Education Issues Debate

I saw this posted on the 1st, 2nd & 3rd grade board and found it very interesting...

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/education/orl-mschools1009feb10,0,788917.story

Apparently there are approximately 16 elementary schools that are candidates for closing or merging.

"Closing them, his staff estimates, would each save at least $1 million in operations and utility costs."

Is this fair to the kids? Is it the right way to save money?

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If the buildings are significantly under capacity, and the children can be absorbed into other schools fairly easily, OF COURSE closing buildings is the right thing to do! 

The fact is, pretty much all public schools are going to have to make serious cuts in the next year or so, and everybody with kids is going to feel the pinch.   Our school district has just proposed cutting about 100 teaching positions (probably all through attrition rather than pink slips), eliminating middle and high school late buses, and reassigning gifted program paras.  (Not sure why the gifted program needs paras anyway.) 

I just hope your district can find a buyer for the properties.  The Kansas City Missouri school district actually has a holding company to manage all its unsold abandoned school buildings.

>>If the buildings are significantly under capacity, and the children can be absorbed into other schools fairly easily, OF COURSE closing buildings is the right thing to do! <<

If we were to sell buildings and close schools, what happens when there is a population change and we end up with insufficient places for extra children?

Our school has gone from having 200 kids and plenty of spare space to 400 kids and bursting at the seams in the space of about 10 years. The other schools in the area have had similiar surges in children and have also had to stop taking 'out of area' children.

This is due to the recent gentrification of the area. Old people are dying and being replaced by young families who are renovating houses and raising families.

If our smaller schools had been merged, closed and sold, there would now be insufficient building space to house the all the kids we have at present.

(my comments are written with suburban living in mind. I'm not familiar with the requirements or population flucuations of rural areas)

yes, population studies have their place for gauging short to medium term requirements of a community.

But you'd probably also be aware that suburban areas have cyclic fluctuations of population: Young families move in to the area. (Schools get busy). Kids start growing up and moving on. (schools get quieter) The area is left with many retirees (schools have minimal population). Retirees die or down size to smaller homes and young families move in. (schools get busy) and so on it goes. We can't afford to close and especially sell schools because when new young families return, there will be no space for them. I've seen this very thing happen in the community in which I was raised.

In areas which are more inner city, we've got property speculation and gentrification. If we could figure accurately which areas would boom next, there would be no such thing as property speculation. We'd all know which is the next upcoming area to buy in. I know areas which are now fasionable which 20 years ago nobody would have predicted.

Not to mention that the school districts don't know for sure what infrastructre will be built or removed during the next decade. Sure, there are lots of promises from governments....but often, it doesn't happen. Or a private developer will unexpectedly put in new infrastructure and bring new life to an area. Meanwhile the foresaid development may spell trouble for a small neighbouring community. I've been part of a community group battling against a developer who wants to put a large centre of shops and high density housing in our neighbourhood. At this point, we don't know if it will get approved and rumour has it that the developer can't get finance anyway. If local government doesn't know if the development will go ahead, how can the school district plan for the impact?

Things such as recession will also effect the numbers of families in a community. Many people may up and leave an expensive area for a cheaper one when finances get too tight. And those cheaper areas need to have space for the extras....and the expensive areas need to retain the space for when people eventually return. Again, if population studies could predict things such as when recession would start and end, the world wouldn't be in the state it's in.

What happens when premises are sold and twenty years later we need those premises again? There may be no suitable premises left for a new school. And even if there was suitable premises, the school would have long since sold and spent proceeds of that asset....so what would they buy property with?