which currently is for grades four through six.
To make room at Southside School, the sixth-grade class would be relocated to Houlton Junior-Senior High School.
As of June 2, there were 1,322 students enrolled in four schools. A breakdown by school shows Wellington School has 66 students; Houlton Elementary, 448; Houlton Southside, 289 and Houlton High School, 519.
Hammer said the full school board has not reviewed the matter of relocating the students. That review will come when the board meets Monday, June 9, at 6 p.m. in the Superintendent’s Conference Room. The meeting is open to the public, however the school board does not have a section on its agenda for public comments.
