The Garden City Telegram
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Tour illustrates issues
Published 10/17/2008 in News : Education
By SHAJIA AHMAD
Area residents will see a few new campaign messages crop up around town Saturday as community advocates of the USD 457 bond issue for a new high school distribute 500 yard signs.
The hallways of Garden City High School, 1412 N. Main St., were mostly empty Thursday night as school officials guided several concerned voters through an array of situations they see as problematic with the current building.
Up and down the science classroom hallways, Assistant Superintendent Shelly Kiblinger took visitors into the lab rooms that she said were poorly equipped for learning.
"We don't have any space to get hands-on in these rooms," Kiblinger said, as she opened and closed rooms where classrooms sizes of about 30 students share a few sinks and gas faucets.
The group entered a classroom designed for physics learning with no sinks or lab tables.
"There's not even space in here for equipment to teach them about weights and mass measurements or for experiments," said Kiblinger, who is also a staff liaison to the speakers bureau committee.
As the assistant superintendent stuck her head inside one classroom, she caught a teacher staying late after school.
The situation isn't ideal, said the science teacher, Rebecca Bryant, referring to the limited space inside her classroom where microscopes sit on student desks because no lab tables are available. But she added that she does the best with what she's got.
As Kiblinger guided some down the stairs, she lamented that the pathways were too narrow to accommodate the volume of kids, especially during passing times.
"With the kind of traffic we have, there's just not enough room," she said to one parent who followed the tour.
Inside the first-floor special-education classroom, Kiblinger told parents that there wasn't enough area for kids to learn functional living skills.
"And you've got some kids with physical disabilities, and there isn't enough room for wheelchairs," she said. "Though I guess the teachers try to make it work in the small space."
The tour was not yet over, as the school official took guests to the outside temporary buildings, which several school administrators agreed perpetuated truancy and safety and weather-related concerns. Though the trailers are used as full-fledged classrooms because of limited space inside the school, they do not provide enough space for computer-assisted learning.
"(The buildings) are meant to be a temporary solution until a new building comes along," Kiblinger said. "But 20 years later, they're still here."
Several families and school administrators gathered Thursday night for a public meeting in the GCHS Courtyard to present information about the bond issue as election day looms closer.
The tour persuaded at least one parent that the proposal was something he would seriously consider.
"I started out against it, but I'm becoming more and more convinced about it," said Earle Rice, who has two sons at GCHS, a senior and junior.
Though his children won't reap the benefits of a new building if the bond issue is approved, Rice said he's willing to consider voting yes because of the challenges he feels the school now faces.
"(The new high school) seems like it's necessary and worth the extra costs," Rice said.
The $97.5 million bond issue on November's ballot proposes to fund a new, 2,000-student high school to be built north of Mary Street and east of Campus Drive that could be expanded to house 2,500; renovations at the current high school to turn it into a middle school; renovations at Abe Hubert Middle School to turn it into an elementary school; and renovations at Garfield Elementary School to make it into a district-wide early childhood center.
School officials received word from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers earlier this week that the 92-acre area where the new high school would be built -- east of Campus Drive and north of Mary Street between the Pheasant Valley subdivision and the U.S. Highway 50/83 Bypass -- is not designated as a wetland, which is a concern that had cropped up in previous months, said Steve Karlin, deputy superintendent.
Several officials Thursday night said they didn't think voters would be stingy about their dollars at the polls despite a national economy on the decline.
"Our message is still the same," said USD 457 Superintendent Rick Atha. "I'm sure (the economic situation) weighs on people's minds, but we haven't heard any discussion about it deterring voters."
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