WALWORTH, N.Y. -- Emotions filled the Wayne Central Middle School cafeteria Wednesday night as the board of education voted 7 to 2 to consolidate the district's students onto one campus, ultimately closing Freewill Elementary School in Walworth. This is a decision some parents say will impact the town and deprive the 270 students there of its family-oriented atmosphere.

"The 5th graders help the kindergarteners with their snow boots and their mittens in the winter, they don’t get that at Ontario Elementary and Ontario Primary,” Walworth resident Steve Gallaher said. “They don’t have things like Safety Patrol to teach the kids responsibility. They change the teachers every two years; they don’t know your names. At Freewill, the kids in 5th grade know every teacher in that building and every teacher knows every child in that building. That makes a difference in their lives.”

The option the board chose will mean Ontario Primary School will serve kindergarten through second grade. Ontario Elementary School will serve 3rd through 4th grade, 5th through 8th graders will attend the middle school and 9th through 12th graders will attend the high school. 

During public comment, some supported this idea, saying they felt they needed to come together as a district, not as individual schools.

"To us it made more sense for all the students to be in the same location, so that they could be with their graduation cohort, all the way through school,” Ontario resident Brian Dastyck said. “They could build those meaningful relationships sooner. Also we weren’t talking about taking more than 100 students away from their friends and moving them into an unfamiliar location with unfamiliar people. Coming from the other direction, all of those students will be coming together, they would stay together.”

Several other options were considered, which included closing other schools, but Walworth parent Matt Ross-McGuire said he doesn't want to see any schools closed.

“I know that Wayne is a very wealthy area,” Ross-McGuire said. “All told it’s not known for that, but if you look at areas like the lake, you see multi-million dollar homes. There are industries lining 104. I know that there are limits in funding education, but we have to look for creative solutions. That’s what leadership is for.”

During the board's discussion, members said it was a very difficult decision to make. Board member Ron Miller said he felt this option would save the district from financial strains. Board member Dennis Landry voted against it and said he didn’t want to see any of the schools close and felt the money could be found elsewhere.

Superintendent Mathis Calvin said the decision made reflects the guiding principles that the board has had to go by in the past year.

“That is, one we want to make sure we offer an appropriate education for all students, secondly that no matter what we do we ensure that all kids are safe and sound in their schools that they attend, then third that no matter what happens all children receive the same learning experiences, and then fourth that the district operates in a very efficient matter,” Calvin said.

He said the next step is to figure out how this will all come together.

“Who will lead the schools in the future, what will the great configurations, in terms of where will the great configurations all fit at in our schools,” Calvin said. “We already have had some preliminary discussions about that with the board and so we’ll now begin to think about that, the actual program, how will it look and operate in the future.”

Calvin said it could take some time for all this to take place.