Four Schools, 2,080 Students
Why Colchester has four school buildings, how full they are, and what closing one would — and wouldn't — save
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 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.
How many seats does each building have, and how many students?
Seats vs. students, building by building
The four buildings are about two-thirds full, and the empty seats are split across all four: 319 at CES, 324 at JJIS, 154 at WJJMS, 297 at Bacon.
Show the data & capacity sources
| Building (grades) | Built / rebuilt | Capacity | Enrolled Oct 2025 | Empty seats | Utilization |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Colchester Elementary (PK-2) | 2006 | 833 | 514 | 319 | 62% |
| Jack Jackter Intermediate (3-5) | 1966 / renovated 2005 | 850 | 526 | 324 | 62% |
| Wm. J. Johnston Middle (6-8) | 1954 / rebuilt 2016-19 | 607 (design enrollment) | 453 | 154 | 75% |
| Bacon Academy (9-12) | 1993 | 850 permanent | 553 | 297 | 65% |
| District | ≈3,140 | 2,046 in the 4 schools (2,080 with ETA & out-of-district) | ≈1,090 | ≈66% |
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.
Close Colchester Elementary
Close Jack Jackter
Close Johnston Middle
Close Bacon Academy
How has the gap between capacity and enrollment moved?
Built for 3,242 — enrolling 2,080
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 in 2016-19 and sized for 607 students.
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.
Show the enrollment series
| October of | Students | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 1970 | 1,828 | Prowda 2021 report, Fig. 1 |
| 1975 | 1,906 | Prowda 2021 |
| 1981 | 1,483 | Prowda 2021 (low point) |
| 2004 | 3,164 | Strategic School Profiles |
| 2005 | 3,229 | SSP |
| 2006 | 3,242 | SSP / Prowda (all-time peak) |
| 2007 | 3,238 | SSP |
| 2008 | 3,180 | SSP |
| 2011 | 3,017 | Prowda 2021, Table 2 |
| 2012 | 2,880 | Prowda 2021 |
| 2013 | 2,733 | Prowda 2021 |
| 2014 | 2,638 | Prowda 2021 |
| 2015 | 2,551 | Prowda 2021 |
| 2016 | 2,426 | Prowda 2021 |
| 2017 | 2,438 | Prowda 2021 |
| 2018 | 2,311 | Prowda 2021 |
| 2019 | 2,312 | Prowda 2021 |
| 2020 | 2,185 | Prowda 2021 |
| 2021 | 2,239 | Prowda 2021 |
| 2022 | 2,235 | EdSight |
| 2023 | 2,161 | EdSight / PSIS |
| 2024 | 2,107 | District enrollment report |
| 2025 | 2,080 | District enrollment report (Oct 14, 2025) |
| 2026-2034 (projected) | 2,139 → 2,330 | NESDEC, Oct 2024 (PK-12) |
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).
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.
(its slack is ~150 seats inside rooms)
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.
- 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.
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.