Jim O'Bryan wrote:Classrooms, classroom size. Heck I hear they cannot even move much needed room dividers from the closed McKinley into schools that are opened and having students attend classes in large rooms and hallways.
Jim O'Bryan wrote:I was speaking with some parents and all hinted at packed classrooms this year. So it occurred to me that this could possibly cause the end of open enrollment as we go from 6 schools to 5 in the near future.
I am not an expert but do not see how it can continue, and Lakewood can continue to improve our schooling on over crowded students.
I am getting emails of kids taking classes in hallways, gymnasiums with multiple classes, how can this work out?
Jim O'Bryan wrote:I was just watching MSNBC and they mentioned schools in the USA are ranked 25th in english, 45th in science and math. Do 30 kids in a hallways create this. What message does this send the kids as they past and talk to friends that actually have classrooms?
The issue of overcrowding and room dividers was brought to my attention and I have shared the concerns with the Administration. I am still waiting for a response.
Jim I share your concern about overcrowding. The administration was quite forthcoming during the levy issue, they said even if the levy passed class sizes would increase. It is frustrating because when the rebuilding process was started we were told that eliminating schools would decrease class sizes, obviously that is not the case. Also when we go down to 6 schools from 7 we will have a major problem. The schools were built to house class sizes of 24, and 3 classes of each grade, this is the template that the board suggested. Using our current enrollment, which is larger than last year, we would be at 99% capacity in our new elementary schools. That number frightens me.
Yeah, that number makes no sense. When the state of Ohio looks at our 'six versus seven' school issue, hopefully they will agree to keep seven schools.
I wanted to explain the divider-wall issue in more detail for people reading the Deck who haven't been to Open schools and can't picture it.
My daughter is a second grader at Grant School. So far she has been in tears twice this year over the fact that she can't hear in her afternoon class, after the third grade class comes in from lunch directly behind the three bulletin boards dividing my daughter's class from the third grade.
My daughter is in a classroom of thirty-one students that was formerly a hallway at the top of the stairs. Grant is an open school which means that classrooms are supposed to be divided by tall, sound-absorbent rolling walls.
Unfortunately, the school doesn't have the walls it is supposed to have. The classes are divided by regular bulletin boards that in some cases you can see over the top of. The maintenance people have figured out a way to connect them together so the kids can’t play hide and seek between them.
There are real divider walls at McKinley school which is closed. Our principal has been asking, and as he stated, Board Member Markling has been inquiring into obtaining those rolling walls, so far with no response. Each day these kids get deeper into subjects that they would probably have more success with, if they could hear better.
If the Administration could package up three buildings worth of furniture and truck it all down to Toledo as a gift, you think they could pack up some dividers and move them a mile down Detroit Rd.
Is the cost too prohibitive to package them up and put them in trucks? Who paid to package up the furniture, who rented the trucks, paid the drivers, to take the furniture to Toledo? We did. What about our own kids? The kids at the rated "Excellent with Distinction" only Blue Ribbon school in yes, the center of the city.
If the cost is too high for our cash-strapped district, then the moms and dads and teachers and staff who work at Grant could put together a group TODAY to go over to McKinley with a bunch of screwdrivers and strong dads and older brothers to take apart and move the dividers ourselves.
We will be happy to assemble a convoy of vans, pick-up trucks, and station wagons to make that long journey down Detroit Rd. I bet some of the businesses around here would help us too.
This is the job of the people who run the school district. Having classrooms in which children can hear seems like it would be a high priority. Placing the dividing walls that an Open School needs in an Open School that is OPEN would seem to be obvious.
This should have been done before the kids got back to school. What's going on? Isn't it part of their job to make sure that schools provide a good learning environment for children, what do they do?
Jim mentioned Grant’s closed modular building, mere feet from the school. We have the daily irony of kids having to tiptoe between each other's bulletin boards, disrupting lessons, while the modular building sits empty, though the power and lights are on.
Everyone would like to just usher the larger classes into this EMPTY BUILDING THAT'S RIGHT THERE. We could, if only the Administration and Board would OPEN THE DOOR.
We once heard that cleaning costs were prohibitive. I can't imagine they are more than the $5000 dollars worth of furniture we sent to Toledo. Again, why do those kids rate and our own Lakewood kids do not?
And again, if our cash-strapped district can’t pay to clean that small building, we can assemble a group of volunteers TODAY to clean the building. We’ll do it in shifts after school, maybe H2O will help us. We’ll clean it ourselves.
