District elementary schools will be reorganized for the 2025-26 school year to group more students and faculty of the same grade level together in fewer buildings, maximize educational resources and encourage a sense of belonging for Poughkeepsie’s youngest learners.
The changes, administrators explained before the Board of Education approved the restructuring plan Wednesday night, are to elevate academic outcomes by enhancing the social and emotional development of students, strengthening the relationships between families and schools, aligning curricula more closely and expanding special programs.
The initiative has been in the works for two years and includes the addition of bus service to all elementary buildings, as detailed in the article above, addressing the key concern raised by parents and caregivers who attended outreach events and took part in the Reconfiguration Task Force shaping the proposal.
For more information on the reconfiguration, visit a dedicated website, Read the presentation given to the board Wednesday or watch the meeting.
Under the plan, pre-K and kindergarten students will no longer be separated from other grades. Instead, the district’s two biggest elementary schools will serve grades PK-2 and the other three will serve grades 3-5. The Task Force also worked to balance out building and class sizes to encourage equitable experiences.
The new alignment includes:
- Pre-K-2
- Krieger: Estimated enrollment 451
- Sojourner Truth (currently Morse): 459
- 3-5
- Warring: 293
- Smith: 215
- Roberto Clemente (formerly Clinton): 296
The realignment is subject to State Education Department approval.
Key goals for the Elementary Leadership Team also included balancing school and average class sizes, while accounting for population trends, and instituting uniform start times for the differently aged buildings. The older students’ buildings will begin each day at 7:45 a.m. and the younger students begin at 8:30 a.m.
Currently, the district’s youngest students switch schools at least once – in some cases twice for those who attend pre-K somewhere other than the Early Learning Center – in their first couple years in the school system.
“That’s not in the best interest of our students developmentally,” said Greg Mott, assistant superintendent of elementary education. “We do believe a pre-K-2 building for four years will allow us to build greater relationships with our students, understand their developmental needs and ensure that by the time they exit second grade we have a greater probability of our students entering third grade (third-grade) ready.”
Janet Bisti, director of elementary education, noted “There’s a big shift in the way that students are taught and the way that they learn around grade 3. So breaking the schools at that point is an appropriate transition.”
Rather than having teachers of one grade level spread among four buildings, it would be two or three. That would not only make it easier to gather students together for group discussion or learning opportunities and assemblies but also easier to provide staff with professional development.
“We’re looking to enhance our students’ social-emotional development by creating a greater focus on age- and grade-appropriate multi-tiered systems of support,” Bisti said. “By having a smaller grade band we’re able to better target what those needs are and have specialists in those areas at those age levels.”
Under the proposal, special programs would be spread among the five schools. All buildings except Smith will have integrated co-teaching and 15:1 classes. Morse will also include SSTAR and behavioral support programming, Krieger and Smith will offer life skills and the dual language programs, Warring will offer SSTAR programming and Clinton will offer behavioral support.
Bisti said having fewer grades in each building offers an opportunity to provide more targeted support services, “such as special education or literacy or numeracy intervention,” as “our AIS teachers or our academic intervention services teachers would be able to concentrate on just one or two grades as opposed to looking at an entire five- or six-grade band.
Bisti stressed the district purposefully placed each program in the buildings where they could best serve the students’ progress and comfort, and where there would be room for the programs to grow.
Under the Community Schools initiative, all buildings will continue to provide music, library, art and extended learning, and the district is looking into expanding the extended learning after-school program to five days with the realignment.
The next steps for the district include ironing out the logistics of the change, such as reorganizing faculty and transporting furniture. That work is already underway with surveys regarding building preferences going to staff and conversations with principals ongoing.
“We do have plans for the symphony of moving everyone around,” Bisti said. “It will be an orchestra that we will have to create together.”
