The quality and function of a building can have a substantial effect on students and faculty. As USD 257 continues its discussion on whether to ask voters to approve a bond issue, it weighs the pros and cons of having one school campus over the current five individual schools.
At Monday’s board meeting Angie Linn, USD 257 curriculum director, showed the board how students and faculty could benefit if the district were to have one elementary school over its current Jefferson, Lincoln and McKinley elementaries.
Linn said site licensing costs could be cut significantly if only one building existed. The library circulation system costs the district $800 per building, the Accelerated Reader hosting costs $499 per building, IXL (a math program for Common Core) costs $1,500 per building. SWIS (School Wide Information System) would cost $350 per building if the project was used.
Linn also said that consolidating resources, such as the library, music, art and physical education, would give the district equitable schedules.
“At a new facility we would have a dedicated lunch room so we do not have to shut down the gym for 2 1/2 hours each day,” Linn said. “The current setup creates scheduling issues.”
Having one resource for the district, like only one nurse, has struck a chord with all of the elementary administrators.
“I look at the medical aspect of it,” Lincoln principal Larry Hart said. “Our staff needs to be ready if a student has an accident. If the nurse is at a different building all we can do is call 911 and comfort the child until help arrives.”
Due to district boundaries and limited space at the schools, sometimes families have children at different buildings. Hart said moving students to a different building is hard on the administrators and the families.
“We live through this every day,” Hart said about the struggles. “It frustrates me to be able to only take one kid and have to ship the other off to McKinley. It’s hard to sleep at night.”
Brad Crusinberry, principal for Jefferson, said not all schools are equal, including the classroom sizes.
If the district were to have just one elementary school, there would be more classrooms which would be smaller in size, allowing for a more intimate learning experience, Linn said. There also would be adequate space for learning so students would no longer have use the hallways as makeshift classrooms.
Brett Linn, USD 257 technology director, explained how technology upgrades at a new middle school would change how students learn. Brett said there are 144 student desktop computers at the middle school. The age of each computer is around eight years. These computers are currently running Windows XP. Updates for this program will not be available after April, meaning entirely new programs will have to be purchased.
In a survey of middle school teachers about using technology in the classroom, Linn found 71 percent of teachers would like to see the 1:1 initiative in the classroom where each student has his own electronic device, 23 percent would like mobile carts and 70 percent said they have average knowledge of the technology that could be used.
