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Sunday, January 07, 2007

School Beat: 4K: December: Mr. Pierick Speaks on 4K

(Ed. note. In preparation for the Monday night School Board meeting, I have published the comments made by Mr. Pierick at last month's School Board meeting regarding 4K. This topic is again on the agenda for Monday night's meeting.)

"I have a subjective bias about preschool, and I personally believe that there are benefits to 4-year-old kindergarten. Both of my sons attended preschool, and my opinion is based upon the positive learning experience that they had.

However, I have very strong reservations about going forward with this program, and even about going ahead with a pilot program. If I were to vote today, I would vote not to continue. In fact, I question why we are investing so many District resources and so much planning time on something that appears less than fully compelling.

My reservations are varied.

I don’t see any widely based community support for 4-year-old kindergarten, and there were more comments at the public hearing opposed to this program than in favor.

This was initially presented as a program that would benefit and be supported by the existing providers of 4-year-old preschool in the District, but most of those providers who came to the public hearing spoke against it.

The State legislative task force on this topic was presented a few days ago. The task force admitted that it did not vote on the recommendations. Regardless of the recommendations, there is a statement in the report that is unlikely to be refuted soon by anyone: “in our current limited resource setting, increased funding for 4 year old kindergarten programs is not likely, and would only be found at the expense of another education program.”

We have a facilities consulting firm, Plunkett Raysich Architects, which has given us some preliminary analysis of our facilities. According to Plunkett Raysich, we already have a need for three additional rooms to serve our elementary school population, and will need another by 2011 – in just four years. We are currently at the level of classrooms that we need to serve our intermediate school population, but will need three more rooms in four years. We now have the number of core curriculum rooms needed to serve our middle school population – not the best facility, only the right number of core curriculum rooms -- but we will need five additional classrooms in four years. And we will need one more classroom in the high school designed just five years ago. Altogether, this means we need to add about 13 classrooms in four years. The preliminary report also talks about numerous facility deficiencies in the three older buildings – some of them major deficiencies -- and even a few facility deficiencies in the new high school.

The Evansville Community School District pays about two million dollars per year for construction debt. Most of that is the debt on the high school construction, which won’t be paid off for another 15 years. The rest is debt from 1992 construction to be paid off in 2012. That construction debt represents about a third of our property tax levy, two million of the six million dollars levied.

However we go about adding some 13 classrooms and correcting some major deficiencies in our facilities, it is going to cost us some major money. And the only way we are going to get that money is by passing a referendum. My guess is that’s not politically doable until 2012, when the 1992 debt is fully paid.

I believe that the Evansville community will support this District when we go to them and demonstrate our need for additional classrooms in order to teach additional children who have moved to the district or been born in the district. But I very much doubt that the community will support us if we increase the number of students in our buildings by adding 4 year olds over the next few years, and then turn around and say it’s too crowded.

I think we need to stop planning for any 4 year old program that will place additional children in our school buildings. I think this Board needs to give a strong message about this now, so that valuable administrator and staff time can be spent on other important curriculum and planning endeavors."

3 comments:

  1. Anonymous5:49 PM

    I think as well the school administaration needs to worry about the needs of the kids who are already in the school system. I believe so much attention has been brought to the issue of 4k and possible needs not being met, I think if there were kids out there who had special needs, it has been made very clear they should contact the school, we don't need 4k to do that. If a child has special needs, by the law the school has to provide service, we don't need 4k for that.
    If you just want more social skills for your child, head start is a excellent program, and if there is a special need head start will wave the max. income guideline they have. They did for our child. Excellent teachers here in the head start class room.
    I also want to let people know that the ymca also has programs available. If there is a speech or physical impairment there is a county program called birth-3. For the county program, they come to you, so transportation is not a concern. So basically my point is there are plenty of other programs
    to help any one who has special needs, with out putting a 4k program into place that will eventually only hurt the rest of the students in the Evansville school district. So many more areas they need to improve, with out wasting money we don't have on this.

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  2. Anonymous5:53 PM

    I am so sick of this. I think the board needs to make it very clear to Heidi Carvin, enough already. This is not going to work.

    I have always have had alot of respect for Mr.Pierick and that continues, he is a voice of reason.

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  3. anon, thanks for being a source of reason in this. The problem I see is head start wants this program. At one public hearing the head start lady talked of 3 and 2 year old kindergarten.

    I would like to see the board squash this thought of 4K now before april comes. Thanks for the posting of this and thanks to Mr. Pierick

    ReplyDelete