3 Children Fill the Rolls of This R.I. School

The Prudence Island School probably has the fastest and most orderly fire drills in Rhode Island, if not the world. And why not--a 6-year-old and two 5-year-olds make up the entire student body.

Shannon Cubellis and Daniel Jenness, both 5-year-old kindergartners, and first-grader Ethel Flynn, 6, quickly lined up and marched behind teacher Elizabeth Hambly when the fire alarm buzzed on a recent day.

They congregated calmly at the end of the school’s driveway until it was time to return to class.

Ethel was the first one to school that day, bounding in seven minutes before class started at 9 a.m. As the first, she got to ring the school’s bell, tugging on the rope 13 times.

The girl beamed when Hambly admired her denim dress and purple sweater.

“You look beautiful,” the teacher said.

The 93-year-old school on the island, linked to Portsmouth by ferry, was closed six years ago because there weren’t enough students. The island’s older children take the 30-minute ferry ride into Portsmouth to attend middle and high schools, but parents of elementary-level children opted to teach them at home rather than put them on the ferry at such tender ages.

Portsmouth School Superintendent Mario Mancieri said parents finally persuaded him to reopen the school recently.

“My first reaction was: ‘We have a ferry service. Avail yourself of that,’ ” he said. “Then we started talking about young children. Someone asked me: ‘How would you like to put a 5-year-old on a ferry every morning?’ I started thinking about that.”

Hambly, 27, drives five miles from her home in Portsmouth to catch the ferry in Bristol each school day.

Once off the boat, Hambly hops into a car provided by the school department. She drives about a mile down a narrow, winding road lined with old cars and quaint cottages and summer homes to the schoolhouse.

Prudence Island, with a permanent population of about 200, is part of the town of Portsmouth.

Mancieri said he realized that the money that would be spent to transport younger children from the island to Portsmouth could be used to reopen the schoolhouse.

He said it would have cost the school district about $35,000 a year to ship the three students to the mainland on special, $300-a-trip ferry runs not on the boat’s normal schedule.

Instead, the Portsmouth School Department spent between $20,000 and $30,000 to make over the island’s school building, including asbestos removal, smoke alarms and new paint.

Shannon and Daniel, the kindergartners, get out of school at 12:30 p.m., while Ethel remains until 3:30 p.m. She doesn’t seem to mind that the boys are free to go home early and play.

“After they leave I have some lunch and then I do some of my work,” she said.

Hambly said her school would get at least one more student in two years, but until then, unless someone moves to the island with a youngster, it’s just going to be the four of them. And to make sure that the students don’t miss out on making friends, there’ll be periodic visits to other schools.

“Other teachers couldn’t get to know their students as well as I’m going to get to know these three,” Hambly said. “There’s more one-to-one teaching and learning.”

After two months on the job, Hambly has three loyal fans in her students.

Shannon wants to be a telephone repairman when he grows up and Daniel wants to be a fireman. Daniel would have to move off the island because firefighters here are volunteers and he wants to make money.

Ethel said she wants to be a teacher.

“Just like Ms. Hambly,” she said.