Silver Street supporters, New Albany's mayor join forces, by Tara Hettinger (News-Tribune).
On Monday, New Albany Mayor Doug England told a group of concerned parents and community members — who are fighting to keep Silver Street Elementary open — that he understands the importance of being able to walk to school.
He did just that as a child … (and) England told the group he is in favor of keeping the school open, because it encourages walkers and helps to define the area.“The school is the heart of the neighborhood and if you take the heart away, the neighborhood just dies,” England said.
I’m delighted to see Mayor England involved in this unfolding story.
It’s hard to imagine a public entity playing its hand any more ineptly than the school corporation has managed to date, with its imported hatchet-wielding consultant, rubber-stamp “cover” committee designed for no other reason than to ultimately take the fall, and a penchant for secrecy that’s positively Nixonian in scope.
Toss into the mix a school board member or two whose prime mandate seems to be sticking it to “them people” downtown (if Linden Meadows were a tune, I'd be humming it), and we’re approaching a readymade Mel Brooks comedic epic – except that the more one considers it, the story isn’t funny, and even the addition of a flatulent campfire scene out behind the administration building wouldn’t make it so.
I’ll say it again: I have friends in the school corporation, and it pains me to note their employer’s stance in this matter. At this point, it isn’t just that the validity of the Superintendent’s pre-determined course of school resource “action” is questionable. It’s that the method pursued in achieving it is bordering on the reprehensible.
That’s very alarming.
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2 comments:
What is shameful is this board and "corporation" are considering three scenarios, all of which include closing a elementary school. Yet following one of the meetings regarding this effort to save money and better use resources. The board approved millions and millions of dollars in expenditures for expansion, and "improvements" for athletic facilities for both NAHS and FCHS.
Why does it seem odd to me that they would spent nearly 8 million dollars on weight rooms, and other athletic facilites, and consider this a higher priority than keeping a school open where the foundations of a childs entire education is laid out?
But then again, history shows that the school corporation answers to no one, and does what it damn well pleases.
The millions of dollars of athletic expenditures come in conjunction with members of the sacrificial resources committee disclosing that, according to numbers given to them by the school corporation, closing Silver Street would result in an annual savings of only $300K per year.
Make no mistake, this is not an attempt to save money. It's an attempt to transfer money to areas other than central city elementary schools with the majority of it going to outlying, exurban schools.
It's sprawl subsidy.
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