The four questions this page answers
Why does Colchester have four schools? Because three of them — Bacon Academy (1993), Jack Jackter as renovated (2005), and Colchester Elementary (2006) — were built or rebuilt for a district of 3,200+ students during a 25-year enrollment boom, and because Colchester runs one building per grade band (PK-2 / 3-5 / 6-8 / 9-12), not neighborhood schools. The fourth, Johnston Middle, was rebuilt in 2016-19 and deliberately sized for the smaller district that exists now.
Are the schools full? No. Enrollment is 2,080 — down 36% from the 2006 peak of 3,242 — and the district's buildings hold about 3,140 rated seats. Three of the four buildings sit around 62-65% full.
So could we run three schools? On seat arithmetic alone, two of the four possible closures technically fit and two do not. The ~1,090 empty seats are spread across buildings in ~300-seat pockets, so closing either lower school fails outright; closing Johnston Middle fits only by filling Bacon to exactly 100%, and closing Bacon fits only by relocating every grade in the district and housing the high school in the middle-school building. The infographics below walk through all four scenarios; seat counts are one test — program space, code requirements, and grade-band fit are separate questions the arithmetic doesn't answer.
What would it save if we could? Roughly $0.9-1.4M a year — about 2-2.5% of the school budget — because in a grade-banded district a closed building doesn't cut any classroom teachers, only building overhead.
Students, Oct 2025
2,080
PK-12; peak was 3,242 in Oct 2006 (−36%)
Seats in 4 buildings
≈ 3,140
833 + 850 + 607 + 850 — rated capacities, except Johnston's 607, its state-filed design enrollment (see table note)
Empty seats
≈ 1,090
but the largest single pocket is 324 seats
Potential saving from closing one
≈ $1.1M/yr
≈ 2.3% of the $48.8M school budget — if it fit
Seats vs. students, building by building
October 1, 2025 enrollment against each building's official capacity — CES/JJIS/Bacon from the state ED050 facilities survey and the district's Building Descriptions. The rebuilt Johnston Middle has no post-renovation state capacity rating on file; this page uses the 607 projected enrollment the building was designed to, from its state construction-grant file.
Empty in aggregate, tight in the specifics. The district is only about two-thirds full, but the vacancy comes in four separate pockets — 319 seats at CES, 324 at JJIS, 154 at WJJMS, 297 at Bacon. A grade-band system can only use those pockets if a whole displaced grade band fits into them; none does.
Show the data & capacity sources
Capacities: ED050 School Facilities Survey (2013) and district Building Descriptions (CES 833, JJ 850, Bacon 850 permanent + 12 portable classrooms). WJJMS's 607 is a different kind of number: the state has not re-rated the building since the 2016-19 rebuild (the pre-renovation rating of 1,020 described a wing that was demolished), so this page uses the projected enrollment the project was designed and sized for — "Projected Enrollment: 607," DAS 2016 School Building Project Priority List, project 028-0043, which states "the school will be sized for current and projected enrollment." The building's classroom count (≈24 core rooms at ~25 students) supports the same order of magnitude. Enrollment: district Enrollment Report presented to the BOE Oct 14, 2025. Bacon's grade-level OCR sums to 563 vs. a stated 553 school total; the chart uses the official school total.
Four ways to close a school — and what the seat arithmetic says
October 2025 enrollment vs. state-filed building capacities — Colchester, CT · colchesterctbudget four-schools page
Students who get a seat
Students with no seat
Capacity of the receiving school(s)
Close Colchester Elementary
All of PK-5 (1,040 students) consolidates at Jack Jackter (capacity 850).
Students to place: 1,040
✕ Doesn't fit — 190 students over
Even moving preschool (97) out of the district's buildings entirely still leaves 943 K-5 students for 850 seats.
Close Jack Jackter
Grades 3-5 (526 students) split between the spare space at CES (319) and at Johnston (154).
