West-Side Elem.

[bombermwc]

So we've chit-chatted about this before, but I have some info that might clear some things up.

Mid-Del's asking price for West Side was not overstated or over market, it was a legal requirement. Schools cannot sell property for less than their appraised value. And the school was appraised so much higher than expected because it's appraisal must include all of the equipment inside....musical instruments, computers, etc. I find that a little odd since that equipment will move, but whatever. So there's the reason why the school district was asking so much higher of a price and why the city couldn't really just go in a take it over. So if it is to go, someone is going to have to pony up the dough for it.

Now, with that being said, West Side is just one part of the puzzle for what I believe is a really stupid restructuring plan.

One part includes closing Sooner Rose and dividing it's students between the next closest schools. I'm OK with this one because students from Sooner Rose already get to pick which middle school they go to, so why not go ahead and divide up the students and remove the choice? Add on a few classrooms at the other elementary schools and it's a better approach anyway.

Now is the part I think needs to be re-examined. Removing Jarman and not replacing it. I think the school really should be torn down. I went to Jarman, and they have done a lot of work there, but it is a huge piece of crap building with no historical value that looks like junk. The thought is that Monroney was built for 1,600 students and that they could absorb the whole population. I find that to be crap and extremely irresponsible. That would mean fitting the population of MCHS into a building that is half it's size. In case we forgot, MCHS wasn't big enough to fit 9th graders, so they added a wing. BUT the school was supposed to be able to handle more than 2,000 students like it did in the 80's. The problem with this is that classrroms get reutilized for things that didn't exist before...like computer labs and new programs. So I don't find this to be an acceptable option by any way possible. I think if they want to take out Jarman, then they need to be rebuilding it, not removing it. There's that big plot of land over near Sooner Rose that they could build on.....

[mmonroe]

I hadn't heard anything about Jarman being taken out, I'm just a few blocks of east of it. I also attended there as a 7th grader. I'd be curious to know what they would do with the land after jarman was gone...