Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Welcome to the community development in support of Silver Street Elementary. We are citizens concerned with keeping and maintaining this community anchor and historic landmark.
Please feel free to express your thoughts and opinions about ways to benefit our community school.
Subscribe To
Posts
Comments
Blog Talk Radio with Randy Smith
Committee
Blog Archive
Contributors
Window Sign
Click the picture to download and print (choose landscape printing)
3 comments:
from Kathy Ayres:
There are so many crucial topics which need addressing, but time is limited. Time, is actually one of those important topics, because the time this community has been given to digest the details of these broad budget issues is also very limited. The impression given by this limited time does not present a sense of urgency, but that of mis-information.
The School Corporation has presented three options and chosen to dismiss two, prior to this hearing’s community input. Isn’t it a failure of job performance to offer options and automatically assume the community wouldn’t want them and dismiss them before asking? Further, while the school corporation may have come up with three options, this doesn’t mean there are only three options. It just means you stopped at three.
Napoleon Hill once said:
“Whatever the mind of a man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.”
I do believe this to be true. If Henry Ford hadn’t believed that and trusted in his engineers’ “it can’t be done” attitudes, the all-encased V8 engine would have never been developed … at least not by Ford.
While I know we have this major challenge in front of us, I do believe there are other options that you haven’t yet considered. I challenge you to focus on what CAN be done and not on what can’t. Can’t never succeeds.
Yes, our school corporation needs to make cuts, improve our budgets and find efficiency. But we also need to remember our #1 reason for even being a school corporation, and that is to do what is in the very best interest of our children and supply them with a stellar education - - they are the future of America.
According to a Tribune article dated January 13th, 2010, we currently have $4 million to work with this year. While that isn’t $6.6 million, that does give us some work room and should provide us with some time. New Albany and Floyd County possess some really great and amazing minds. I’ve heard many wonderful ideas from only a small percentage – yet time constraints prevents me from sharing all of those with you. Before approving this tragic proposal today and regretting it later, why not allow some of these great minds to help find a creative and more constructive resolution which not only balances budgets, but even improves education to the point of making our school system a leading example for the rest of the country?
I leave you with this final thought from Henry Ford: “Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.”
My name is Teresa Strange. I am PTO co-president of The Children's Academy were my first and third grade children attend. I am a very concerned parent and tax payer. I am also one of those parents who went to school here and then moved away. When I moved back home 4 years ago I was excited that my children would get the down-home neighborhood good education that I remember receiving. You are taking that from me. We hear all the time how important it is for parents to play an active role in their child's early education. I could not do that if my school was not in my neighborhood. I along with many others must walk. I ask you to please really take this to heart and consider what an impact closing an elementary school has on a neighborhood. I can not imagine my neighborhood without Children's Academy. They are so much more than a school. They are our family. They are not only educators to our children, they are educators to us parents. They understand our special needs as a low-income school and work really hard in getting us the various grants to meet those needs. Such as Title 1 funding. I am concerned that if we distribute our children all over the County that no one will qualify for these low-income based funds.
In closing, I ask you to please reconsider this proposal. This is not the only way. Please give us time to explore more options. There are too many unanswered questions. Closing our schools is not the answer.
My name is Vicky Nugent and I am no stranger to these proceedings. I am not here to try and save Silver Street School as I have in the past, but as a home owner of 10 years, find it disheartening that I have neighbors relocating due to the possibility of Silver Street being sold to an investor that will turn it into some type of housing that can reduce my investment.
I am disappointed that my son will not be able to walk to his elementary school and that our home is on the dividing line between a school that passes ISTEP at 75% and one that barely made it to 50% this year and he falls into the latter's district.
I understand that difficult decisions had to be made and they have been made uniformly. I only hope that you realize that this is a short term fix and that you will have to continue to tighten your belt. There has been serious mismanagement of funds in the corporation, especially in regards to rubber stamping change work orders for new construction and this needs to stop.
The school board has been buying up property in the neighborhoods around the schools - half of Myrtle St has been purchased and others are slated to be for a parking lot. This is money that could have been spent to prevent Silver Street and the others from closing. I don't want to hear about x amt of dollars needed to redo work that has been paid for and that you have decided to buy property to put buildings and parking lots on. When you buy a home at or above market value and tear it down, you are removing the tax paying family that occupied the home and the home's property tax value.
When you tighten your belts, keep them tight... we've lost enough.
Post a Comment