MASSENA -- Summing up a Nov. 1 public meeting of the committee looking at possible reconfiguring of the district, Massena Central Superintendent Pat Brady at the Thursday school board meeting said the district’s arrangement of grades is common.

The committee is made up of school and community members and advised by hired consultants with Brady and school board members observing the meetings.

Their most recent meeting was Nov. 1 at Jefferson Elementary.

“We had a meeting that focused on the instructional program,” Brady told the Board of Education. “The main takeaway at this particular meeting is the grade configuration … is very common. The most common is [kindergarten] through five, six through eight and nine through twelve.”

Massena now has kindergarten through sixth grade, seventh and eighth, and ninth through 12th in respective clusters.

“The junior high program they feel is quite typical,” Brady said.

The district recently hired Castallo and Silky education consultants to assist in the process.

The study comes at a time of declining enrollment. According to notes from the meeting posted on the district webpage, enrollment went from 2,924 in the 1998-1999 school year to 2,595 in 2016-2017, an 11.3 percent drop.

The notes from the meeting say “the bottom line is that there is no one best way to organize 2 school grades and that ‘what’ a district does with its grade arrangement is more critical to student success than ‘which’ grade organization it has adopted.”

“Common issues with grade re-configuration include length of bus ride for students, impact on parent involvement, grouping students of similar developmental levels, interaction of students, and number of transitions,” according to a slideshow presentation shown at the Nov. 1 meeting that is posted to the district website.

The committee next meets on Dec. 20 at Nightengale Elementary.