In Pembroke schools, end of year celebrations are colored by anxiety about what next year will bring

Teachers and students celebrate winning a tug of war contest at Pembroke Hill School on Friday, May 24, 2024. The principal of the school did not allow the students’ faces to be photographed.

Teachers and students celebrate winning a tug of war contest at Pembroke Hill School on Friday, May 24, 2024. The principal of the school did not allow the students’ faces to be photographed. GEOFF FORESTERMonitor staff

Pembroke Hill School principal Wendy Gerry at the field day for the school on Friday, May 24, 2024.

Pembroke Hill School principal Wendy Gerry at the field day for the school on Friday, May 24, 2024. GEOFF FORESTER / Monitor staff

A mural on the wall of the ILAB classroom at Pembroke Hill School.

A mural on the wall of the ILAB classroom at Pembroke Hill School. JEREMY MARGOLIS / Monitor staff

The entrance to the nature trail that the ILAB program created and maintains.

The entrance to the nature trail that the ILAB program created and maintains. JEREMY MARGOLIS—Monitor staff

By JEREMY MARGOLIS

Monitor staff

Published: 06-03-2024 4:37 PM

Modified: 06-03-2024 6:45 PM


Jenny Jones grew up in Pembroke, attended its schools, and began her teaching career at Pembroke Hill School 23 years ago. Over the years, she taught the children of her own childhood friends, pouring energy into a calling that felt decidedly personal.

Next year, for the first time in her career, Jones’ classroom will not be located in her hometown, but rather 45 minutes away at the K-8 Chester Academy.

As the school year comes to an end, Jones is now in the final days of teaching ILAB, the science, technology, engineering, art and math (STEAM) program that she built from scratch six years ago. For many families, the program is the most painful casualty out of $3 million in cuts the Pembroke School District sustained when voters chose to trim the schools’ budget by roughly 10% in March.

While students, educators, and parents try to bring joy and a sense of normalcy to a string of end-of-year events – Field Day was held at the Hill School on May 24, prom was on Saturday, high school graduation is on Tuesday, and the last day of school is June 17 – some also look toward next year with trepidation.

“Our teachers put every ounce of what they have into making sure that all of our kids get what they need, but you can only stretch a school or a grade-level team so far, and I think that’s what a lot of the parents are concerned about,” said Kerri Dean, a member of Pembroke’s School Board.

In all, the cuts will force the district to eliminate 27 jobs next year, including 11 of the district’s 130 classroom teaching positions. The professional uncertainty of the looming cuts caused an additional eight employees to resign, according to Dean.

A lot remains in flux about what next year will look like, from what courses will be offered at the high school to exactly how large class sizes at the elementary school will be, Dean said.

“I feel like we’re in a centrifuge where we’re just spinning and spinning and spinning,” said Dean, the mother of a third grader and a high school senior.

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Superintendent Patty Sherman declined to comment on the effects of the cuts or the sentiment in the district heading into next year.

“At the end of the year we are focused on finishing up on our curriculum as well as celebrating our students and their successes,” Sherman wrote in an email.

Morale in the district

Principals from all three of Pembroke’s schools said at a school board meeting last month that the cuts have sparked anxiety among staff surrounding next year.

“It’s impactful not only to the people that we’re going to not be able to bring back next year, but it changes the day-to-day responsibilities for people that remain, too,” said Dan Morris, the headmaster of Pembroke Academy, the town’s high school, where students from Allentown, Chichester and Epsom also attend.

Among other positions, the high school is losing its curriculum director, which will cause administrative roles to shift.

“There are going to be some things that we have not anticipated that we’ll have to figure out next year,” Morris acknowledged.

Morris said uncertainty about the future of the district has made it more challenging to hire educators to fill the positions that went vacant when employees who were not laid off resigned anyway.

“There are question marks about, ‘Well, if this happened this year, can you guarantee it’s not going to happen next year?’ ” Morris said. “And the answer is, ‘No, we can’t guarantee that.’ ”

Three Rivers School principal Bill McCarthy and Pembroke Hill principal Wendy Gerry echoed elements of what Morris reported.

