It is the town’s oldest school, built in 1910, a place that has educated generations of immigrants, including some of Plymouth’s newest residents.
For many of its students, English is not their first language. Two thirds of them come from low-income households, compared with 31 percent townwide.
“We have families that have been in North Plymouth for generations, where their grandparents and great-grandparents have come to school here,” said Kristin Wilson, principal of Hedge School. With just 210 students from kindergarten through fifth grade, the school is the town’s smallest. “We have families that are new to Plymouth, and then we have a large growing Brazilian population.”
That makes it distinct from every other school in town. The population of Plymouth’s public school system is overwhelmingly white – 81 percent, according to the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.
Hedge faces many challenges – from integrating immigrant students to addressing needs for food and clothing to dealing with an aging infrastructure to rising fears about a crackdown on undocumented immigrants – but Wilson, teachers, and parents say they are proud of the community that fills the hallways and classrooms every day.
The Brazilian children are from all over the South American country, not just its major cities, Wilson said.
“A lot of the families come from agricultural areas,” she said. “A lot of families have literacy challenges in their native language (Portuguese),” never mind English.
Most do not have books at home that are written in English or Portuguese, she said. To help address that, the school has spent about $15,000 buying books for the library, including some in Portuguese.
A couple of years ago, Hedgebegan organizing family nights for Portuguese-speaking families.
“We call them our multilingual learners’ nights, and we had translators available,” Wilson said. “And we started by really just talking about school and how school works.”
At the events, there are discussions about homework and how parents can communicate with the school, and instructions on using phone apps to translate the school’s website and newsletters. Staff members encourage families to read with their children, using their phones to translate text.
Another evening event focused on science.
To further help students acclimate, signs throughout the building and outside are in English and Portuguese.
Wilson often spends time explaining school procedures and rules to parents – things like report cards, and the requirement that students up to third grade must be accompanied by an adult if they walk to school. And half days because of teacher conferences can cause confusion, she said.
Since 2013, the number of Hedge students who are English-language learners and those whose first language is not English has dramatically increased. In 2013, just 3 percent were English-language learners. For 6 percent, English was not their first language, meaning that while they are proficient in it, they also speak another language.
This year, 34 percent of students are English-language learners, and for 42 percent, English is not their primary language.
New students typically arrive in January, not at the start of the school year. That’s mainly because the school calendar in some Latin American countries runs from January to November. As a result, families generally travel to the US in December so their children can start school the next month. But this year, which coincided with the return of President Trump to the White House and his pledge to deport millions of undocumented immigrants – was different. For the first time in 12 years there were no new students from other countries in January, Wilson said.
The Plymouth public school system – like others in Massachusetts – doesn’t collect or track the immigration status of students or their families, according to Superintendent Christopher Campbell.
“In line with both federal and state law – including guidance from the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) – we are committed to providing a free and appropriate public education to all students, regardless of immigration status,” Campbell said in an email.
“The Commonwealth of Massachusetts and DESE have made it clear that all children residing in the state have the right to attend public school, and that schools may not inquire into or document a student’s or family’s immigration status as a condition of enrollment,” Campbell said. “Our role is to create safe, supportive, and welcoming environments for every student, and our focus remains on meeting their academic, social, and emotional needs – without exception.”
At Tuesday’s Select Board meeting, Chair Kevin Canty, who lives in North Plymouth, said he has heard of schoolchildren who are afraid that their parents are going to be gone when they get home from school.
Those concerns were amplified last Friday when Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers showed up on Standish Avenue, just up the street from Hedge, where they were confronted by a North Plymouth resident who recorded them with her phone.
“I’ve talked to schools about how to prepare students for [ICE detaining a parent], and I find that to be troubling, that there are children in our schools that are worried about that,” Canty said during the Select Board meeting. “That situation with those children is very distressing.”
Canty, other Select Board members, Town Manager Derek Brindisi, and two school committee members meet regularly to discuss how the town and the schools can best coordinate on various issues. Canty told the Independent that at the last two meetings, including one three weeks ago, ICE raids and the worries of the students came up. At an earlier meeting this year, some parents were reported to be keeping their children home out of fear, he said.
Meantime, education goes on inside the school, regardless of what is happening here and across the country.
Hedge has two English-language learning teachers and a fellow. Through Merrimack College’s Teacher Fellowship program, students complete a full school year of teaching under the supervision of a teacher at Hedge.
Patricia Santana, who is from Brazil, has been the Portuguese-English interpreter at Hedge for three-and-a-half years. The children pick up English quickly, she said, but parents can struggle.
Getting accustomed to the length of the school day, however, is challenging for many of the newcomers.
“We are talking about two different cultures,” Santana said. For example, she said, in Brazil, students often go to school for just the morning, afternoon, or evening.
