'Nothing like it': Here's how your child can attend affluent New Castle elementary school

NEW CASTLE — At New Castle’s tiny kindergarten through fifth-grade elementary school, students learn to knit, track hurricanes, study robotics and cook Italian food during the course of an average week, all while maintaining their everyday public education studies.

The Maude H. Trefethen School, named after the island town’s school teacher who taught students from 1895 to 1946, according to Seacoast historian J. Dennis Robinson, is the town’s only school. Since 1952, the town’s lone school building, where Miami Heat sharpshooter Duncan Robinson studied as a youngster and began his basketball journey, has stood on Cranfield Street.

Handwritten town records dating back to the early-to-mid 20th century show New Castle’s elementary school enrollment levels have ranged between 20 to roughly 60 students over the years, according to Principal David Latchaw.

“The reason for that is that buildable lots ceased to exist in the 1950s on the island. So when a handful of families move, it’s just like a flip of the coin if a family comes in with elementary school-aged children,” Latchaw said. "If we get three or four families that come in, the population goes up. If we have a number of families living at the U.S. Coast Guard station who have kids, our population will spike up. The population has always snaked. It always has and always will. That’s never changed.”

This year, the school’s total enrollment is 26 students, a figure far from other schools in the district. Newington Public School has about 50 students, while Rye's elementary and junior high schools have around 200 students each and Greenland Central School has nearly 400 students.

With summer vacation having come to a close, Maude H. Trefethen students returned to their combined classrooms last week inside the single-story structure, where they were met by Latchaw and the school’s handful of full-time teachers. The rest of the staff at the school, including its extracurricular and physical education teachers, nurse and secretary, are part-time employees.

Some Maude H. Trefethen School students aren't from New Castle. Here's how they're able to attend.

For about a decade, the school has welcomed students from the greater Seacoast community to add to its small class sizes on a rolling basis. The New Hampshire Department of Education reports that the state permits each public school district to set its own open enrollment policies, with no law or mandate in place requiring them to charge tuition to out-of-towners.

The school is part of SAU 50, which is comprised of several elementary and middle schools in Greenland, New Castle, Newington and Rye. Upon their eighth-grade graduation, students in all four municipalities then attend Portsmouth High School.

This academic year, for the first time, the school is advertising its non-resident program online, one that seeks applications from families in the Seacoast, southern Maine and northeastern Massachusetts at a yearly tuition of $7,900. An approximate 80% tuition discount is available to out-of-town students who have a grandparent, aunt or uncle residing in New Castle, said Latchaw.

“Approximately 10 years ago, the New Castle School Board decided to open up our public school to non-resident students so long as spacing allows and the full, requisite application process occurs,” he explained. “Then, as is the case now, we believed this could be a truly unique opportunity for other students to benefit from our amazing learning environment while simultaneously giving resident students the opportunity to learn with new faces, something that can be hard to come by at times on a tiny New Hampshire island.”

The school’s current out-of-district student population includes students from the Exeter area and Eliot, Maine.

Though student enrollment has historically been teeny at the New Castle elementary school, Latchaw, now in his eighth year at the head of the school, noted that the school is not in danger of closing. The school’s classroom size sweet spot is between 13 to 15 students at most, and about six non-resident students attend the school each year.

The out-of-district student tuition program is also used in Newington, according to Latchaw.

“Regardless of whether or not we bring in non-resident students, we’re still going to be a public school,” he said.

Is Education Freedom Account funding allowed? Yes. Is anyone using the grants in SAU 50? No.

The New Hampshire Department of Education noted that state students can use an Education Freedom Account voucher to pay to attend a school in another municipal district than the one they live in. Should the cost of attending the school exceed the grant from the Education Freedom Account, families would need to pay for the difference in order for their child to go to an out-of-district school.

The state-awarded grants are administered by the Children’s Scholarship Fund, with families at or below 300% of the poverty level eligible to use the funding toward their kids’ education.

“Education Freedom Accounts allow eligible New Hampshire students to direct state funded per-pupil education adequacy grants toward select educational programming of their choice for a variety of learning experiences,” according to the state Department of Education.

No student at the Maude H. Trefethen School nor any student throughout SAU 50 attending any school in Greenland, New Castle, Newington or Rye are using education freedom account funding, District Superintendent Steve Zadravec shared.

What is the atmosphere of the school like?

Despite lower enrollment, volunteers have been a constant at the school for years, ranging from current and former parents to town retirees who visit classrooms to speak and work with students.

On occasion, older town residents come in to share their painting, knitting, writing and language skills, including an Italian woman who showed the children how to cook some dishes. One islander named Mike Geanoulis has come to the school to read a self-written poem and share his research about New Castle's ties to the American Revolution. The poem hangs on a wall in the school.

“There’s a lot of really great community support,” said Zadravec, the superintendent of schools for SAU 50 who formerly served in the same role within the Portsmouth school district.

According to Latchaw and Zadravec, the school has formed good relationships with area agencies such as the U.S. Coast Guard, which built a new playhouse for the students to use after a prior one began to fall in. The school this year is also partnering with Durham-based One World Language School to bring in a part-time Spanish teacher who lived in Colombia, as well as with the University of New Hampshire to have Melissa Ryan, assistant professor of music, teach music on a part-time basis in New Castle.

'The community is amazing'

Near the school’s multipurpose room, where students study robotics and use 3D printers, fourth- and fifth-grade teacher William Purcell propped up a green screen for his students to use to present a newscast-style presentation about Hurricane Idalia’s path toward Florida.

A Maude H. Trefethen teacher since 2009, Purcell sent his own children to the school using the non-resident tuition program and commended the school’s volunteer network and part-time employees.

“These are highly intelligent people helping out,” he said. “We take that help when we can, and we’re blessed with a lot of help.”

One is Portsmouth-based state-certified physical education and health teacher Melody Gray, a part-time teacher who leads Maude H. Trefethen students in fitness outside on the basketball court and lawn.

With no gymnasium on-site, Gray takes her students outdoors nearly year-round. In the winter, the students build snow forts, go snowshoeing, sled down small hills at the school and use the ice skating rink installed each year at the school.

“The community is amazing. The support of the staff and principal is amazing. Whatever I want to do or bring to the table or add to the program, he’s usually on board,” she said of Latchaw. “We all collaborate really well, which I really like.”

In a given week, 10 to 20 adults not fully employed or working for the school part-time will come to the school to present or assist with classes, the principal added.

“The excitement and joy is palpable here,” said Latchaw.

Custodian Paul Mundo, who works in another school district in addition to the Maude H. Trefethen School, says the staff members and volunteers at the school are friends who assist each other with tasks. Students at the school, which has a five-to-one student-to-teacher ratio, regularly approach him to greet him and talk.

“This is more of a family atmosphere,” he said. “It’s a good teacher-to-student ratio, I feel.”

Parent Dayna Barker, mother to a Maude H. Trefethen first-grader, began volunteering at the school last year, assisting with organizing folders and other items in the few classrooms on the public school campus.

The ability for Barker to drop in and see the school setting her daughter has entered and be able to help without getting in the way of her child’s school day has been a plus for her and her family.

“It’s really magical to have the chance to just be in this world,” she said. “This is the greatest school ever. I wish I could go back in time and do kindergarten and now first grade at MHT. There's nothing like it anywhere so we are really lucky.”

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Here's how your child can attend New Castle NH tiny elementary school