Huntsville City Schools Consolidation (Lincoln, Butler: attorney, gated, condos)

[Reactionary]

Committee recommends merging 10 Huntsville schools, building three new ones

The recommendations:
• Consolidate Terry Heights and University Place elementary schools and build a new school for the consolidated student body in the area.

• Merge Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. elementary schools after construction of a new school in the area.

• Combine East Clinton and Blossomwood elementary schools after construction of a new school on the Blossomwood campus.

• Consolidate West Huntsville and Morris elementary schools as soon as possible. The committee recommended renovating Morris by 2012 to accommodate the students.

• Move students at Stone Middle School to the larger Westlawn Middle School campus. Renovate the consolidated Westlawn building by 2013.

• Make better use of Butler High School. With about 700 students, Butler is at about 35 percent of its student capacity and costs $3 million a year to operate.

Committee recommends merging 10 Huntsville schools, building three new ones - Breaking News from The Huntsville Times - al.com

[BKOTH97]

Originally Posted by Reactionary

Committee recommends merging 10 Huntsville schools, building three new ones



Committee recommends merging 10 Huntsville schools, building three new ones - Breaking News from The Huntsville Times - al.com

This is the right thing to do for the Huntsville School System, but there will be protests galore at Blossomwood before this comes to fruition. They are going to take a wonderful school like Blossomwood Elementary and combine it with a completely failed school like East Clinton. Property values in the Blossomwood area dropped by atleast 10% this morning.

FYI, Blossomwood has a Great Schools rating of 10 and East Clinton is a 2.

[Reactionary]

Merge Terry Heights (190 students, 40% capacity) and University Place (321 students, 60% capacity) elementary schools into new school building. Note that UAH is eager to buy the University Place property; IIRC the City did a study and found that the new school can be mostly paid for from the proceeds of that sale.

Merge Lincoln (170 students, 53% capacity) and Martin Luther King Jr. (287 students, 75% capacity) into new school building. The historic Lincoln school property may have some value, since there are plans to develop condos nearby. The City could probably sell MLK to A&M.

Merge East Clinton (158 students, 33% capacity) and Blossomwood (483 students, 97% capacity) into new school building at Blossomwood.

BKOTH97 - I predict that the new Blossomwood school will be built for less than 600 students so that kids who previously transferred into Blossomwood under NCLB won't be able to because of no room. The combined school will be about 80 / 20 (IIRC not much different than now). IMO that theory partly explains why HHS was built to be overcapacity from day 1 - no transfers in.

Merge West Huntsville (247 students, 42% capacity) and Morris (300 students, 42% capacity) elementary schools into renovated Morris. Morris was built for 720 students, so the combined student body would be 76% capacity.

Merge Stone Middle School (332 students, 35% capacity) and Westlawn Middle School (235 students, 27% capacity) into renovated Westlawn. Stone has a fairly new building with 940 student capacity. Westlawn has 880 student capacity. Both have large campuses, but maybe the City can sell Stone for more money.

Make better use of Butler High School. I have no idea what this means, unless they plan to shut down / demolish part of the campus to reduce operating costs.

Note that Ridgecrest ES (48% capacity), Rolling Hills ES (43%), West Mastin Lake ES (40%), Chaffee ES (47%), Davis Hills MS (45%), Farley ES (35%) are other schools with low use stats.

Looks like the City made a 40% threshold (rather than just number of students, as previously reported, i.e., Monte Sano ES with 200+ kids was mentioned as a target earlier).

IMO the Elementary School plan is pretty good and the MS plan is OK. They addressed the schools with the lowest capacity numbers, they plan to close schools built in the 60s, and they can sell some of the properties to balance the costs of new construction.

All without a sales tax increase.

[Charles]

An outstanding article on this in this morning's Huntsville Times:

Are city's schools equal enough?- al.com

"And six months ago, Huntsville began the process of shedding its desegregation court order by sending four boxes of statistical data to the attorneys at the Department of Justice. "

""I think we're desegregated," Superintendent Ann Roy Moore said last week. "

"In the last 10 years, the Justice Department blocked a second southeast high school, demanded race-based quotas at Hampton Cove Middle,..."

"Last year, the Supreme Court ruled against the use of a student's race in deciding who gets to transfer to a new school in Seattle or Louisville. But in Huntsville, the federal desegregation order requires exactly that."

"But Martinson and Moore say that ending the court order would allow the Huntsville system greater flexibility in building new schools to handle growth or redrawing zone lines to make better use of under-used buildings."

[vakinderegg]

Charles,

Thanks for sharing this article. I find this so interesting. When I taught in Fairfax County , Virginia the students were able if they chose to pick a school based on thier interest. If a child wanted to take Japanese they can apply to another school in the district or any other special interest topic such as a different foreign language , dance class , IB , or vocational classes. This does not always change the demographics but it certainly gave the students different opportunities.This article mentioned moving teachers around. Sometimes this can work, but a teacher needs to understand other cultures before teaching. Educating a teacher on teaching a different race or culture other than theirs is important.I thought Fairfax County and the very diverse HS I taught at did a super job. Perhaps Huntsville schools need to visit lots of school districts around the county that have diverse populations and see how successful or not so successful their schools are doing on testing and their HS drop out rate.

I am so new here. Is this North/South sides of town an economical issuse too???? Is this based on rich/poor or is this only a black/white issue. I surely hope all Huntsville children get the same opportunities in thier neighborhood schools.

Once again for sharing your interesting finds in the news!