The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Sherman to let teachers’ kids attend class for free
SHERMAN — Full-time district teachers will be able to send their own children to the Sherman School free of charge this academic year, thanks to a policy change in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
The Board of Education voted during a special meeting on Friday to amend its policy on nonresident student attendance for the 2020-21 school year, which is scheduled to begin Aug. 31.
Under the amended policy, tuition fees will be waived for full-time Sherman School teachers who enroll their kindergartners through eighth-graders in school this year.
Normally, they would have to pay $6,700 per child — half the regular tuition rate for other out-of-town families — to send their children to the Sherman School. Melendez said that cost would be “quite significant, especially under these circumstances where spouses may be unemployed.”
The amended policy will also allow teachers with preschoolers to enroll them in the school district’s preschool program at the same $225-per-month tuition rate paid by residents.
“We have a number of teachers who are impacted by other schools and health care needs that would not allow them to be able to teach full time potentially,” Superintendent-Principal Jeff Melendez said.
He said there are at least two benefits to having teachers’ children attend the Sherman School, one being a reduced risk to possible COVID-19 exposure.
“By allowing teachers to have their children attend, we effectively remove one variable of their families being exposed to cohorts in other towns,” Melendez said Monday. “We hope that this will improve safety for our faculty and our students, even if the effect is minimal.”
Melendez said another benefit is a reduced number of staff taking leaves of absence for child care reasons.
“Since a number of surrounding districts need to use a hybrid model to reopen safely, our faculty who reside in those com
munities may be challenged to find child care that would prevent them from coming to work every day,” he said. “Such leaves of absence would be costly to fill, and not having their teacher would disrupt learning for our students.”
Melendez said there would be no impact on the school board’s operating budget and “very minimal impact to the town from a revenue standpoint.”
Several teachers have expressed interest in sending their children to the Sherman School this year, Melendez said, and 12 are expected to attend — two preschoolers, four firstgraders, two second-graders, one third-grader, one fourthgrader, one fifth-grader and one sixth-grader.
As outlined in the district’s current nonresident attendance policy, teachers with special needs children may be charged “a supplemental tuition or fee ... in instances where special or additional services are provided,” and that the tuition or fee “shall be based upon the actual costs associated with providing the special or
additional services.”
Melendez said any teacher planning to send a special needs child to the Sherman School should contact the district to go over the costs before school starts.
Preschool enrollment and K-8 attendance will be an “open offer” to full-time Sherman School teachers through the end of the school year, said Melendez, who told the school board he would inquire to see if any administrative staff would be interested as well.
With the exception of Stamford — where public school teachers have been able to have their children attend the city’s public schools free of charge for years, regardless of where they live — many, if not most, school districts in western Connecticut do not offer free admittance to school employees’ children.
The New Haven County town of Guilford, however, has “done something similar” to Sherman’s policy change to help staff prepare for a return to school, said state Department of Education communications director Peter Yazbak.
The Sherman school board’s next regular meeting is scheduled for Sept. 2 at 7 p.m.