Schools in the Nauset district face rising costs and declining enrollment, so officials hired consultants to map out their different options for potentially consolidating the district's five elementary schools.
All the options cost millions.
That's according to Parker Mumford of the Provincetown Independent.
CAI's Gilda Geist spoke to Parker to learn more.
Gilda Geist Nauset is already a regional school district, so why did the district do a regionalization study?
Parker Mumford Well, they were curious about efficiency and ways to improve their efficiency. There's declining enrollment in most of the schools, and all of these buildings are getting old and are in need of some sort of repair. Some of them are in need of a lot of repairs. So back in 2024, Eastham, Orleans and Brewster got a state grant for a regionalization and efficiency study, and Wellfleet joined in in 2025. We got the results a couple weeks ago.
GG The study recommended four different options for the school district. Are there one or two that stand out as particularly likely to happen, or on the other hand, particularly controversial?
PM Yeah, so these aren't technically recommendations. These were just possible scenarios that the consultants were looking at, and these were the scenarios that the consultants thought were worth digging the most into. They had a list of around 20 scenarios, and they narrowed it down into four or five, depending on how you count, that they thought were worth really looking at. And that was based on input that they had from a committee that was composed of representatives from all four towns in the district. One of the scenarios, nothing changes. The others, one of them merges Brewster's two elementary schools, so Stony Brook and Eddy, into a single school for Brewster. One of them leaves one school in Brewster and then merges Wellfleet, Eastham and Orleans into a single school in Orleans. One of the scenarios keeps that school in Brewster, has a school in Orleans and then merges Wellfleet and Eastham into one elementary school in Wellfleet. And then the last scenario has three schools. Two of them [would] serve kindergarten through 2nd grade—one in Eastham, one in Brewster—and the other [would] serve grades three through five in Orleans. The most controversial ones were the ones that ended up shutting down Wellfleet Elementary because the Wellfleet select board made it really clear that they are not open to closing down Wellfleet Elementary. Eastham also seemed kind of opposed to closing down Eastham Elementary, but they were a little more pragmatic than Wellfleet on whether or not that would need to happen. And the reason for that is that here on the Outer Cape, a lot of towns see their schools as a kind of community center, and it's taken as a blow to the town when they need to shut down their elementary school.
GG Even the cheapest option here, including doing nothing, involves millions of dollars in expenditures. Where is that money going to come from?
PM So, all these schools do need repairs. At Stony Brook Elementary, the consultants estimated they need about $44 million to repair it. And at that point, you might as well rebuild it, which they said would cost about $75 million, most likely. And so that money would come from the taxpayers, largely. Now, taxpayers here on the Outer Cape tend to be okay with funding school building projects, but it's always better if costs can be reduced somehow. There are these grants from the Massachusetts School Building Authority, the state agency, but those are pretty selective, and they're only given to schools that hit a certain enrollment target or space use target. And as of right now, all the elementary schools in the district are below that target.
GG There have been several public meetings over the past few weeks about these regionalization options. So, what happens next?
PM Well, that steering committee that's composed of representatives from the towns is going to continue to meet over the next year. They're hopefully going to get some recommendations that they're going to present to the select boards. In Eastham, the elementary school is actually in pretty good shape, and enrollment is actually projected to increase there. So that means that a push for change on a district level or regional level would probably come from one of the other towns, like Orleans or Brewster, who might be looking to cut costs instead of rebuilding these underutilized buildings. We'll see what recommendations come before the select boards.
GG How do conversations about affordable housing fit into this regionalization issue?
PM I think that that's kind of the thing that a lot of people are quietly realizing, is that one of the reasons why enrollment is on the decline is because it's hard for families with young children to find affordable housing here on the Outer Cape. And there are initiatives in Eastham, Wellfleet, Orleans, but these initiatives move pretty slowly, and they also face a lot of opposition from community members. In a lot of cases, it seems kind of ironic that the town really wants the school to stay open and yet at the same time is not doing everything that it could to get more students there, and it's definitely something that I think is going to be in the front of the minds of these towns going forward.
