2/9/11 Meeting

If you are joining the advisory meeting from home tonight please feel free to use the comments section to post questions or thoughts that you want shared.

Introductions were made. They started by looking over last weeks data. Which presents each of the three schools interms of facilities and it was clear that there were no standout of differences. Now they are presenting mothball costs which includes the cost of keeping schools open with noone in them. This info is on the web site. They are showing the three schools and what it costs to keep buildings maintained with conservative estimates. KES - 32k, MES 38k, RES 33k. This includes utilities, some costodial. No mention of the cost of insurance to maintain the building, perhaps someone will discuss this soon.

Rosario is now speaking to us, thanking us for coming. Update on last night meeting. BOE 58-59 million dollar projected budget. Rollover is 65million so they need to go from 59 to 65 million.

Insurance savings if schools are closed were presented all about 6k but not the insurance "mothball" costs. No information of revenue for leasing the buildings is available yet - they expect it in a few weeks. He next presented enrollment information. Long story short enrollment has been going down over the years. They expect enrollment to balance out to 2000 at around 2020. I am not writing much on this because this is the whole story. Our enrollment has gone down. He is just showing different slides saying this same thing.

He presents what the class sizes would be if we reduced the number of classes per grade. So right now we have 8 kind. classes with an average of 17 kids per class. At the projected level for next year 8 classes would result in 18 kids per class while 6 classes would result in about 25 kids per class.

The advisory committee will now look at 10-11 sets of data. They are asked to think about what they conclude about the data.

First they showed enrollment data (all of this is posted on their web site and can be linked through this blog). Big news, enrollment is down! The discussion is mostly about if Canopy will change this, the impact of increased housing costs and whether these numbers are stable.

Rochelle asked if given the regular decline in enrollment why hasn't the administration decreased (but rather increased). She was put off with no answer. There was a question about why some grades have class sizes smaller than others. They were told there were grants. There are no more. Rochelle asked about what might be causing the changing enrollment - she asked if other districts like NP is compared. Rosario says that the economy has hit everyone. He says NP is maxed out in class size - they can't get bigger. He says we have flexibility since we are not maxed out. Is this true about NP? It was asked if the behaviorial management classes have been included int he enrollment information. The question was asked, back in the 1990's we had more kids. Was there any information about why we went to smaller class size and is there a reason to raise it up. The class sizes have gradually been declining. According to Heidi (life-long K teacher)Twenty years ago they were about 20. In 1996 they created a new model with smaller class sizes. Test scores increased and the model was looked upon by other schools as a replicable model.

Rosario is changing next week from transportation next week to consolidation model next week.

Rosario talks about studetn capacity - if you look at the capacity of a building for holding students. KES & MES capacity each is about 540 students. This comes about 25 students per class times the number of classrooms. It was asked how did it look ten years ago when there were 100 more kids. Was it too croweded? Was it different. A teacher said it was louder, some special classes e.g ESL would be held in temporary classrooms. It was added that this was all prior to the additions.

It was asked, if we move one school into two, what gets lost interms of the use of the other rooms. Will ESL go back into a closet? Rosario said that he nneds to alk this over with the principles, but this did did not include reading rooms and art rooms but he is not sure. So these could be lost if there is a consolidation.

Breanna asked the committee to go over their general conclusions and if they agree. They confirmed there has been a drop in enrollment. They are talking about why enrollment has declined in each school. KES may have seen less decline since its tax base is lower. It was pointed out that the tax base can shift which can shift enrollment. Someone chimed in that the entire discussion about different enrollment drops in each school is irrelevant as if there is a consolidation then everyone is shuffled around.

Summary points by Beckerman - there is a declining enrollment and if we closed a school can we fit the students into the two remaining school. It was pointed out that last week it was said that they could only go K-3. Rosario said he was wrong last week. Now they can fit. "Maybe it will work" "It looks like we can"
It looks like they can do K-4 into two buildings.

Next week consolidation models will look at 9 configurations that include the high school and middle school.

Is the question IF a school should be closed or WHICH school schould be closed. Which is it?

Rosario claims this is not about money it is about the lower enrollment. He claims that there is room but we have no evidence of this. Class size values and numbers - he will not answer the max size. The request was made for better information on the cost/benefit.

The role of the committee is to gather information. But they are missing the crucial information on the costs. They claim that we should be patient - that they will get to this. But they only have five meetings and wo are done. It was asked that we get the data sooner. It was asked what if we close and then we have an increase in enrollment what happens.

It was questioned that this group will meet the timeline they set and that by talking about these items separately. These need to be combined to see a single picture. Another call for more time was aked for. People are asking for numbers to go with the information presented. IT was also pointed out that a 10% increase in budget results in $300 increases. 10% sounds like more than $300.

Other questions - if we close one now, we close another soon? What will be done with the empty building? It was asked what will really be the maximum size for a classroom? 30 was mentioned and it was asked if this is really the plan? Rosario clarified that he used 25 in his calculation. He tells us we are not going to have 30 but he will not commit to what cap they are going to use. A teacher requested that if we have new numbers now we should reconsider 5th grades back. She added that while enrollment has declined the quality of education has improved. These smaller classes allow for successful inclusion of kids not possible if the classes are too large.

The BOE president stood and said that the board has a hard task this year. They are totally committed to keeping class sizes at a reasonable number. She is hoping the state will make up for the cuts this year with increased funding next year. She says that the board has a responsibility to every tax payer and that the closing of a school might be the best scenerio. She again claims that closing a school may be the only alternative to cutting programs. She stated that the 2million publically mentioned was only an opinion. Not sure why this "opinion" was given to media outlets....She says we should trust the district. That everyone is working hard. We don't always give the right answers. I am not sure why we should trust them if they don't always give the right answers and publically give information that they can't support.