Teens in the Pontiac school district can pretty much assume they will be going to class at Pontiac Northern High School in the fall.
Although the Pontiac Board of Education will not approve a district restructuring plan until Jan. 26, the majority indicated in a study session Tuesday that they have accepted the recommendation of a community advisory committee to consolidate Central and Northern high schools at Northern’s campus at Perry and Madison.
They also are leaning toward a proposal that would keep Madison and Jefferson open and about half the district’s elementaries.
However, there may be disagreement on which elementary schools should remain open before a decision is final.
The recommendations of the Pontiac Redesign Committee for Instructional Effectiveness and Financial Efficiency were presented Monday night and discussed by the board at a study session Tuesday afternoon.
During their two months of work, the goal of the committee was to downsize buildings to better fit a reduced enrollment of 6,700 students, offset a projected $10 million deficit and improve instructional programs.
The committee made its recommendations after weeks of study and input from three public forums.
“During this process, many meetings and many hours were dedicated to developing this advisory recommendation,” acting Superintendent Linda Paramore said.
The board favored the committee’s “Option One,” which proposed to retain the current alignment of three types of schools: kindergarten through sixth grade, seventh through ninth grade, and 10th through 12th grade.
“Last year, we went toward K-6 buildings, and we even said we wanted the ninth grade by itself and even a 10th-12th grade high school,” said board President Damon Dorkins. “We don’t have to reinvent the wheel.”
Schools recommended for this configuration are Northern; Madison and Jefferson middle schools; and Herrington, Rogers, Lebaron, Emerson, Owen, Alcott and Whitman elementary schools.
The other option would feature only two types of schools, kindergarten through eighth grade and ninth through 12th grade.
Under that option, the district would keep open Northern and five K-8 buildings; the combined Jefferson/ Whittier and Lincoln/ Whitman; and Madison, Herrington and Rogers elementary schools.
Whether the school would have a new name for the single high school with which all the district’s students could identify has not yet come up publicly as a topic. Key instructional decisions and budget amendments cannot be made until the board votes on the building configurations.
During Tuesday’s fourhour discussion, trustees also appeared to favor a variation of option one suggested by board Vice President Gill Garrett. He proposed moving all seventh and eighth graders into Madison Middle School, which is on the same campus as Northern and moving elementary students from Crofoot, Longfellow, Franklin and Whitmer Human Resource Center to the Jefferson Middle School/Whittier Elementary campus.
Garrett suggested Central and Northern ninth-grade academies — which all trustees want to continue — be brought together at either a wing of Madison or a wing of Northern.
“We would have the ninth-grade academy on the same campus as Northern, and if you want summer school between eighth grade and high school, you could have it at Northern. You would have continuity and the parent piece is important,” he said.
Both options by the committee recommended that Northern be operated by a private entity, something the board did not discuss Tuesday.
Paramore said committee members used only data that included capital outlay per pupil, energy cost per pupil, building capacity, feasibility, whether the building would need retooling, and the density of the student population around each building to make their recommendations about which schools to keep in use.
The first time they voted “blind” without knowing the name of the school. They voted a second time with the names of the schools.
Trustee Christopher Northcross said the data provided to the committee to make the decision on which schools to close was from two separate entities and did not agree. He and other board members asked the board for more concise information on which to make their decision on school closings.
In addition, several board members wanted to consider the demographics of which schools they leave open.
Trustees agreed with the committee’s recommendations to keep Frost open for the preschool academy and the Kennedy Center for special education.
The committee also recommended the alternative high school now at Bethune school continue as a separate entity at an alternative site. But neither the committee nor the board said where that site would be, other than it won’t be at Bethune.
Important considerations were given to conditions of each building, adequate space for elementary playgrounds, bus and car student drop-offs, athletic grounds for secondary buildings and adequate land for expansion when enrollment begins to rise again, including space for gymnasiums and cafeterias.
Safety was also a large concern for all sites, both in terms of egress and community conditions.
Both Central and Northern have pools, gyms, strong technology infrastructure and cafeterias. Positives for Central are a bigger kitchen, central location and more air conditioning than Northern.
But at Northern, there is more acreage, windows that open, a more secure site, track and other athletic fields and a proximity to Oakland Schools Technical Campus-Northeast.
The negatives for Northern include projections of higher capital outlay costs over the next three years. But Central has windows that do not open, little to no acreage and some questionable building conditions for which costs to correct are not yet determined.
FYI
The board will vote on the option for restructuring at the regular meeting at 5:30 p.m. Jan. 5; will hold a study session on data to determine which buildings should remain in use; will hold a public forum on the recommendations at 6 p.m. Jan. 13 at Whitmer Human Resource Center; will hold a study session at 12:30 p.m. Jan. 15 and will vote on a plan at the 5:30 p.m. Jan. 26 meeting.
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