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  • Jay Mathews Challenge
  • Test Results
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  • The 71 Acre site
  • Other school capacity needs
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  • The Budget
  • Schools Budget Priorities
  • New High School Costs To-Date
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Other School Capacity Needs

While all attention is riveted on the on-going high school debacle, scant attention is being paid to the elementary school capacity requirements.

In the year 2001, - six years ago - the school administration established their book "The 2007 Plan". This included their projections for capacity expansion. By now, all expanded capacity - both high school and elementary - should have been finished. See their chart:
View large version of the capacity expansion chart

None of this has been done.

In an attempt to placate the community, there is a request for a "gym" (multi-purpose) to be added to Cooley Elementary - a school which is now greatly overcrowded, and needs much more than one rectangular metal building stuck on one end. This is nothing but a band-aid, and a costly one at that - initially priced at $450,000, the latest estimate is now $750,000.

A comprehensive capacity expansion plan needs to be put into place - a plan which encompasses all capacity needs, prioritizes and budgets them.

The current School Board, in place for many years now, has been unable to do this.

It's time for a new approach.

"Such a degree of learning [should be] given to every member of the society as will enable him to read, to judge and to vote understandingly on what is passing."

--Thomas Jefferson to Littleton Waller Tazewell, 1805

"We looked at the problems facing America and realized that if we are going to be a competitive nation, we need a far better educated populace than we have now. The American K-12 public education has gone from No. 1 in the world some 30 years ago, to No. 19. We thought, This is bad for the country and bad for our democracy."

--Eli Broad - multi-billionaire, (founder - SunAmerica). Has now established The Broad Residency in Urban Education.