BARRE — It’s a problem that will solve itself if seventh and eighth graders in Barre and Barre Town ever attend the same school, but, at least for now, consolidating middle school athletic programs has essentially been sidelined.
It’s not that the idea is without merit or even some support, though it arguably had more of the former than the latter when the Barre Unified School Board took up the topic last week.
It’s also not because the hurdles identified by administrators can’t be cleared. By all accounts they can, even if how to address logistical and other concerns that have been identified was never directly addressed.
And, it’s certainly not because student-athletes from Barre and Barre Town aren’t used to playing together. They are — both before and after their seventh- and eighth-grade years — which, due to the district’s current structure are spent in separate schools that are barely two miles apart.
Credit the Barre Youth Sports Association and Barre Community Baseball & Softball for serving those children through sixth grade, and, in some cases beyond, and Spaulding High School for picking up where Barre City Elementary and Middle School (BCEMS) and Barre Town Middle and Elementary School (BTMES) leave off.
With one notable exception, both pre-K-8 schools offer comparable athletic opportunities for seventh- and eighth-grade students, though School Director Sonya Spaulding suggested the proverbial playing field isn’t as level as it seems.
Even if you discount the fact BTMES offers a sport — field hockey — BCEMS does not, Spaulding said the latter school has frequently struggled to field a full boys’ soccer team, forcing it to play shorthanded, recruit players from the sidelines or both.
“It’s frustrating for coaches and kids who actually want to play,” she said, noting BTMES doesn’t have that problem and some years has enough players to field multiple teams.
Spaulding is an advocate for bringing students from both schools under one combined athletic program, which, depending on the numbers, could field multiple teams in sports like soccer, basketball and baseball and softball.
That isn’t as easy as it sounds.
The fact that the school day ends and practices begin roughly an hour earlier at BTMES than they do at BCEMS was flagged by administrators as a problem that would need to be solved.
School Director Michael Boutin, who is a proponent of restructuring the district so it would have one combined elementary school feeding one combined middle school feeding one already combined high school would create a uniform schedule and address other potential issues.
“This would all be taken care of if we were able to merge our schools,” he said.
Boutin didn’t get any argument from Superintendent Chris Hennessey.
“If we had one middle school this would not be a problem,” he said, adding: “It wouldn’t, and it could really be a strong athletic program for Barre … (with the) middle school feeding into the high school.”
Hennessey said he viewed the currently competing schedules as the trickiest of a handful of issues that would need to be considered if the board was interested in pursuing a change.
“These are undeniable challenges, but we don’t see any of them as insurmountable,” he said, after ticking down a list that ranged from concerns about the potential need to make cuts from a larger program to the value of building-based athletic directors who have relationships with student-athletes.
None of the issues mentioned by Hennessey altered Spaulding’s view creating a single middle school athletics program would better serve all of the district’s seventh- and eighth-grade students than the two separate programs that currently exist.
“It’s not equal, it’s not equitable, and I would encourage us to try to work through some of these concerns to try to find a way to make it work for all of our kids,” she said.
Like Hennessey, board members Paul Malone and Terry Reil viewed scheduling and other logistical issues as particularly problematic.
“That’s going to be a real tough nut to crack,” Malone said, of the differing dismissal times.
Reil agreed.
“It’s going to require a fair amount of analysis to make this work,” he said.
School Director Nancy Leclerc said she worried a combined middle school athletic program would lead to cuts that typically don’t happen until high school.
“It’s important that we have room enough for everybody to play and not worry about a child being on a team,” she said.
School Director Emily Reynolds said she liked what she heard about the value of building-based athletic directors and the value of their relationships with student athletes.
Former board member Sarah Pregent suggested all of those arguments were “kind of weak” and the fact that BTMES students had a field hockey program and their counterparts at BCEMS didn’t was a problem.
“Is the entire Spaulding High School field hockey team from Barre Town?” she asked.
Board members were told interested BCEMS students could play on the BTMES team, as can students from the neighboring Echo Valley Community School District. However, doing so would entail missing a significant chunk of practice due to the different dismissal times.
The conversation eventually fizzled, but not before Spaulding expressed her frustration with the suggestion it was somehow more difficult to schedule games and officials for a combined program she believed would better serve the same number of students that play on the same number of teams that now exist.
“Do the math,” she said, adding: “I don’t understand what is so hard about this. … We are the grownups, we have the fully developed brains, why are we not figuring this out for our kids?”
david.delcore
@timesargus.com
