Kilroy live-blogged the show. Go over to his place and read the whole thing!
Before I get into what was said during the interview let me say that it looks like we’ve found a tax increase that Rick Jensen supports.
According to Kilroy, when Red Clay was asked about building a school in the city, rather than the suburbs, their answer was to cite the number of Charter Schools that opened in the city. Seriously? Charter Schools are not Red Clay schools, and that statement sounded as if RCCD was saying, “We don’t need to consider our city residents since, if they aren’t happy with our RCCD schools, they can leave our traditional public schools and go to Charter schools.
If you also take into account the times Red Clay has tried to move a Charter into its city schools, I’m left wondering why my school district’s plan for my Red Clay schools is to… give them away?
Moving on… When asked what the feeder pattern for the new school would be, Red Clay can’t (won’t?) say. This is consistent with their FAQs answer:
What neighborhoods will go to the new school?
It would be premature to look at feeder patterns at this point. Once funding for a new school is secured, we will invite community members to work on the most appropriate feeder patterns. The goal would be to decrease the overcrowding at our most crowded schools.
Um… okay. Are they really claiming that they went to the State citing a need for a new school without having any idea who was going to go to that school? If this is true* then how would they even know if the Graves Road property would suit their need?
* Sorry, I’m having trouble believing that they haven’t looked at feeder patterns. A more likely scenario… the feeder pattern exists (and may be tweaked by the community if the referendum passes), but if they put this information out it will result in splitting the suburban community into those that get into the new school and those that don’t – but feel they should. Releasing the feeder pattern would lessen the chance of the referendum passing. I remember the uproar from the suburban community when RCCD released its feeder for North Star – I attended this meeting at Baltz. Talk about fireworks! There were many suburbanites saying that they would have never voted for the referendum had they known their neighborhood (which was 1/10 closer to the new school than that other neighborhood) wouldn’t be included in the feeder pattern.
Moving on to the next point… A caller named Mike asked about increased traffic on Graves Road and the need to widen the road and upgrade intersections. He wanted to know the cost and plan for this, and had very serious safety concerns. Red Clay’s answer? No impact study has been done.
Let me get this straight… Red Clay is asking residents to vote for a school, and once they get approval they’ll figure out who will attend that school and what impact it will have on the surrounding community?
Finally, Kilroy gets on the air! He points out that a new dual language Charter school is planned to open within blocks of Red Clay’s dual language school (Lewis). He wants to know what the District plans to do to fill the empty seats (capacity) this Charter will create at Lewis. I didn’t hear an answer to this question.
Let’s take a moment and review. Red Clay has no feeder pattern plan for a new school. Red Clay hasn’t done a traffic impact study on the new school. Red Clay offered no plan to lessen the impact of a new Charter school on Lewis. That’s an awful lot of “We don’t knows.”
I will vote “yes” on the renovations, but “no” on the new school. And I’m not letting the State off the hook. They need to tighten their rules on how they’re defining capacity, and on how they can give approval for a new school without a traffic impact study.