Morale “is up and down as things are going along,” Gerry said. “It also depends on your pocket or how you were personally impacted.”

The loss of ILAB

Jones is beloved at Pembroke Hill and well-known in the community at large. Prior to starting ILAB in 2018, she spent 17 years as a classroom teacher in grades kindergarten, first, second and third.

“I’ve always been really proud to teach in this town,” Jones said in an interview last week. “When I started STEAM six years ago, it was exciting for me because I had an opportunity to be able to work directly with every single student in the building, and I could provide something that they might not always get in a regular classroom setting.”

The class – held once per week for each classroom at the school – incorporates hands-on, student-driven work designed to foster problem-solving skills and promote exploration.

Starting during the pandemic, a nature trail a few hundred yards from the school building has served as a foundational part of the program. Students cleared the trail and built bridges, signs, and structures as large as teepees. In the warmer months, they spent much of their class time in the woods, observing animals and trees and learning about the seasons and topics such as erosion.

Jones hasn’t been told whether the trail will be maintained going forward.

“My heart aches,” she said. “I just know how the kids felt about ILAB. . . . They have expressed to me their disappointment in not continuing to have the program at our school, and they are really sad that they won’t get the opportunity to continue to work on the trail.”

Despite the significant cuts required, not everyone was supportive of the decision to eliminate ILAB, which was proposed by district administrators and approved by the school board.

“I didn’t think that that was the right choice. I felt like ILAB should have been saved,” Dean said.

Gerry, who declined to discuss her thought process behind the decision to cut the program, said that she is thinking about how to incorporate elements of it into the curriculum next year, but she did not have any specifics to share.

While Jones was offered a special education position at Pembroke Hill next year, she made the difficult decision to look elsewhere for a role where she could continue teaching STEAM.

“It was very hard to make that choice, but for me, the value that I see in teaching STEAM or kids having access to this kind of learning was so important that I still wanted to be a part of that,” Jones said.

Details are still being worked out regarding what the program will look like in Chester.

Meanwhile, at Pembroke Hill, Jones hopes the legacy of what her teaching imparted to students will live on.

“My hope is that it sparks an interest in them and gives them permission or inspires them to be able to carry this on on their own and find these learning experiences in their everyday life and be willing to take risks and learn about new things,” she said.

Looking forward

When Pembroke residents voted 305-134 on March 9 to trim the schools’ proposed budget from $33.8 million to $30.8 million, “our eyes were definitely open to a lot of things,” Dean said of the school board’s reaction.

“I think everybody was kind of under that assumption that, ‘Oh, well, the budget always passes for the school,’ ” Dean said. “So they didn’t attend.”

The vote has been characterized as having pitted older residents on fixed incomes against parents of school-aged children, but Dean said it was not that clear-cut. She knows both longtime residents who care deeply about the schools, as well as young parents who are always against the school budget.

Prior to joining the school board two years ago, Dean herself was “on the opposite side of this conversation,” she said.

“I was like, ‘Okay, why is the school spending so much money? Why is this happening? They’ve got to be able to cut things,’ ” Dean said. “Now that I’m actually on the board and I’m sitting here and I’m looking at it and I’m going line by line through things, I’m like, ‘Oh, my gosh, there’s no fat to trim.’ ”

During a post-mortem period over the past two months, the board has realized it must communicate better with residents ahead of the budget process. They have also lobbied their state legislators to improve state funding – though a major effort to do so fizzled out in the Senate last week.

“It’s unfortunate that we’re in a state where we’re not funded properly for the schools, and that’s got to change,” Dean said. “We need to start at ground level and work our way up.”

The school board is considering different modes of community outreach in the coming year.

“If we have to sit and go line by line with people to discuss these things and that’s what we’ll do,” Dean said. “We want them to understand the budget.”

Jeremy Margolis can be contacted at jmargolis@cmonitor.com.