The Manchester Board of School Committee formed a subcommittee to help alleviate overcrowding in some of the city’s elementary schools by studying and recommending options for redistricting. Due to the fact that the city has far more capacity than enrolled students, the problem could be solved by moving students from where there is too little space to where there is too much space.
Instead, the redistricting subcommittee voted to recommend the construction of a new elementary school and an addition to Jewett Street school. This decision came despite the fact that the district is currently 29% empty. I decided to create an infographic to illustrate the scale of the emptiness of Manchester’s schools.
The data used in this analysis came from a PDF document on the MSD website: reference-spreadsheet-as-of-8-11-16. I used the administration’s reported “Capacity,” which is 90% of the elementary schools’ raw capacities and 85% of the high schools’ raw capacities.
Highlights from this analysis include:
- The district currently has room for approximately 5,600 more students
- The school buildings are 29% below their capacities
- Elementary schools are 8% empty
- Middle schools are 39% empty
- High schools are 44% empty
- There are 3 elementary schools over capacity by a total of 58 students
The subcommittee voted to spend approximately $20M to accommodate 58 students when there are 5,599 empty seats.
Click on the image below to view it full-size. The infographic may be licensed via Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International.
