School Committee Holds Off on Reconfiguration

The composition of the Seekonk School district will not be changing for the 2025-2026 year.

The school committee was unable to decide which grade reconfiguration option to choose to handle increasing class sizes at the elementary level.

Member Kyle Juckett said the Infrastructure Council, a Committee and community group led by himself and committee member Alicia MacManus, could be formed again for the purpose of studying the options and then they would make recommendations to the school committee.

Superintendent Rebecca Kidwell noted the problems the district has been facing will continue.

“We’ll make next school year work,” Kidwell said at the October 21 meeting. “We will, but Aitken is still going to be crowded and class sizes are still going to have disparate questions. We will still have challenges of what the athletic program looks like at the high school and what high school enrollment looks like.”
In the last few years, Seekonk has been experiencing a rapid population growth.  For the 2023-2024 school year, there were a total of 2,061 students with 1,021 students at Aitken/Martin and 1,034 students at Hurley and the high school.  

One option which had been proposed would be to move the fifth grade out of Aitken and Martin elementary schools to Hurley Middle School.

In 2021, the 10 classroom addition to Aitken Elementary School was completed at a cost of $11 million. Former School Superintendent Rich Drolet said the project was needed to reduce class sizes. Modular units were used when the project was under construction.

Member Kyle Juckett suggested modulars could work at the elementary schools.

“We have two elementary schools with two different styles of educating our kids, so when we make those changes, it’s going to change a lot of that and again, it may only last for two or three years,” Juckett said. “If we move the Pre-K somewhere, it’s only going to last two or three years. Those changes aren’t going to last long term. I think we’re burdened by the amount of room that we have. I think modulars are the quickest ways (to add space).”

“It’s been a struggle in really trying to work collaboratively with everybody to make sure because we have to be fiscally responsible for the entire town,” said committee chair Meaghan Mahoney.

Kidwell believed the Infrastructure Council’s work could be beneficial if they were able to propose a long-term solution to the district’s overcrowding problem.

“We would love to show you some long-term options,” Kidwell added. “We will definitely not be spending time on short-term options when you’re asking us to research long-term possibilities.”