By Brian McCready
Milford Bureau Chief
MILFORD — The Board of Education will extend for a year the plan to send incoming Mathewson School kindergartners to Pumpkin Delight School to ease overcrowding.
This is the first year the kindergartners have been attending Pumpkin Delight. Administrators said the move was seamless and parents were supportive.
The kindergartners will be relocated back to Mathewson in the fall for first grade.
School board Chairman David Hourigan, D-4, said the board agreed to extend the move because it has not completed its redistricting review, and no plan will be ready for the start of the next school year.
Hourigan said the board will review the kindergarten relocation in another year, and he hopes that by then the board will have several redistricting options to explore.
Mathewson Principal Clifford Dudley, in a letter, said that in 2006-07, Mathewson was overcrowded with 574 students. At the third-grade level there was no additional classroom space, which would have led to a class size of 25. Dudley said that large a class could have affected student achievement.
He also said the absence of kindergarten classes makes it possible to schedule more time for the upper grades to use the computer room for research.
“The removal of the five kindergarten classes from Mathewson also directly impacted the school safety,” Dudley wrote. “The principal and parents had such concerns regarding the overcrowding in the cafeteria that a Milford Fire Department inspector was called in for advice. That overcrowding no longer exists.”