The Garden City Telegram
Email this story | Add Your Comment
| Read (0) Comments
Answering questions on the bond issue
Published 10/30/2008 in News : Education
By EMILY BEHLMANN
Building plans, educational philosophies, taxes and flood plains -- all have been topics of discussion around Garden City's school district in connection with USD 457's $97.5 million bond issue, and Wednesday night, district representatives addressed the subjects in person, on TV and on the radio.
Click to Purchase Photo Reprints!
Brad Nading/Telegram — Stewart Nelson answers a question on the site location for a new high school Wednesday during a forum on the bond issue for USD 457 at the Garden City Administrative bulding.
After district officials, board members and supporters have given more than 100 presentations around the community on the issue, up for approval on Tuesday's ballot, they participated in a public forum Wednesday hosted by the city of Garden City, Western Kansas Broadcast Center and The Garden City Telegram.
About a dozen people attended the event, with a few submitting their own questions for the district as a supplement to the prepared list, while others could tune in on the city's cable channel 8 or KBUF 1030 AM.
At the forum, Rick Atha, superintendent; Mike Utz, president of the Board of Education; Craig Wheeler, co-chairman of the Garden City High School Facilities Study Group; and Stewart Nelson, architect with Gibson, Mancini, Carmichael & Nelson, stated their case for the long-range facilities plan that would be funded by the $97.5 million bond issue.
The proposal includes construction of a new, 2,000-student high school with infrastructure to expand to a 2,500-student school, conversion of the current main GCHS building into a middle school, conversion of Abe Hubert Middle School into an elementary school and expansion of Garfield Elementary School into a centralized early childhood center. J.D. Adams Hall, adjacent to GCHS, would serve as the site of the New Outlook Academy alternative high school.
Making the case
Utz said the plan was developed based on criteria the board developed more than a year ago to address concerns, among other things, of crowded facilities. Objectives included providing all teachers with a classroom (14 at GCHS push their materials on carts), eliminating the district's trailer classrooms, maintaining the same number or fewer school-to-school transitions, recruiting and retaining teachers, and having the opportunity to lower class size.
"Of the 10 options the committee looked at, it came down to two," Utz said, referencing Wheeler's committee's recommendation of replacing GCHS or adding a second high school to the district. "This is a pretty good compromise of all the ideas out there."
Utz acknowledged he had favored a two-high-school plan instead -- an idea voters rejected in bond issues in 1998 and 2000 -- but said he appreciates many aspects of the proposal on the ballot, and that the board is "100 percent committed." The board voted 4-3 in favor of the proposal on the ballot, with John Scheopner and Bruce Reichmuth joining Utz in favoring two high schools.
Other ideas
In addition to the two options the study group recommended to the board, the committee looked at options including adding on to the current high school. One question asked of district representatives at Wednesday's forum was, "Why can't you just add on?"
Nelson said it "just isn't feasible anymore" to expand a building that has the infrastructure for about 1,500 students, despite its more than 1,900-student enrollment.
Drawbacks of the idea, he said, include the fact GCHS has maxed out its supply of electricity, that adding to the building would decrease available parking -- "which is already in short supply," he said -- and that it could add more entrances and exits to a campus where 56 already exist.
The number of openings in the main building, J.D. Adams Hall, the Music Building and trailer classrooms is a security concern, according to Utz, a captain with the Garden City Police Department. He said the new school would have only two entrances and exits for student use, with the others controlled with electronic security systems.
Meanwhile, the GCHS building -- to be Abe Hubert Middle School -- would be controlled in the same way, since middle school students don't drive, wouldn't need to go outside to attend class in trailers (to be eliminated), and don't come and go for college classes or lunch, Atha said.
The proposal
Those at the forum touted the way the district's proposal would touch all USD 457 grade levels, starting with early childhood education. Centralizing programs, Atha said, would allow early childhood teachers to collaborate and reduce equipment duplication as they worked with mostly special education and at-risk children to catch them up before kindergarten. It also would free up 26 elementary school classrooms, he said.
That building, as well as the new GCHS, would include storm shelters, Nelson said in response to an audience question.
Services to Abe Hubert would stay the same in the current high school building, but the school would pick up an extra gym, an auditorium, a wrestling room, a weight room and some more students -- allowing for elimination of eight trailer classrooms at Kenneth Henderson, the district's other middle school, Atha said.
The high school would be built to incorporate "small learning communities." Students would choose a community based on their career interests, and their basic academic classes would be geared to match.
In responding to an audience question about whether the bond issue would help the district make Adequate Yearly Progress -- a federal No Child Left Behind mandate that involves meeting annually increasing benchmarks on state assessments -- Wheeler said the larger high school would provide teachers with their own space to meet one-on-one with students, something sometimes hard to come by at the current GCHS.
It also could help with teacher retention, which would allow the district to maintain a more experienced teaching staff, Atha said.
"Will this help us (meet AYP)?" Atha said. "It won't hurt us, but those targets get higher every year."
The bond issue would cost a $100,000 home owner $109.94 a year for 25 years, according to the school district. District representatives were asked how they'd answer to those who say they can't afford it.
If the tax increase does come, forum attendee L.D. Niedens said he expects there will be people who complain, despite the fact that they didn't get involved earlier in the process.
"Why aren't they here?" he said of Wednesday's event.
For further coverage of the forum, plus the latest news on the USD 457 bond issue and a chance to share your own thoughts, visit the "Up to the Minute" blog at http://gctbond.wordpress.com.
Found 0 comment(s)!
Twitter Updates
