Rooster Tales: Here’s an Option

As much as I enjoyed living in the Madison, Wisconsin area, they have problems with educating their lot like everybody else.  In this case it is about as opposite as ours, so why can’t we get together and solve each other’s problems with one, major rental of U-Haul equipment?

I hope this comes through to post; if not let me know so I can try a different method.  I thought this would be a good read for all those concerned with ‘problem solving-101’.  Last week I stated that we have it better off than you may think, and, Magnet (not our Magnet) Schools were a suggested alternative for Knox Co/consolidation issues.  This was cut and pasted from the Madison, WI., newspaper on Thursday, Feb.4. for my Roostertales column.  Thanks J.

 
Andrew Bahnsack, back left, is a second-grade teacher and Jennifer Garthwaite, right center, is a bilingual resource specialist at Frank Allis Elementary School. Both teach in a single classroom housing two second-grade classes because of overcrowding at the school. Before she can teach a fifth-grade art class at Allis Elementary School, teacher Kimberly Wilson has to hoist a 40-pound plastic bin of art supplies up three flights of stairs from a basement art room, then haul it down a long corridor to another instructor’s classroom.  When the class hour is over, she lugs the bin back to refill supplies and heads back up another staircase to teach another class.

“I’m a marathon runner, and it’s really good they hired an athlete,” Wilson said, “because this takes an incredible amount of energy.”

Wilson’s on-the job workout is only one of the byproducts of crowding in four elementary schools in the La Follette High School attendance area. This fall, the art room Wilson planned to teach in — and share with a music teacher — was converted to a kindergarten classroom to accommodate an unexpected increase in 5-year-olds at Allis. The three-story, elevatorless building at 4201 Buckeye Road also houses the Nuestro Mundo charter school, also filled to capacity.

Through 2014-15, the elementary school-age population in the La Follette attendance area — which includes Allis, Nuestro Mundo, Kennedy, Elvehjem, Glendale and Schenk schools — is expected to increase by 100. By 2014, that number could double to 200 — half the size of an average elementary school.
The issue is limited to the elementary schools; area middle schools and La Follette are thought to have enough space to absorb the current elementary students as they get older.

“I think overcrowded schools are a critical issue for many reasons,” said Darcy Burke, an Elvehjem parent who is part of a committee of school principals, district administrators and parents seeking a neighborhood solution. “Specifically because our kids aren’t going to be getting the services that all the other kids are getting in different schools the same way. So there’s an equity issue.”

In the Allis/Nuestro Mundo building, eight classes are doubled up, sharing space in four rooms, said Allis principal Julie Frentz. Classes also have to double up for music, and either double up or triple up for gym. Fire drills take a little longer, and testing sometimes has to be done in the principal’s office or school psychologist’s office because there’s no other space quiet enough.

“It takes away from our flexibility,” said Frentz, whose crowding problem started when 30 more children than were projected showed up this fall to register for school. “We don’t have small group spaces for reading or for anything. So we are really cramped.”

The population bump primarily comes from four areas with a growing number of young children, said Kurt Kiefer, the district’s chief information officer: the Sprecher, Marsh Road and East Towne-Burke Heights neighborhoods, and the Rimrock/Badger Road area.

Community members have been brainstorming solutions for several months, and on Monday they brought to the Madison School Board several possibilities, including:

• Boundary changes for 144 students at Allis, Elvehjem, Glendale and Kennedy.
• Turning all the elementary schools in the attendance area into magnet schools with different academic themes.
• Moving Nuestro Mundo’s K-5 program into Sennett Middle School.
• Allowing families in the Elvehjem and Kennedy districts to choose from the two schools by lottery.
• Converting all computer labs in the affected area to classrooms and providing wireless “netbooks” on a cart to travel to students.
• Shifting classrooms at Kennedy, a temporary solution.