Teresa Thiel: A vision for what restructuring should accomplish

The vision is the broad goal or achievable "dream" the district wants to accomplish. That vision is to have our district buildings, as much as possible, further the vision of a school district that offers an excellent education, with equity of surroundings and educational opportunities in as efficient manner as possible.

I believe that we must support all of these values but because we don't live in a perfect world we cannot support them equally. I believe the most important should be equity, this does not mean that everything is equal or exactly the same. It means that our buildings should make it possible for students to have the same exposure to the same experiences across the district. For example, all students should be able to experience a "clay" unit in Art, not deny some the opportunity because Art is on a cart or shares a space that also has phy-ed and lunch. The rooms that all students learn in should be of an adequate size so that we no longer have students being taught in former closets.

Excellence is somewhat more difficult to define, everyone has their own idea of what an excellent education is, sometimes you just know it when you see it. I believe we cannot skimp on the idea of striving to provide an excellent education for our students.

Finally, efficiency, we have to be more efficient and one way to do that, and I believe the best way is to close the schools that would cost too much to repair and that will not last at least another 25 years. It doesn't make sense to put $300,000 into a school that experts say has outlived its useful life. This is neither efficient nor responsible. While I do not like Scenario 7's philosophical shift to move 4th and 5th graders into the middle school, I do like the way boundary lines have changed based on geography moving students from a school that has been closed to the open school nearest them, rather than moving an entire school to another which would increase the distance to the new school for many. While this Scenario 7 may be the most efficient as far as utilizing middle school seats, I think this is where efficiency should take a back seat to excellence. This shift in philosophy is to be the most efficient with our buildings but I don't think it is worth the upheaval it will cause. There are not direct, proven educational benefits to this shift and I'm not even convinced it will save as many dollars as keeping the K-5, 6-8 configuration due to the increase in middle school staffing.

The dollars saved by closing schools are dollars that can then be spent to maintain educational programs that are continually under consideration for cuts in order to balance the budget. These efficiencies will allow excellence to be maintained. The extra classrooms and other space that will need to be built to accomodate students from closed schools will provide equitable buildings and programs across the district. I don't thnk Scenario 7 is the one that accomplishes this but there are many aspects of it that get us closer.