Dear Students, Staff, and Families:
Welcome Back!! What a smooth start to the year. I can feel the energy throughout the district. Wishing everyone a wonderful 2026/2027 school year. This week’s message is going to focus on upcoming redistricting for both Elementary and Middle Schools. I understand that this topic can cause some worry; I want to be sure everyone is informed.
On September 11, 2025, the Cumberland School Committee voted 6-1 to engage Transpar Group, Inc. for a transportation efficiency study and redistricting of both Middle and Elementary Schools for the 2027/2028 school year. You can watch the start of the conversation from August 28, 2025 (around 32 minutes) and the September 11, 2025 (around 36 minutes) meeting where the vote was taken. Since that time, updates from Transpar have been on the agenda as they became available. I have added them all to one folder here for your convenience. The dates of the updates coincide with a school committee meeting where there may have been additional discussion of the update. The committee felt it was important to have a company with no direct ties to Cumberland complete this work, as biases that we sometimes see otherwise would not be a factor. RIDE went to bid for this contract with Transpar, and Cumberland capitalized on the opportunity to have our transportation and redistricting analyzed by professionals who specialize in this work.
One question I have heard several times is Why Redistricting? School districts are often faced with the challenge of trying to keep schools within a town in balance. In many instances, within a 5- to 10-year span, districts must adjust boundary lines of schools as some schools become overcrowded, while other schools are underpopulated.
Today, Cumberland finds itself in the position where we have overcrowding in some schools and are under-enrolled in other schools. A clear example of this can be seen at Garvin Elementary, where the desirable enrollment should be approximately 432 students while we currently have 472 students. At the same time, construction will be completed on a new school at the B.F. Norton Elementary School site. Like Community Elementary in the north, this southernmost elementary school will be a four-track school that can hold 575 students. This larger school in the southern part of town was designed specifically to help mitigate enrollment increases in Cumberland.
Cumberland is one of the few Rhode Island towns actually gaining student enrollment year over year. While this is certainly a positive trend for the town, it does present challenges when talking about keeping school boundary areas balanced.
If you would like to sign up to receive upcoming school committee agendas as they are posted, please complete this form. We are working on a Frequently Asked Questions page that will be linked to the district home page and should be available sometime next week. We look forward to our continued partnership and the success of Cumberland students.
Sincerely,
Philip D. Thornton, Ed.D.
Superintendent of Schools