Orleans Hears Four School Restructuring Scenarios in Regional Efficiency Study Debut

ORLEANS — June 2, 2026 — Orleans hosts the first of four Nauset region school study presentations, outlining four restructuring scenarios and $255 million in deferred facility costs. The Orleans Select Board and Orleans School Committee met jointly June 2 to receive the Nauset Regionalization and Efficiency Study, a 300-page report produced by HMFH Architects and Civic Solutions Group at the direction of a four-town steering committee that includes Orleans Town Manager Kim Newman, Select Board member Kevin Galligan, and Superintendent Glenn Brand. Consultants Lori Coles, Justin Impala, and Paula Barney walked the audience through four school configuration scenarios — ranging from consolidating Brewster's two elementary schools to creating a single 465-student regional pre-K through grade five campus in Orleans — and identified $255 million as the cost of simply maintaining all existing buildings under the status-quo baseline. The study found that only 69 percent of kindergarten-age children in the four towns attend public schools, a figure consultants linked to inadequate after-school programming. An annual $680,000 transportation reimbursement is currently unavailable to elementary schools because they are not organized as a regional district. "The numbers are the numbers," Galligan said. "They are telling all of us we have got to do something."