- By Dan Veaner
- News
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The e-mail came from a contingent of the committee that has been displeased with the process from the beginning. David Dubin challenged the makeup of the committee, the process, claimed that insufficient information has been provided and questioned the district's credibility in the community relative to usage of funds and taxes. Others chimed in to support these challenges. Maureen Bell defended the process, saying that the community hires experts then tries to tell them how to do their jobs rather than trusting their expertise. She noted that the buildings are at a crisis point and cannot wait for a delayed capital project.
These arguments have been made in meetings since the committee began. When facilitator Mark Stammer has been allowed to conduct the process it has seemed to achieve the results he intended. So far the committee has set priorities for the district, and going forward it will use those priorities to analyze potential solutions to problems in the buildings and form a recommendation to the Board of Education. Stammer says the recommendation will include a prioritized list of items to be fixed, updated or built, along with dissenting opinions from committee members.
The gridlock the committee has experienced might be summed up this way: the full process was never really adequately or comprehensively explained until Wednesday night. Some committee members spent a lot of meeting time arguing with the process because they didn't see the point of it. Wednesday's meeting may have cleared up at least that part of the disagreement, especially because Gizzi and Stone presented their cases eloquently and with pictures and facts to support the needs they portrayed.
The two principals expanded on themes they had demonstrated on tours of their buildings (click here for a write-up of the tours). Gizzi noted that mandates, including unfunded ones, have effected physical plant needs in the schools. "The landscape of education has changed dramatically since 1999 (when academic intervention was mandated)," he said. Space is not a problem in the Middle School, but the configuration of that space and underlying infrastructure makes it inadequate for modern programs. He outlined specific problems in the music, art and science rooms. In music he explained that the acoustics are so bad in the band room that kids can't hear what they are playing, and can contribute to hearing loss. When they get on stage for concerts they can hear, but don't know how to adjust. In the art room there is no room for paintings to dry, so oil painting can't even be offered. Science rooms have inadequate lab space.
Stone painted a picture of a high school in crisis. Rooms are overcrowded, in some cases unsafe, and many are scheduled 100% of the time. She has to schedule some classes in hallways, as well as the library and cafeteria. Academic Intervention Services (AES) are jammed into closet-sized rooms. She said she is very worried about scheduling next year when she will have about 40 more students than she does this school year. "Our philosophy is that we might have less, but let's do it right," she told the committee.
The facilities committee only has two more meetings before it must present its recommendation to the School Board. Members worry about the time frame, especially since a three year long-range plan will not be available to them until their next meeting on June 14. Members fear they will not be able to effectively match physical plant needs to program needs if they don't have a sense of where programs will be going into the future. Some also say they want the district to explore alternatives to building more comprehensively before deciding on an expensive capital project. Examples of alternatives could include expanding the number of periods in the day or moving grades to different buildings.
Meanwhile the Community Awareness Committee is reaching out to the community, posting minutes and other information, and preparing a survey to get community input into the project. The survey may be posted on their Web page by the time of this publication (or shortly after) and they plan to have results in by June 13 so they can be collated and presented to the Facilities Committee at their June 14 meeting. That committee will take the results into consideration to craft a capital project that theoretically the community will accept.
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