Braintree committee reviews six redistricting scenarios, pauses decision after parents protest potential closures

Braintree School Committee members heard a detailed presentation Monday, Feb. 10, on six redistricting scenarios from consultant Sanborn Partners and town finance staff, but made no decisions and scheduled further public hearings before any vote.

The committee convened at Colbert School for more than two hours of presentations and public comment about proposals that would keep all six neighborhood elementary schools or reduce the elementary footprint to five by reusing Old South and closing one or two schools. Superintendent Jim Lee opened the presentation and said the town's last comprehensive redistricting was in 2004 and that shifts in enrollment, diversity and English-learner needs have created inequitable class sizes and strained facility spending.

The most immediate reason for the review, Lee said, is budget pressure and the cost to maintain older school systems. "Outdated district boundaries have caused inequitable class sizes and building enrollments," Lee said. Priya Sekaliya of AppGeo/Sanborn then walked the committee through six options that Sanborn modeled: a business-as-usual baseline (no redistricting), a townwide redistricting that keeps all six schools open, and four options that would use Old South and close combinations of Ross, Highlands or Liberty with different north/south redistricting permutations.

Why it matters: the district's capacity and class-size imbalances are uneven. Sanborn's slides…