TSAS Building Update

[Eric Doss]

Greetings to parents, guardians, students, and friends of TSAS,

I would like to first apologize, I attempted to send you a message on Friday and I just found out that my email ended up in the TSASNotes spam and wasn't delivered to our community. My message did go out on Facebook, but not in email form.

On Monday of this week, the TSAS board had a significant discussion about the location of the school. TPS has asked us to consider moving to the former Roosevelt building a year from now, during the summer before the 2016-2017 school year. The three story 1926 vintage building is located in Owen Park at 1202 W Easton St. The building is large and has attributes we might consider desirable, such as large common areas.  It has enough room for the additional students in the middle school to be located on their own floor, which would keep our school community together, but the grade levels separated. 

I spoke to the teachers on Wednesday of last week and the comments were overwhelmingly positive. Likewise, the comments shared by parents and community members on Monday night at the board meeting were also very positive. I believe that this opportunity to move is a win-win for us and for Tulsa Public Schools.

The main reason that this discussion is happening now is that the entity that had contracted to purchase the Roosevelt building is unable to do so and that building became available at the end of May. TPS also has realized that the three elementary buildings near our Sequoyah building are overcrowded and they are looking at adding 2 million dollars worth of trailers to those buildings.

Dr. Ballard has offered to use TPS to move everything for us, as well as make several other concessions such as TPS doing renovations and creating some permanence in our lease. There is a small window of time for us to consider this matter and the TSAS board has authorized me to begin negotiations, which I began today. There are still many unknown aspects of the move that will have to be discussed and worked out with Tulsa Public Schools, but I am confident we can resolve most issues.

I know that many of you will have questions and concerns, please feel free to reach out to me with these and I will try to respond as quickly as possible. This is a busy time, so please be patient with my responses.

I am excited about this opportunity for our school and for our community.

Sincerely,

Eric Doss

WE ARE TSAS
Eric S Doss
Executive Director
Tulsa School of Arts and Sciences