These are our kids we’re talking about. They are going to school now, today. They’re not going to get this time back.
We are all in this school district in the first place because we think so highly of it. Overall our kids are having a GREAT experience here. We need to equip Lakewood's only Blue Ribbon school, and one of two elementary schools rated "Excellent with Distinction", with the environment for teaching and learning that it deserves, and we need to do it now.
If we actually do need to put a volunteer citizen's group together to do some moving, we can do it right here on the Deck. I'll post a separate thread for that if it looks like we need it. Our school district has been hit very hard. Maybe we do need a volunteer citizens group.
I am appalled that the modulars have sat empty. It is absurd. The space is needed and we are already paying to cool and heat them, why not just open them up?
Also I forgot to mention the numbers if we kept all 7 schools open. With our current numbers we would be at 85% capacity. That makes more sense, especially since we were told that the new schools would last for the next 50 years. I don't see how having 6 new buildings that would already be at 99% capacity is planning for the next 50 years.
I am really beginning to scratch my head about who exactly is doing the thinking over at the board building. We know that several teachers have been let go. That has personally affected by middle schooler as he is supposed to be served in a self contained special education room. This year they lost their aide, who was a certified teacher. This year the main teacher has to manage 6th, 7th and 8th grade special ed students on her own. The kids are having to go into regular ed classrooms on their own unlike in years past. And now I hear this absurdity about uniforms for the district which will cost $85,000. Wouldn't that money be better spent on teachers and aides? Uniforms will not make our district an excellent district but if we have more staff to provide actually education for our kids we could possibly be an excellent district. The priorities are off and it is very disappointing.
Yeah, that number makes no sense. When the state of Ohio looks at our 'six versus seven' school issue, hopefully they will agree to keep seven schools.
I know this is a little off subject, but our school district (BOE) decided to close a school. OSFC said they would give us a pot of money that would cover rebuilding or renovating 2 of the 3 last remaining elementary schools (and 1/2 of the high school). They never said we HAD to close a school. We have the option of keeping Grant open if we want. We also have the option to renovate it at a cost of about $5m dollars (rebuilding Roosevelt is about 15m and Lincoln 16m). This could go on the ballot and the cost to taxpayers is minimal. However, citizens have not been given a chance to vote on this issue.
We can keep all 7 schools, use our pot of money from OSFC wisely with the most bang for our buck, and rebuild the 3rd school (right sized school and the right price) when the taxpayers can afford it.
Is hard to digest that money isn't being used wisely when we just passed a levy.
Yeah, sorry I keep misstating that, making it worse.
THE STATE OF OHIO DID NOT SAY THAT WE HAVE TO CLOSE AN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL. They said they would pay for rebuilding only six schools, based on our population, which in our younger grades is going up, and needs to be re-evaluated, so put more correctly, maybe the state will agree to pay for REBUILDING ALL SEVEN OF OUR ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS.
And maybe we don't need to use the state's evaluation of Lakewood's School District to tell us what to do.
If we ask the state they may say we overbuilt our Middle Schools in order to preserve our beautiful architecture, and they would prefer Middle School in Lakewood to start at fifth grade because there is room in those buildings for another grade, an idea that was carefully studied and rejected for good and real reasons by the Fifty Year Committee.
We can reject the idea of total top to bottom school renovations especially if the money's not available right now. (And it's looking like there is absolutely no guarantee that the State of Ohio will have the money either.) How much money would it cost to fix the things that are wrong with the schools as they stand? Is it less than the portion we would have to kick in for the total renovations?
It is significant that the two elementary schools rated "Excellent with Distinction" are schools that have NOT been renovated, proving that teaching and learning has much more to do with what goes on between established teams of teachers and their students, than the architecture that surrounds them, no matter how many smart boards there are.
But there is time for debate on this. Not a lot of time, but time.
First things first.
There is no time to wait, to help kids at Grant be able to have better access to learning on MONDAY, if they could hear better, which they would be able to do, if those divider walls were moved and installed this weekend.
They can't hear in their classrooms because they don't have the right kind of divider walls. The District has the right kind of dividers within the District, they are at McKinley, which is closed.
What does everybody out there think about moving those dividers to Grant?
Would anybody out there help us move them if we are told that it will cost the District too much money to do it?
I am volunteering right now to help with any manual labor at any of the schools that will help our kids do better in school, and if we put a group together like this, maybe we can make things better. I know it sounds naive, maybe it's not.
