Should a Rec Center be Included in School 16?

As you know planning for the renovation of School 16 has started. The RCSD and the architects gave our community a review of the initial plans on August 24th at the Arnett Library as is documented in the video: https://youtu.be/yqJ85k2v8x8. John Laing and I have been serving on the School 16 Building Advisory Committee to give continued community input to the planning process. From the meeting on Aug. 24th to the most recent Building Advisory Committee meeting on Sept. 21st the possibility of trading off the functions of the current gym and cafeteria has been discussed. An additional advantage of switching the functions was brought up this week. If the gym/assembly area is moved to the north location of the current cafeteria it would permit:

Isolating the noise from the gym bothering the classrooms. (original reason proposed)
Increasing the size of the gym a bit to permit a central partition for when two gym classes need to be scheduled for the same time.
The gym on the north side of the building would permit its use as part of a Rec Center because it would be easy to close it of from the school after hours. The current playground would also serve the Rec Center.

Here is the current Expansion plan for the renovations:

Next you see the proposed City Rec Center Option:

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by John Boutet on September 26, 2016 at 5:05am

I took this proposal to the "Coffee with the Mayor" meeting the morning of September 24th. The event was very well attended. People signed in as they arrived and they got to sit down with the Mayor to review their issue(s) privately in the order they had signed in. She was kept busy talking with people people from the time she arrived around 8am until sometime after 10:10am when I left. At least 4 or 5 people I spoke to had come to talk about various School related issues also.

I primarily focused on reviewing a printout of the above post on the Rec Center proposal. I of course would like to have the City take on the Rec Center work with their own funds since the estimates so far for the renovation work for School 16 is coming in significantly over our available budget from the State. She sounded interested in pursuing the Rec Center proposal but was skeptical that the City could supply the funds considering they are trying to plug a $40,000,000 shortfall of their own. In our discussion I mentioned that we are hoping to have School 16 come back as a neighborhood school with mostly students from this area, and that the addition of the Rec Center would provide a valuable service to the 19th Ward. She responded with "Yes it would be a 'beacon school'" which is the administration's term for a neighborhood school which provides additional services to the community. I also had the chance to review the proposal with City Councilman Dana Miller and a few other folks from the Mayors office. All seemed interested in the proposal. We will discuss this at the September 28th SWCC Education Committee meeting at 6:30pm at the Arnett Library.

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