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Comment by DeWain Feller on November 13, 2012 at 1:58pm

I went to this morning's Coffee and Conversation. I could only stay for less than one hour, so there was very little time after Superintendent Vargas was done talking. While I applaud Dr. Vargas for creating this opportunity for public dialog, I must say that the overall tone was more of "let us explain why our decision is right" rather than "what does the community want."

I tried to explain that the superintendent's option (that would keep the School 16 building closed and would close the building that currently houses School 10) would close *half* of the schools in the 19th Ward, and that the 19th Ward would shoulder 40% of the proposed building closures. However, Dr. Vargas clearly does not have an understanding of the geography of the SW. He claimed that School 16 was only 2 to 3 blocks from the new K-8 school at the former Madison/ Wilson Foundation building on Genesee. I said that it was closer to 20 blocks (I checked the map at lunch, and it is actually 13 blocks). If both 16 and 10 close, it will be a *very* long distance from southern 19th Ward Streets such as Winbourne, Satura, and Kingsboro to either 44 or Wilson Foundation.

The recommendation from the Facilities Modernization Plan does include the option of building a new school to replace both 16 and 44 (which the plan also proposes for closure later on down the road). However, there are a number of problems with this proposal. First is that the proposed replacement building would be very large (over 900 students), and history has shown that large new schools have been a failure in the RCSD. The second problem ... where would this school be built? If it was built on the current 44 site, it would not be central, and it would still require the demolition of a large number of homes. The School 16 site would be more central, but we would still lose a lot of homes as the combined school would be much larger than the current 16 building. The third problem is that cost of the proposed consolidated building (on the order of $56 million) would far exceed the cost of extensively renovating both buildings. A four problem is that we would lose two buildings that have good urban design, and the RCSD does not have a good track record of building new buildings that enhance the surrounding neighborhoods (newer is *not* necessarily better).

The other major issue that I tried to raise is that School 10, which has an expeditionary learning program is a great asset to the SW. (The current plan is to move the School 10 program over the School 1 building by Cobbs Hill. Why not keep an expeditionary learning school in the SW? The SE already has a number of exceptional schools... why can't we keep one in the SW?

A number of 19th residents send their kids to School 10. How many will leave the 19th Ward if both 10 and 16 are closed?