CSD Asks For Community Feedback on New Elementary School Plans
Decatur Metro | April 13, 2017 | 4:07 pm
CSD is now floating two new elementary school plans, which keep all current lower elementary schools intact as K-2 or K-3 schools. They are asking for feedback from the community on the two scenarios.
Here’s the note from CSD, which includes the survey link…
The Elementary Facility Planning Steering Committee examined data and feedback from the community meeting and survey and offered two options to the Board of Education for consideration at the April 11 Board Meeting. We want to hear from the CSD community about these options. It is recommended that the presentation from the April 11 meeting be viewed prior to taking the survey. The survey and presentation can be found at http://www.dejongrichter.com/csdecatur/
The survey will close at 11:59 PM on April 23.
Thank you for your participation. Your feedback is extremely important to this process.
CSD also provides useful summary tables of the two options in the survey as well. Click the tables below to zoom in a bit or see them close up in the survey itself.
Photos courtesy of CSD
I have’t done our family’s research on this, but it’s clear – so very obviously, startlingly clear – which the city wants us to choose. The descriptions are written with such bias, you’d think the copywriter comes from the media trades. Or worse, marketing!
(Not that I disagree with the choice, but it’s amusing to note.)
Yep. It is going to be option 1 in the end, even if #2 were to receive 85% of the votes in the feedback.
I’m assuming when you say “the city” you’re talking about the school board, correct? I don’t believe the city’s playing any role here.
Sorry – I guess that’s correct. I referred to whomever assembled this comparison, and I used a generic term for ‘gubmint’ that may not be accurate.
Eh, I’m OK with the ‘bias.’ I mean, if the Steering Committee looked over the options, got feedback on them, and then judges that option 1 has a significant number of advantages, I’d prefer them to go ahead and note them rather than trying to maintain a pose of scrupulous neutrality. Pace Telemachus, if there were some sort of huge community outcry against option 1, for whatever reason, I don’t think that that would just be ignored. But they’re laying out of pros and cons of each in a way that makes it clear which one they prefer.
I’m disappointed that these options don’t seem to eliminate over crowded classrooms and/or the ongoing cost of modulars. Especially considering the higher than expected cost of the senior tax exemption.
CSD has no ability to reduce the number of students. Until CSD increases the number of classrooms, there is little it can do about classroom size or cost of modulars. So, I guess it is up to us citizens to make CoD a less desirable place to live.
and don’t kid yourself – the cost of the senior tax exemption isn’t higher than expected – it is only higher than the most conservative, lowest estimate touted by those who think retiring in place is a right worthy of an entitlement subsidy
That’s my point – I prefer an option that maximizes capacity at facilities, i.e., seats. There was an option presented that maximized classrooms more than the present option but it is no longer on the table. The present options will likely require the continued ongoing expense of modulars, which will be made worse by the fact that the cost of the exemption is higher than the board anticipated. Given that many of us will be facing a significant rise in taxes to cover the exemption, I would hope that the board uses the GO Bond as efficiently as possible. Raising taxes will definitely make it less desirable to live here.
Remember that the GO Bond is only for an amount designed to cover 90% of projected capacity – we are likely going to have trailers and overcrowding regardless. The school board may as well optimize travel times to school, because they likely don’t have the money to build the actual facilities needed without another bond or some sort of external event changing a decade-long growth trajectory for the schools.
Hindsight being 20/20, the city (as distinct from the school board) has performed poorly in the past 5 years on school expansion/construction. Waiting several years to pass a school bond (remember, the city refused to consider the request in 2012) meant land prices and construction costs have gone up multiples over inflation, so the GO bond “buys” less than it would have in 2012. In addition, requiring the school board to support (in my opinion) a non-targeted and poorly researched exemption as a condition of getting the badly needed GO bond at all will increase taxes on non-seniors, ironically reducing the very affordability and diversity that the city claimed to be supporting. I won’t get into claims about the school board wanting “gold-plated facilities” while the city renovated substantially all of the facilities it controlled.
I generally feel like the City of Decatur has excellent governance; that being said, I hope that there will be some soul-searching about the fact that decisions by the city mean that we are trying to find the better of two poor options.
I’m strongly in favor of option 1. We need SEATS and smaller class sizes and option 1 gets us closer than option 2.
Whatever happened to K-6, or Pre-K-5?
Watch the video from the community meeting.
An explanation of why K-5 did not make it out of the room of either steering committee is summed up starting around the 20:40 mark.