Students to place: 526
✕ Doesn't fit — 53 students short, best case
The other split — PK-3 at CES (fits) and grades 4-8 at Johnston — puts 812 students in a building designed for 607 (134%).
Close Johnston Middle
Grade 6 (156) joins Jack Jackter; grades 7-8 (297) join Bacon Academy (553 enrolled, 850 permanent seats).
Bacon after the move: 850 students
△ Fits on paper — at exactly 100%
Zero slack at Bacon (planners target ~85%), portables would return — and this closes the town's newest school, rebuilt 2016-19 for $48.7M with bonds still being paid. Middle-school enrollment is also projected to grow back to ~560-576 by 2033-35.
Close Bacon Academy
Grades 6-7 (307) move to CES, grade 8 (146) to Jack Jackter; the high school (553) moves into Johnston Middle (designed for 607).
Johnston after the move: 553 students
△ Fits on paper — every school changes grades
Every student in the district changes buildings: grade 7 joins the PK-2 school (CES lands at 821 of 833 seats — 99%), and the high school moves into a 6-8 building with 74,000 fewer square feet than Bacon and none of its high-school labs, athletic, and arts space. Seat counts alone don't test program space, building codes, or grade configuration.
Built for 3,242 — enrolling 2,080
District enrollment since 1970, with the years each of today's buildings was opened or rebuilt. Annual points from 2004; earlier decades show the published waypoints from the district's enrollment reports. The dashed line is the district's current NESDEC projection (Oct 2024).
Building milestones: ① 1993 — current Bacon Academy opens · ② 2005 — Jack Jackter renovation completed (118,000 sq ft) · ③ 2006 — Colchester Elementary opens; Colchester Intermediate School closes · ④ 2019 — Johnston Middle rebuilt, sized for 607 students.
Three buildings were sized near the peak; the fourth was sized after the fall. Bacon (1993), the Jack Jackter renovation (2005) and CES (2006) all date from the run-up to the 2006 peak of 3,242. Johnston Middle was rebuilt 2016-19, a decade into the decline, and the state project file sized it for 607 students — which is why it, alone, has little spare room. The projection line matters too: NESDEC has enrollment flat-to-rising through 2034-35, so no grade band is projected to empty out.
Show the enrollment series
Definitions differ slightly across sources (PK-12 vs. K-12, out-of-district placements); differences are a few dozen students and do not change the shape. Paid projections have run high in recent years — the 2021 Prowda report projected 2,253 for Oct 2025 (actual: 2,080); NESDEC projected 2,111 (off by 31).
The classroom view: where the empty rooms actually are
Room counts from district Building Descriptions / ED050 survey and the WJJMS project file; rooms-in-use estimated at 2025-26 enrollment and current class sizes (≈19) · colchesterctbudget four-schools page
Rated capacity is essentially classrooms × ~21 students. Counting rooms shows the same problem as counting seats: the spare rooms sit in three different buildings, and the one rebuilt building has almost none.
Rooms in use
Rooms spare
Portable classrooms (idle)
Colchester ElementaryPK-2 · 40 general classrooms
≈27 in use · 13 spare
Jack Jackter Intermediate3-5 · 40 general classrooms
≈27 in use · 13 spare
Wm. J. Johnston Middle6-8 · ≈24 core classrooms as rebuilt
≈24 in use · ~0 spare rooms
(its slack is ~150 seats inside rooms)
Bacon Academy9-12 · 48 permanent + 12 portable
≈33 in use per period · ≈15 spare · 12 portables idle
The merged school no building can hold: a single PK-5 school for today's 1,040 younger students would need roughly 50 homerooms plus art, music and special-education space. The largest building in town has 40 classrooms. Johnston Middle, rebuilt around two four-teacher teams per grade (≈8 core rooms per grade), runs near room-capacity at class sizes of ~19 — its 154 spare seats are empty desks inside occupied rooms, not empty rooms a relocated grade could use.