“When they first come here, they start to complain about [being] in school for too long,” she said. “That is one of the biggest struggles for them.”
The fact that going to school is required by law is a new concept for some parents, too. While school is officially mandatory up to age 14 in Brazil, not all parents are aware of the requirement.
Even the morning ritual of reciting the Pledge of Allegiance prompts questions.
“What does ‘allegiance’ mean?” Wilson said. “What is ‘the United States of America and to the republic?’ What’s a republic?”
Then there are the holidays.
Labor Day, Indigenous People’s Day, Halloween, Veterans Day, and Thanksgiving take some sorting out, along with “the story of the Pilgrims and the Mayflower,” Wilson said.
In fourth grade, the curriculum is all about the regions of the United States.
“For a lot of our newcomers, that’s a big learning curve,” Wilson said. “They don’t know what California is, necessarily.”
Staff members remind parents to come to parent-teacher conferences but allow them to join by phone if they cannot attend in person.
“All of our families [are] working-class families, so everybody’s working,” Wilson said. “People can’t take time off to come to a conference. They know that education is important, but they’re trying to survive.”
The school attempts to help ease the economic pressure as best it can. Students are sent home with backpacks full of food staples every Thursday. Hedge also provides Thanksgiving and Christmas meals. This year, it also provided Christmas presents for more than 40 children.
“Quintal’s does a giving tree for us,” Wilson said, referring to Quintal Bros. Produce. In addition, local churches supply gifts for families.
The school also makes sure all the children have winter coats, thanks to organizations that collects outerwear.
“In the fall, we do a coat drive up in the front lawn, and we just take a bunch of winter coats, and we make sure that everybody who wants one can take one off the racks,” Wilson said. “And then, throughout the year, as kids need them, we supply them winter coats or boots or whatever they need.”
Despite these efforts, there is only so much that can be done about the Hedge’s physical limitations.
At 115 years old, the building is bursting at the seams and lacks modern amenities. That requires creative use of limited space. There is no room for an art class, so the teacher keeps a supply cart in each classroom. The music room is a space in the gym, which also serves as a passage from one side of the school to the other.
“The art teacher, the music teacher, it’s been hard to keep them because they don’t have their own classrooms,” said Melody Fabian, a parent with two children at the school, one in kindergarten and another in third grade.
Even stair landings do double-duty – they are used as teacher workspaces.
Those stairs, Wilson said, are yet another problem. There are no elevators.
“If we have a student that has physical challenges, it makes it difficult for them, as well as staff,” Wilson said.
Making the two-story building – plus the basement – compliant with the Americans with Disabilities would require two elevators, one on each end, starting in the basement where the cafeteria and the library are located.
And there is no air conditioning, a problem worsened by the hotter weather of recent years.
But there is community.
Third-grade teacher Michael MacEachern, 28, has been teaching at Hedge for six years. He attended the school as a student from second to fifth grade and finds the same sense of community now that he knew then.
“When you walk through the hallways, everyone knows each other, and Mrs. Wilson’s able to greet almost every child by name,” MacEachern said.
“The kids know most of the adults here,” he said. “We have that small neighborhood feel that doesn’t really exist in many places.”
Still, MacEachern looks forward to the construction of a new school.
“We definitely need a new facility,” he said. “Our students definitely deserve a lot more.”
But that won’t happen in time to benefit most current students.
In April, Town Meeting approved a $2 million study to determine the feasibility of renovating Hedge and Cold Spring elementary schools or combining them into a single new facility. The process from study to construction and completion will be lengthy.
Fabian, originally from Connecticut, is such a fan of Hedge that as she and her family look for their next house, she wants to make sure it’s in the same district so her children can continue to attend it.
“We love Hedge,” Fabian said. “I love that it’s a small community school. There’s no buses. Everyone walks.”
The prospect of a new, larger building makes her nervous.
“My favorite thing about Hedge is how small it is and how everyone just knows everyone,” Fabian said. “I don’t like the idea of making it twice as big by integrating it with another school.”
Angela Henry, who grew up in Carver and has two children at the school – in second and third grade – also likes the intimacy of the old building.
“The girls love it,” Henry said. “They love the smallness of it. We’ve had great experiences with all the teachers.”
On a recent day, Henry was in the modest playground with her daughter for an after-school family event called the Year End Title 1 Lending Library Celebration. (Title I of the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act provides financial assistance to schools with a high number of low-income students.)
Every month, the school hosts a library lending day with families.
Parent Sheila Rabanal, originally from Peru, has lived in Plymouth for 10 years. She has a son in first grade at Hedge.
“I love the teachers,” she said. “They’re always engaging with all the students.”
But despite that, she believes they deserve a better facility.
“They need to build something bigger,” she said. “It needs an upgrade.”
Fred Thys can be reached at fred@plymouthindependent.org.