The Morning Call article is here.
The Express-Times article is here.
The Express-Times' Joe Owens blogs about other Nazareth Building Projects here.
The Call article noted the facility would be:
a 220,000-square-foot building on a 37-acre site. There will be a six-lane track, two gymnasiums, eight science labs, an auditorium that will seat 500 and an eight-lane pool housed in a 15,000-square-foot natatorium.Additionally, the article noted that Superintendent Victor Lesky said at the groundbreaking that the building will hold about 1,000 seventh- and eighth-graders.
The building is on a fast track to open by September 2009 as bids were received on Thursday and approved with options four days later at the last School Board meeting.
Unlike previous middle schools (like the North Campus of the current HS), this one should not fill up anytime soon. While Lesky noted 1000 students, it is being built to accommodate 1,340 students in 7th and 8th grade based on papers filed with the state last year. The latest enrollment figures from Board Minutes indicate that the 5th and 6th graders, who will be 7th & 8th in 2009 total 711.
By comparison, the current MS has 1166 students and can hold 1256 and the HS has 1641 and can hold 1,648 (9-12th grades).
Why not build a new HS and make the HS a MS given the enrollment crunch there? Not enough money. We've essentially borrowed everything we can to build the MS and couldn't have borrowed enough money to build a HS. A traditional JH (7-9) would have alleviated some of the HS crowding but as I recall academic considerations ruled that out. Will be interesting to see how the HS situation plays out, especially for those of us with kids in elementary level now.
3 comments:
Ross,
How will this play out for your kids in elementary school? Simple, they will be sitting in crowded classrooms while we sit and wait for the district to figure out how they are going to jack our taxes up to correct yet another stupid mistake.
Our school "leaders" (and I use that term very loosely) continue to exceed their level of ineptness with each passing decision.
Yes, they solved the middle school problem, but oops, where did that high school one come from.
Yes, they built a beautiful new turf field, but oops, hope nobody gets seriously hurt because we forgot to build the entrance wide enough for an ambulance.
But hey, the tax payers have deep pockets, they can afford to make up for the districts lack of smarts.
I could accept one, maybe two mistakes, but every time I turn around, it seems like this administration is making one and we the tax payers have to fork over more to make it right.
As these people come up for election, we need to start throwing them out. They clearly are not even capable of finding their way across the street with a map, compass and tour guide, let alone run a school district effectively and efficiently.
I don't know what was in the air or water, but it seems most of the people I know more or less around my age have a kid in kindergarten this year.
Given that, there is quite a bit of concern about these issues, and many of us have older children in school as well, so we are somewhat aware of what is going on.
The biggest problem I see, is that despite the calls for action and frustration with the decisions that are made, people don't regularly attend meetings and especially committee meetings and as a result they only find out about them after the fact.
Further, this past February, to encourage people to get involved, I personally held a "how to be a candidate night" in Nazareth. The idea was to explain in layman's terms what it takes to run for local office (like school board). Despite a great turnout (some 30 or 40 people), some positions remained unopposed. This is commonplace, not uncommon.
While not disrespecting you at all, as I completely understand your position, the fact remains until these elected officials feel challenged (by audiences at every meeting) and threatened (by individuals running against them) you are probably going to get more of the same.
The good thing is that through this site and thanks to Brad's notes, we better understand what is happening at the NASD whether we attend or not and the administration and board are aware of this fact.
If we could get a few more people to attend key committee meetings and share what is discussed we can head off some of these miss-steps before they are approved.
Enjoy the rest of the weekend!
Go PSU!
Post a Comment