Half the rooms were already closed off to improve efficiencies. Enrollment projections
were for increases, not decreases, at Wells. The projection numbers used were
a distillation of the enrollment decrease formula generated for the district and
applied mathematically to each school. The local administrator had economic development
information for the board which would have caused them to suspect increasing,
not decreasing enrollment. This was ultimately the case. 18 elementary children
attend school from Wells and a further 5 moved away, because they couldn't wait
for the last minute tactics of the board.
Under the old funding formula, the wells school was a cash cow for the school
board, generating huge sums of money for no effort. As a result the board never
attempted to improve the efficiencies of the building. When the formula changed
their own neglect of the facility began to work against the students in the
board's eyes. Nonetheless, the school continued to generate a $100,000 Small
Community grant from the Ministry of Education. According to the figures provided
by the district [footnote 4] the school is generating $65,000 more than it costs
to operate.