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NEW BEDFORD — Superintendent Andrew O’Leary has informed the parents and staff of Parker Elementary that he is considering closing their neighborhood school and reopening the building as a centralized, preschool-only facility in fall 2025.
O’Leary’s letter arrived without fanfare into parents’ inboxes in late July, describing plans for “an early childhood center that would consolidate pre-K classrooms currently spread across the five central schools,” O’Leary wrote, referring to Rodman, Hathaway, Parker, Carney, and Hayden-McFadden elementaries.
Parents were shocked when the email arrived. Then the questions and emotions flooded in.
“I was very annoyed,” said Deanna DeBarros, whose son is a first-grader at Parker. “I expected to have more community input.” O’Leary’s letter said community listening sessions will be held at each of the five elementary schools, but no specific dates were listed. DeBarros looked for a number to call, but found none.
The community around the Parker school has been DeBarros’ home for her entire life. As a child, she walked a path near Summer Street to school each day. And in 2019, she began an almost identical route when her oldest son enrolled in Parker. They walked together until he was confident enough to walk himself.
After years of field days, holiday dances, and other parent-teacher organization (PTO) events — not to mention enrolling another child, the current first-grader — DeBarros got a job at Parker. She worked as a paraprofessional helping in the classrooms.
“I’m very proud to have gone from that school and see all the things that have come from it,” DeBarros said. “And it’s nice to feel so comfortable … being in that building.”
The news that Parker could close hit many parents hard, said Susanna Araujo, the PTO president for the last five years. “I understand they need more preschool classes and I’m not against that,” Araujo said. But she and many others feel as though they’re losing an important sense of identity. “It was like a slap in the face,” said Araujo, who said the school had “become a family.”
Since the letter went out, O’Leary said that he has interacted with many parents and heard their concerns, including during the public comments during Monday night’s School Committee meeting.
So far O’Leary remains confident in the reasons behind the announcement, citing data which indicates a need for improved early education services. “The most practical approach for the district is to move beyond a cycle of opening, closing, moving and reassigning pre-K classrooms on an annual basis,” O’Leary wrote to The Light in an email.
A rapidly growing population of pre-K students in New Bedford, especially as the district started offering full-day sessions to better meet families’ needs, has led to an increase in young students with specialized learning needs. To serve them, the district must follow legal requirements for capped class sizes and a higher number of teachers.
“At its simplest, one can see this as an assignment of classrooms,” O’Leary continued. “An early childhood center with at least 14 [special needs] classrooms located at Parker is in the best interest of district families over the medium and long term.” The Parker schools sits geographically in the middle of the five elementary schools affected by the consolidation.
But to many parents, a decision based on classroom-size arithmetic feels coldly calculated, missing what makes their school and community tick.
“A top-down approach doesn’t work for me and won’t work in this situation,” said Dan Washburn, a parent who spoke in the School Committee’s public comment period. He said that receiving the summertime email without a plan for feedback felt like a decision had already been made “in the darkness of the night.”
Washburn, like many parents, acknowledged the need for additional preschool classrooms. “I have two kids that will directly benefit,” Washburn said of the proposed pre-K expansion. But he didn’t agree that breaking up the Parker School was worth that benefit.
Teachers from Parker showed up to Monday’s School Committee meeting but said they had been advised by their union to not speak publicly on the matter. The local teachers union president, Thomas Nickerson, also declined an interview, but offered public remarks to the School Committee that condemned the proposal.
“On behalf of Parker members, I share our collective wishes to keep Parker a neighborhood school,” Nickerson said. He praised the teachers, saying, “They worked tirelessly for many years to bring about positive changes for children and families.” But the unexpected announcement, Nickerson said, led to “fear that drastic changes will undo all they’ve done.”
The Parker school has been subject to a state-mandated turnaround plan since 2014, and has been under state receivership for several years. Recently, academic outcomes and attendance have improved, with Parker now matching the district average in reading scores, math scores, and average attendance.
Transitioning the school into a consolidated pre-K center would require that the state release Parker from its receivership this year — which O’Leary seems confident will happen. That decision will be made after the most recent test results are made public, in October.
The decision to focus on Parker also marks a shift from the previous plan to renovate the now-vacant Holy Family Holy Name school into the district’s centralized pre-K facility. O’Leary said recent tours of that building showed it was not fit for its new purpose: “We have visited the [Holy Family Holy Name] building several times … but I do not think it is feasible as a dedicated space to exclusively serve 3- and 4-year-olds.”
Experts from the HEED Coalition, who partnered with New Bedford Schools to make the previous announcement about the Holy Family Holy Name site, did not respond to requests for comment.
In the meantime, parents are waiting to hear when the promised community listening sessions might take place. Many aren’t hopeful they can convince administrators to save their school.
“I don’t know if they’re really thinking about the parents’ interests,” said DeBarros, the Parker parent who also attended the school herself. She said parents are “going into the school year so uncertain,” and “staff members are going to have this heavy on their minds every day.”
Though listening sessions have not yet been scheduled, the School Committee is planning to discuss the proposal at its next meeting, on Sept. 9.
Email Colin Hogan at chogan@newbedfordlight.org
Editor's note: This story was updated on Thursday, Sept. 26, 2024, to reflect that test scores at Parker last year were comparable to other elementary schools, but did not necessarily exceed them.
New Bedford is a terrible school district, and maybe having more organized pre-k will improve test scores in a few years. I’m glad they are at least trying to fix things rather than pretending that everything is going great like the mayor. People from New Bedford are so against any change you would think it was already a utopia rather than a run-down post-industrial city. I’ve lived here for many years now, and that has never changed.
This is a rediculous solution to close the Parker street school. First the Shawmut ave school now this. Why not re open the Shawmut ave school as a pre school facility!! It just sits there unused and could serve the neighborhood as a pre school!!!