Decatur Metro » 2012 » July

Superintendent Recommends Moving CSD Central Office to Beacon Hill

Decatur Metro | July 4, 2012

In preparation for the Decatur School Board’s July 10th meeting, Superintendent Phyllis Edwards has provided a good summary of the available options of where to move the City Schools of Decatur’s Central Office in anticipation of reopening Westchester Elementary as an elementary school. As mentioned at the Decatur City Commission meeting on Monday, the School Board is scheduled to make a final decision on this topic at the July 10th meeting.

So without further ado, here’s the Superintendent’s note to the Board…

For the last year we have discussed increasing enrollment and the need to place the last school building (Westchester) back into the mix as a school. This means that the central office must be relocated.

Discussions have been held with the city leaders in our search for options. There is an opportunity to locate the central office in the current Beacon Hill building. The building would allow the system to have approximately the same amount of space as currently used at Westchester. The building can be designed to meet the system’s needs of parking, board room space, and program management space so central office personnel will not be located in school buildings where there is little space. It will also provide a sense of community and honor to the neighbors and families that cherished this building when it was an operational school. For the sake of history and community, this would be a positive move. It is also a plausible choice because it does not utilize spaces on other campuses that could be utilized for future expansion if needed. The building would be built by the city and when finished the school system would purchase the space. The drawback is the price (last price received: $5.9 million) which exceeds what our initial estimate was for the new central office. However, the city is able to allow the school system to fund the cost over time.

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