The Community Advisory Committee met last night, still working through the details of a possible school merger; the topics were athletics/co-curricular activities, and building use.
The coaches of Hamilton Central and of Morrisville-Eaton have already merged the football teams, which are now black and white rather than green for Hamilton and red for Morrisville-Eaton; other sports have been effectively merged for longer, in the sense that a student who wants to play sport X which is supported only at the other school may simply go and join that team, subject to various permissions issues. An actual school merger would make this automatic for all teams; it's not clear to me how much difference it would really make. It might be easier to maintain modified and JV soccer, for example; these could be merged without merging varsity soccer, but in that case it would not be possible for a kid to move between JV and varsity in the middle of a year. Still, if it's best for the whole soccer programs to be merged, then they can be merged without involving the rest of the school. (Unless the league forbids it, which is possible but unusual. I think. If I understand correctly. Which I probably don't.) There is a possible disadvantage to any team merger, namely that there may be only so many "starring"/starting/whatever positions on a team and if you merge two teams into one then you've just reduced the number of stars, and therefore you've reduced the odds of any particular kid becoming one. And another disadvantage that some kids walk or bicycle to practices, which becomes less practical with merged teams. And a third disadvantage in that such activities are dependent on volunteers; if the school moves away from its community, or from one of its communities, then some volunteers will probably be less involved.
And the same applies to co-curricular activities generally, and music/drama in particular.
On building usage, we have one contiguous structure in Hamilton and two, being an elementary separated from the high school, in Morrisville (and each village has a bus garage.) So you take projected enrollments and try to split them up so that the merged high school ends up in one building, while the elementary and middle schools may or may not physically merge. Well, high school in Hamilton has the advantage that ambitious students can take a couple of Colgate courses. So if we leave the elementary schools alone, merge the middle schools into Morrisville, merge the high schools into Hamilton, perhaps it can almost work. There was a review of academic benefits of merger...the clearest to me would be that Morrisville students might get the AP classes and stringed instruments and foreign language instruction that they've dropped, which are still kept in Hamilton -- and maybe economies of scale would actually make it easier to keep them in a merged school than for Hamilton to keep them alone. (A Morrisville parent remarked that a kid who doesn't want to take AP classes may look better in college admissions evaluation if he went to a school that simply didn't offer them. My feeling is that a college that thinks that way is not a place where a kid like that should be applying.)
Or then again, maybe not.
The coaches of Hamilton Central and of Morrisville-Eaton have already merged the football teams, which are now black and white rather than green for Hamilton and red for Morrisville-Eaton; other sports have been effectively merged for longer, in the sense that a student who wants to play sport X which is supported only at the other school may simply go and join that team, subject to various permissions issues. An actual school merger would make this automatic for all teams; it's not clear to me how much difference it would really make. It might be easier to maintain modified and JV soccer, for example; these could be merged without merging varsity soccer, but in that case it would not be possible for a kid to move between JV and varsity in the middle of a year. Still, if it's best for the whole soccer programs to be merged, then they can be merged without involving the rest of the school. (Unless the league forbids it, which is possible but unusual. I think. If I understand correctly. Which I probably don't.) There is a possible disadvantage to any team merger, namely that there may be only so many "starring"/starting/whatever positions on a team and if you merge two teams into one then you've just reduced the number of stars, and therefore you've reduced the odds of any particular kid becoming one. And another disadvantage that some kids walk or bicycle to practices, which becomes less practical with merged teams. And a third disadvantage in that such activities are dependent on volunteers; if the school moves away from its community, or from one of its communities, then some volunteers will probably be less involved.
And the same applies to co-curricular activities generally, and music/drama in particular.
On building usage, we have one contiguous structure in Hamilton and two, being an elementary separated from the high school, in Morrisville (and each village has a bus garage.) So you take projected enrollments and try to split them up so that the merged high school ends up in one building, while the elementary and middle schools may or may not physically merge. Well, high school in Hamilton has the advantage that ambitious students can take a couple of Colgate courses. So if we leave the elementary schools alone, merge the middle schools into Morrisville, merge the high schools into Hamilton, perhaps it can almost work. There was a review of academic benefits of merger...the clearest to me would be that Morrisville students might get the AP classes and stringed instruments and foreign language instruction that they've dropped, which are still kept in Hamilton -- and maybe economies of scale would actually make it easier to keep them in a merged school than for Hamilton to keep them alone. (A Morrisville parent remarked that a kid who doesn't want to take AP classes may look better in college admissions evaluation if he went to a school that simply didn't offer them. My feeling is that a college that thinks that way is not a place where a kid like that should be applying.)
Or then again, maybe not.
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