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.
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
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.
Four ways to close a school — and what the seat arithmetic says
October 2025 enrollment vs. state-filed building capacities — Colchester, CT · woodennutmeg four-schools page
Students who get a seatStudents with no seatCapacity 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
capacity 850
✕ 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
spare capacity 473
✕ 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
capacity 850
△ 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
design enrollment 607
△ 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.
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).
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) · woodennutmeg 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 useRooms sparePortable 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.
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.
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.
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.