Thealexa Becker wrote:Why not do that with Emerson? It's a huge school on a large lot. And there is plenty of recreation space there are well. And evening courses are offered practically across the street at Taft, which was my understanding at least.
And the school has been renovated recently. Seems like what you are describing.
Thealexa, not Emerson because it is extremely far from children in the southern part of the city, particularly around Hayes, and take a look at what it's boundary lines are like even WITH a 7 school configuration - they are already so oversized that they have to take kids from far south in order to be anywhere equal in percentage of capacity with other schools, which makes longer walks for kids (or longer pickup/dropoff lines for those driving, which also decreases air quality for the neighborhood from all those idling vehicles). From what I've been able to ascertain, the decision to convert Emerson to an elementary school from a middle school was made looking at pure population density, not density of housing with children (which was available by neighborhood block from the US Census for a couple decades quite easily, and could likely be gotten further back with just a bit of digging/public records requesting). The northeast corner of Lakewood has by FAR the lowest density of residences with children (there is, on average, less than two families with minor children in any of the high density housing along Edgewater). The highest density of housing with children has been, consistently across time, the area between Detroit and Madison throughout Lakewood, but especially from the center westward. Unfortunately, due to lack of accounting for this, when Phase I and Phase II were done, all the elementary schools in that swath of our town north-to-south (Garfield, McKinley, Franklin, and darnit I'm forgetting the one that was the north half of the property that is now just Harding - was that Harding Elementary?) were closed/swapped for a different building further north, Taft being the only one between those roads that was closed from my counting (and Emerson basically replaced both Taft and Franklin while TRYING to take some of the overflow from Harrison, which has been bursting at the seams basically since it opened from what I've heard). When we had 10 elementary schools, FIVE of them were on or between Detroit and Madison - McKinley, Harding, Grant, Franklin, Garfield. McKinley, Garfield and Grant are basically where the first three elementary schools were in this town, before it was even called Lakewood (the BOE building across the parking lot from Grant is the actual original site, but we're talking less than 500ft difference here, not a quarter mile or more). In case you're not aware, the north part of the BOE building is the original central elementary school building, then there is the ramp-bridge part that connects it to the other part of the building which is the original high school building (or I may have switched them, I'm a tad groggy right now as it's past midnight). Our town GREW around having the primary schools along Detroit, and added the other schools as the population spread. The attractive features that drew families to the center of town (not the least of them proximity to the schools for an easy walk for their children) did not change for over 100 years. I dropped off a kid who is now in 5th grade at McKinley for the public pre-k program. I didn't move to Lakewood myself until 2005 but I came here quite frequently as a teen when I lived in the ever-unhip Parma, and even occasionally as a CWRU student because I thought Lakewood was way better than Coventry.
What Meg is referring to with the Grant/BOE property is also that the Grant property is much larger than many people realize - it extends in a peninsula south toward Hilliard between houses/back yards further than is obvious. With a little bit of creative architecture work, a rebuilt central elementary school on that property (still called Grant or not, I'm not that attached to the name) could be repositioned so that it could connect to the original buildings and incorporate VERY NEEDED renovations to the BOE building (which does not meet any but the most rudimentary handicap accessibility markers, for one thing), share some maintainance costs between the two buildings the way several of our neighboring municipalities have done, and preserve some very important qualities that our town was built around - while also providing more equality of access to the special programs (like the gifted program aka Discovery or the special needs program known as CHAMPS) instead of having them out on the edges of town (and a real pain for the few families who happen to have one kid who is Autistic and one who is Gifted... which happens). Plus, this would allow the central elementary school to expand/contract its boarders with the other school boundary lines more productively if there IS a sudden influx of students in one of the areas along the perimeter, without dramatically increasing walking distance for any of the kids impacted by the change. Oh, and for the record, the section of town currently serviced by Grant's boundary lines has the HIGHEST density of households with minor children per square quarter mile in the entire town. I've run the numbers based upon census data AND the school district's own enrollment information obtained via public records request. I know why the boundary lines are the way they are, I've counted the kids for myself.
And yeah, I'm one of the ones they blow off. Never mind the degree in sociology and graduate work in community & social development, apparently that's not relevant. I've been telling them that the demographic trends say "woah, stop, reconsider" since 2008 and been being brushed off AND had the data I provided them withheld from public discussions aimed at reaching "consensus" (which wasn't consensus - it was pressure applied at tables with a handful of people and majority rules at each table being reported as the "consensus" agreement to the little sticker board, with lots of snearing and denegrating of experience, and a suspicious HEAVY majority of people with lakewood.k12.oh.us in their email addresses on the sign in sheet... with very few people with children elementary age or younger there... especially since these meetings happened on school nights overlapping dinner and bedtime for your average kids in that age range, without childcare available onsite except for the big meetings where there was only childcare for ages 5+... yeah, it was a REALLY open and inclusive atmosphere for families directly facing the impact of these decisions... see if you can get an official to give you an estimate of average age of participants and compare that for yourself with the average age of parents of elementary school children...)
