A crowd of parents and community members living within the Cache County School District boundaries joined the school board’s study session on Thursday evening to voice opinions on the potential impending elementary school configuration change. At the last school board meeting, the vote to change all of the Smithfield elementary schools to a Kindergarten through 5th grade configuration passed, but because of outcry from some community members, the board is revisiting the issue.

The school board allowed everyone who had signed up on circulating clipboards to speak for one and half minutes at the meeting. With microphones standing on either side of the board’s seating area, patrons spoke their minds.

Most speakers were parents of students in the affected schools. Each side alternated representation until the patrons wishing to speak in favor of the Kindergarten-5th grade switch dried up, after which more people in favor of the K-2 / 3-5 configuration spoke. By the end of the study session, audience members were applauding after speakers.

Speakers on both sides of the issue appealed to wanting the best possible educational situation for the children—the only problem is that they see different results being the definition of what is best. Many of the same arguments were presented as evidence on both sides of the configuration discussion. The most notable of these two-way arguments revolved around the word “transitions” for children of elementary school age. Both sides brought up the inevitability of change in children’s lives, but some wanted to lessen the amount of that change and some wanted to embrace it. Some parents expressed the difficulties that children have each time they are required to transition, and some parents told of the excitement with which their children look forward to these many transitions.

Aside from the transition question, several patrons expressed frustration with the school board’s previous vote, feeling that their voices had been ignored. Mary McBride, a parent in favor of the K-5 configuration, said that many of the people with the preference for a K-2/3-5 configuration simply object to the configuration change because they feel that their voices weren’t heard beforehand. Four parents who spoke in favor of the current K-2/3-5 configuration verbalized this very concern.

Now that proponents of both configurations have voiced their preferences, the school board will make a decision which will inevitably cause some community members to accept a transition to an elementary school configuration they don’t want. Despite the strong feelings on both sides of the issue, there is one common thread that ties together the comments of speakers representing both sides—and that is the confidence community members have in the high quality teachers in the district.

There will be further North Boundary meetings at Sunrise Elementary at 7 p.m. on Dec. 15 and at Greenville Elementary at 7 p.m. on Dec. 16. The school board meeting to decide the issue will be held on Dec. 17 at 5:30 p.m.