State High Vision UPDATE

[State High Vision]

Return of the

Monday Morning Update

 

 

District Wide Master Plan

 

You probably thought you’d seen your last Monday morning e-mail from State High Vision.  So had we.  What brought us back to the computer and a Monday morning update?  Nothing – and that’s a big problem for all of us. 

 

After the landslide primary election and the subsequent vote to abandon the high school renovation, the current school board members also voted to cancel all activity related to updating the District Wide Master Plan (DWMP) for school facilities.  In effect, they have decided to do NOTHING.  The current board has also decided to make no funding allowances in next year’s budget for the district wide planning process either. 

 

State High Vision has been asking the current SCASD board to Stop and Re-EVALUATE their plans for the renovation of the high school and the other facilities in the district.  Community members on all sides of this issue – including SHV – have acknowledged that doing NOTHING should not be an option.  Where is the re-evaluation going and how will it impact the delivery of education?

 

In a letter to the incumbent board, the community has approached the board about forming an ad hoc committee of the challengers (Barney Grimes, Ann McGlaughlin, Dorothea Stahl, Chris Small and Rick Madore) and remaining incumbents, as well as citizen advisors, to continue moving the facility master plan update forward, but this has reportedly been rebuffed.

 

Evidently, the current school board is content to ignore this issue until December when the new board takes office.  Meanwhile, we are faced with elementary schools, athletic fields and a high school that are in need of critical maintenance and renovation.  Valuable time is being lost by the board’s intransigence.  Their approach reminds us of the child on the playground who loses a game and, in a show of bad sportsmanship, takes their ball and goes home, so no one else can play.

 

Please come to TONIGHT’s School Board meeting at 7:30 in the Mt. Nittany Middle School Library and remind the incumbent board members that they took an oath to serve for 4 years, not 3-1/2.  Valuable time will be lost if they continue to do nothing on facilities for the next 7 months.  

 

Artificial Turf for the South Building Playing Field.

Last April the board voted to approve a $1,000,000 expenditure to install artificial turf at the South Building playing field inside of the track.  The issue was forced through as a priority due to the impending loss of playing fields associated with the infamous high school renovation project (may it R.I.P.).  Now that that ill-conceived and poorly managed project has been cancelled in response to the public’s message delivered at the voting booth, one needs to ask oneself “why do we need this million dollar turf now?”

 

Please attend tonight’s school board meeting and help us seek an answer to this question.  One million dollars is a significant amount of money and we need to be sure that this is the right project and the right time to be spending it.  Without a viable DWMP it is virtually impossible to see how this expenditure rates in terms of other priority needs within the district.  What are the associated costs to this project (i.e. fencing, maintenance, etc.).  How many students and how many sports will have access to the field?  How does it impact drainage to the North Building’s existing water problems?  Are there other priorities (heating and air conditioning, the elementary schools, the water problem in the band/music wing)?  Without a plan of action, this BANDAID to one athletic field does not seem timely or a good use of district resources.

 

Quote for the Day

"You've got to be very careful if you don't know where you're going, because you might not get there."

 

Yogi Berra