Michelle Monte: Restructuring Vision

In thinking about restructuring as it is happening right now, I am distracted by the rapidity of the current phase of the process. While we have been trying since at least 1986 to figure out how to best organize our buildings, programming, and curriculum to the best possible benefit of our children, we have only had this radical scenario 7 for a couple of weeks and a few Board of Education members are pushing to vote no later than April 4.

All that aside, I have given a lot of thought to what would make a better scenario. I have pored over documents I have gotten as a CRT member and research I have obtained on my own and through interested community members. I have talked to hundreds of community members and several PTOs from across the district. I have asked what they would like to see, what they have a problem with, and what they would be willing to compromise on for the betterment of their children. Had the Board of Education taken a little more time on scenario 7 and done as much one-on-one, I think they would have developed a far better and more equitable plan.

My idea of what is appropriate would be to set a timeline for adequate discussion, accumulation of community input, and verification of research and numbers associated with the scenario. If we were to continue with scenario 7 and work to turn it into something the community would willingly support, I would expect a timeline that is close to the timeline that was followed for the January 10th meeting. It took months to get a scenario most of the committee members could agree on. Only year one was approved out of all that work. Years two through ten were presented March fifth with a vote expected March 28 or April 4. The only comparable plan offered is an inflated status quo plan. I would not be opposed to a timeline that puts a vote at the end of the school year. Since year one has already been voted on and nothing can proceed until a referendum passes, it would behoove us to tread carefully, take the time we have, and get this right.

As for what our schools and district would look like and this process, I would go back to what was set as the goals and educational considerations in November when scenarios were being developed. These were based on the PMP report we paid almost $40,000 for. Without rehashing the documents, I would direct attention to the Goals/Criteria of the OASD Long-Range Facilities Plan from 2/9/2007. In this document, the committees were reminded what our focus was supposed to be. The second document is the OASD Educational Standards from 11/10/2006.

Our focus should also be on the goal of making the district more efficient both with buildings and spending. Currently scenario 7 does little for the high schools and still prevents the block scheduling that the district claims would be of great educational benefit. It also does not address the freshmen failure rate the district mentions every now and again. I would explore moving the ninth grade into the underutilized middle schools making them 6-9. This makes room for block scheduling without major additions to the high schools and allows freshmen who have academic deficiencies the remedial help they need. This could cut the number of kids in summer school, significantly reduce the freshman failure rate, allow for block scheduling, and utilize our middle schools to their optimal capacity. Currently, the numbers show an excess of about 80 freshmen or 4 classrooms. Adding four classrooms to Tipler is far less expensive than adding 100+ classrooms to seven buildings. The north side, where elementary buildings are virtually on top of each other, could benefit from a K-4, 5-9 model similar to scenario 7. The southern and western schools could feasibly handle K-5, 6-9.

As for school closings, I think the criteria were greatly subjective and architectural biases towards only modern designs eliminates older schools which are servicing our students and have a lot of life left if they were taken care of. Taking care of buildings is something we need to do significantly better on. I can think of six buildings that are expensive to operate, have significant repairs attached to them, and are in locations where their students could be easily absorbed by nearby schools. They are not the same six identified by PMP and SODEXO. I think we could realistically close up to three schools. To close more than that would set us up for a future referendum to build one or two new schools if development on the northwest and southwest sides of town are as large as expected. I also think we need to be careful how large we create our elementary schools. The community has spoken loudly against megaschools throughout this entire process.

All buildings should have equitable resources: art rooms, cafeterias, gyms, science labs, computer labs. There should be no teachers on carts. Of course this may become a problem with one middle school having a pool. I do not want every middle school to have a pool, we cannot sustain that kind of expense. I am not even sure we can sustain the expense of the one pool.

Finally, we need a detailed and comprehensive boundary plan and policy to spread our students in such a way that our buildings are used to their optimal operating capacities. The boundary policy should have periodic checks (3-5 yrs) to ensure our buildings do not become overcrowded or underutilized. In addition, there should be triggers identified to illicit interim boundary changes if there is a significant population change in any part of the district.

Our students would benefit by having enough space to work, maintained buildings to study in, and teachers who are happy and proud to step into their classrooms that are of appropriate size, maintained, and equipped. Our schools do not necessarily have to be different from what we have to be an improvement on what we have.

At the very least, any change that occurs and any dollars asked from the community need to be justified in quantitative and qualitative ways that are specific and detailed. All goals for educational standards needs to measurable and accountability needs to be assured. Only then can I see our community supporting a large-scale referendum.