Dear Fellow Residents,
Since 2016 the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education has granted the Winthrop Elementary School its highest honor and ranked it as a “Level 1 school.”
This means that Winthrop School is among “the highest performing” elementary schools in Massachusetts, and, that it “meets targets for reducing proficiency gaps both for all students and for the highest needs.” That’s quite an achievement.
We, the citizens of Ipswich, must be honest with ourselves and understand that the proposed combined elementary school at Doyon would necessarily dissolve one of the town’s highest performing educational communities at Winthrop and disperse its high achieving, living community of excellent leadership, staff, parents and children into an unknown and untested reconfiguration that will require years to reorganize and then achieve the educational excellence our town now possesses at Winthrop Elementary School, if that is possible at all.
It has taken years of dedication and leadership to grow the school community and programming at Winthrop Elementary School and it should be preserved and used as an educational model that can and should be adopted across the district so that all our schools can achieve Level 1 status.
A brand new “state of the art” building does not solve educational challenges and create “state of the art” learning and opportunities.
In fact, study after study show that academic achievement is consistently linked to small schools. Let’s not destroy what is working.
I urge Ipswich residents: Vote to preserve our small community schools. Support a plan that addresses both elementary schools’ infrastructure and preserves community schools.
All our children deserve that. We as a community need to support that.
Ipswich, we still have a choice regarding the much debated elementary school project.
You can vote “no” for one combined elementary school at Doyon on May 8 at town meeting. We can do much better than the one choice currently on the table.
Seraphima McLean
Woods Lane,
Ipswich