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Comment by John Boutet on April 16, 2013 at 1:57am

Linda,  Thank you very much for providing additional information regarding your observations.  I hope you can join us at our next SW Education Committee meeting.  As you requested your initial post has been removed.

Comment by Mark Sweetland on April 15, 2013 at 6:34pm

Linda,  You may have important information the community would like to know. Without getting into specifics, can you say if your reasons relate to building structure, staff or administration, programs, or other problems?  As John suggests, some problems can be fixed.  Any others insights?  Or should we just listen to administration, as you suggest? 

Comment by John Boutet on April 15, 2013 at 2:45pm

Thanks for the input Linda.  The current plans as I understand them are that School 1 would be renovated and the Expeditionary Learning Program, School 10, would be moved as a unit to the new location, probably assimilating the students currently at School 1.  School 1 currently has a feeder pattern with 99 elementary school age children, 38 of which attend RCSD schools and 2 of those 38 attend School 1.

When the former School 37 was closed a few years back, it's feeder pattern was combined with that of School 16.  The combined feeder pattern assigned to School 16 has 1,644 elementary aged children in it, 1,068 of which attend RCSD schools and 133 of those are enrolled at School 16.  As you probably know last summer the the District closed the building on Post Ave where School 16 was housed and moved the school to Freddie Thomas on Scio Street and we have had to fight hard to get the District to agree to renovate the Post Avenue location and plan to bring School 16 back in 2015.  Note that Bldg #16 on Post and Bldg #37 of Congress are K-6 buildings that can accommodate 500 to 550 students. 

After using Bldg #37 for storage and Staff training purposes for a few years the District reopened it to house the School 10 Expeditionary Learning Program which opened with K-2 classes and is now up to K-5.  It is scheduled to move to Bldg #1 in the fall or 2015 as a K-6 program.  Click to see the timeline.  Bldg #37 would then be used for swing space for 4 years and closed in 2020.

During the same time-frame the hope in the District is that there will be a move back to neighborhood schools which encourages parent involvement in their children's schools.  The district currently spends well over $50 million a year busing kids all over town, separating parents from their children's schools.  One only needs to look at the numbers and the need to return more to neighborhood schools to see that either Bldg #37 needs to be renovated of rebuilt.  Whether it is as School 10 or as School 37 it will be needed in the neighborhood.

If there are management problems in the present school they need to be fixed.  That is best done by having strong parent and community involvement in the school to make sure the necessary resources are directed at problems.  You don't fix them by putting the school further away from the community most involved in its PTO.