And if it did fit? The savings are real — and small
Because each grade is already consolidated in one school, closing a building cuts no classroom teachers — sections per grade don't change. What ends is the building's overhead: custodians, utilities, office staff, an administrator, security, supplies, part of maintenance.
≈ $1.1M/yr — estimated recurring saving (range $0.9-1.4M)FY 2026-27 education budget: $48.8M
- What that equals: about 2.3% of the school budget, roughly half a mill — on the order of $100-125 a year on a typical single-family tax bill.
- What's in it (from Colchester's own budget line items): ~$280-340K utilities · ~$215-300K custodial · ~$150-185K office/security staff · $0-110K administration · ~$125-200K benefits on those wages · ~$75-175K maintenance/insurance share.
- What's not in it: teachers (they move with the students), debt service (bonds are owed whether a building is open or not), one-time moving and renovation costs, and the carrying cost of an empty building — closed schools still need to be sealed, insured and maintained.
- The comparables agree: one-school closures in Stafford ($448K), East Lyme (~$550K) and Middletown (~$650-670K) landed in the same band. Groton's ~$1.5M and Elmbrook WI's audited $1.2M were bigger because those districts also cut 9-18 teachers by merging half-empty parallel schools — an option Colchester's grade-band structure already used up.
The near-term versions of this saving don't need a closure. Sharing administration across the adjacent CES/JJIS campus (begun June 2026, when the two schools were put under one principal) and filling Bacon's ~300 empty seats with tuition or magnet students capture a meaningful slice of a closure's value with none of its one-time costs, capacity squeeze, or state-grant complications.
Sources
- DAS Office of School Construction Grants, 2016 School Building Project Priority Category List (Dec. 15, 2015), p. 12 — WJJMS project 028-0043 EA/RR: projected enrollment 607, grades 6-8, 118,065 sq ft, $47,029,213. Page image and transcript preserved in the project repository (
SchoolConsolidationSources/).
- Colchester Public Schools, Enrollment Report as of October 1, 2025 (presented to the BOE Oct. 14, 2025) — per-school enrollment and 2,080 district total. Archived in the project's DocumentArchive.
- Colchester Public Schools Facilities Dept., "Building Descriptions," and State ED050 School Facilities Survey (2013) — capacities of 833 (CES), 850 (JJ), 1,020 (WJJMS pre-renovation), 850 permanent (Bacon); classroom counts. Archived in the DocumentArchive.
- Peter M. Prowda, "Colchester Public Schools Enrollment Projected to 2031" (Nov. 5, 2021) and "…to 2032" (Jan. 27, 2023) — historical enrollment 1970-2021, peak 3,242 (2006). Archived in the DocumentArchive.
- NESDEC, "School Year 2024-25 Enrollment Projection Report" (Oct. 15, 2024) — projections to 2034-35. Archived in the DocumentArchive.
- Rivereast News Bulletin: Feb. 13, 2015, June 12, 2015, June 19, 2015, Feb. 2, 2018 — WJJMS project scope, sizing decisions, referendum result ($48,656,713; net town $20,664,232).
- Colchester BOE budget books (FY 2023-24 line-item budget; FY 2026-27 proposed and adjusted) — per-school staffing and utility lines used in the savings estimate. Archived in the DocumentArchive.
- Comparable closures: Stafford, East Lyme, Middletown, Groton, Elmbrook WI; research: Edunomics Lab (2024), Pew (2011).
Method note: capacity utilization compares October 1, 2025 headcounts to state-filed building capacities; "empty seats" is their difference. Johnston Middle is the exception: no post-renovation capacity rating exists, so its figures use the 607 design enrollment from the state construction-grant file — a planning figure, and every WJJMS utilization, empty-seat, and scenario number on this page depends on it. The savings estimate is an order-of-magnitude model built from Colchester's own per-school budget lines, not a costed plan. The full research memo, with the complete evidence trail, is school-consolidation-research.md in the project repository. Spotted an error? Email the address in the footer.