BURNHAM – SAD 53 Superintendent Michael Gallagher said Thursday that he wanted to assure Burnham residents that there is no plan to close their small rural school.

A recent meeting with administrators and parents about realigning a kindergarten and grade-one classroom may have sparked the rumor that the district was preparing to close the school which serves only 34 pupils in kindergarten through grade three.

SAD 53 serves the towns of Pittsfield, Burnham and Detroit with four schools, three in Pittsfield and one in Burnham. Detroit’s school was closed decades ago and is used now as its town hall.

Gallagher said the meeting held last week at Burnham Village School was to deal with very low enrollment figures for next year’s kindergarten class and to explain to parents the solution.

With only eight pupils now in kindergarten at BVS and eight registered for fall, Gallagher said a multiage, kindergarten-grade one class is being established. The class will be kindergarten-grade one for half of each day and then solely grade one for the other half. It will serve a total of 15 or 16 pupils and use one full-time teacher.

The other district kindergarten, at Manson Park School in Pittsfield, will serve about 15 pupils, said Gallagher.

Several parents at BVS, however, want to see the kindergartners taught separately, using a half-time teacher. The additional cost to the district for this move would be $18,000.

SAD 53 taxpayers fund BVS at $291,504, a cost of more than $8,573 per student, well above the state average of $6,640.

Voters in 1999 also approved $305,275 in renovations for the aging school.

Gallagher said the multiyear approach has been used several times before in the district, including at BVS where a combined grades two and three classroom has been highly successful.

“It has a proven track record and this solution is part of an overall district realignment,” said Gallagher.

The superintendent said that initial growth predictions indicated that about 14 pupils would be entering kindergarten at BVS, but that didn’t happen. “Should we end up with a substantial number of additional children, we’ll put that position back in,” said Gallagher.