CSD To Open an Additional Kindergarten Class at Winnona Park
Decatur Metro | June 10, 2011Another interesting enrollment tidbit from from the Superintendent’s letter to the School Board prior to next week’s meeting…
We continue to see greater enrollment on the south side and will need to open another Kindergarten class at Winnona Park. That site will allow us to add this class. As has been our practice for many years, as we see openings in various classes, we place newer enrollees at these sites. Glennwood will be our smallest K-3 next year. Any new tuition students will be first placed at Glennwood. As I have said at many many previous meetings, just as a way of planning, we will retain portables until after Labor Day so that we can be sure they are not needed.
Latest from Decaturish
so much for all those plans for a decreasing student body.
If the population growth is in the south side, perhaps the pre-k/early learning programs should be moved to Westchester and College Heights switched to K -3. Not to open any cans of worms or anything . . . just wondering if it should be considered. More info about exactly where the under 5 population of Decatur resides is needed. And then there’s the possibility that the population growth wiill level off in the south and start in the north side.
If Glennwood is under capacity, why not send the kindergarteners there? If the north-siders could cross the tracks to go to Oakhurst and WP, certainly some of us south-siders could cross the tracks and go to Glennwood . . .not that I’m volunteering (don’t have a kindergartener, luckily). But that would mean more busses and might be more expensive than the portable that will need to remain at WP.
It seems like CSD gets an unexpectedly large kindergarten class every time it reconfigures.
Now that I have time to think about it, it makes the proposal to have Westchester as a specialty school makes sense since Westchester is not located in the area of the population growth. One of the positive aspects of going to the k-3 schools was that there were no longer the perceptions that certain elementary schools in Decatur were better than others. Would opening Westchester as a specialty school be a step backward in that regard? I haven’t formed an opinion on the matter myself, just wondering.
I see babies and toddlers all over the NW quadrant. There’s big homes east of Scott but tons of older, unrenovated, starter homes west of Scott that are drawing young families that can’t afford the expensive areas of north Decatur and Oakhurst. I don’t think there’s a single part of Decatur not busting with rugrats. The expensive areas are already popular and everywhere else is attracting eveeryone that doesn’t want to be the last one into City of Decatur.
One reason Winnona Park is over capacity in the first place, is that somewhere between several kindergarteners and a full class worth of kindergarteners from the Oakhurst district was re-routed to Winnona Park. I cannot tell you the exact numbers because the board has ignored queries about the number of children affected, and the number of tuition slots at each of the elementary schools. (the announcement says “new” tuition students will be placed at Glennwood, but of course the vast majority of tuition students have already been enrolled at othre schools).
Leaving aside whether the overcrowding on the south side should have been foreseeable, it is primarily at Oakhurst. Rather than open a new classroom at Winnona Park, a better solution might be to place a new trailer at Oakhurst, adding the new class there, instead.
While adding a trailer is an imperfect solution, adding a class at Winnona Park only kicks the real solution further down the road. Next year, the families of all the Oakhurst students placed at Winnona Park will be faced with the dilemma of having to switch schools – or, worse, being told they can never attend their neighborhood school.
Most frustrating is the failure to provide information about the numbers of students affected, how many students from each district are actually registered, how many tuition students were enrolled in the district, etc. Without this information, it is difficult to assess whether any particular solution – e.g., opening a class at Winnona Park – is the right one. More generally, having such an opaque process lowers confidence in the board’s ability to handle these issues.
With apologies. I need to correct my post just above… I am just getting back to email and did receive, Friday, an email from our district assistent superintendent with some of the information we asked for.
According to the central office, 11 students living in the Oakhurst district are being sent to other schools, and there are no kindergarteners paying tuition at Oakhurst.
I appreciate the information, which helps us all evaluate potential solutions for this year and beyond.
For those keeping score, there are 103 “Oakhurst” kindergarteners officially enrolled at CSD. I know of one other family who has not yet registered, and we can expect at least a few more enrollments between now and the start of school. This is enough students to open a 5th K class at Oakhurst, with 21+ students in each class.
I do not know the comparable figures at Winnona Park – or how much of their overcrowding would be alleviated by moving those 11 students back to their home (Oakhurst) district.