Yujin Gakuen School - Register Guard

[Anselmo Villanueva]

Any thoughts on how this decision might impact any Mandarin initiatives?

Anselmo
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Letter to the Editor    May 14, 2012    Register Guard

http://www.registerguard.com/web/opinion/28034912-47/eugene-commissioners-county-beer-hemp.html.csp

Supporting teachers takes priority

My mother told me the Eugene School Board is planning, long term, to
move a lot of its schools to new locations, including my school, Yujin
Gakuen, which would be relocated to the Churchill High School region.

It’s nice to think about my own dear school in a spiffy new place, but
I would rather be assured that the teaching situation is stable. The
tired old building that Yujin Gakuen is in now might not be a beauty,
but it’s good enough for learning.

At Yujin Gakuen, we fifth-graders have half the day with our teachers
to ourselves but after lunch we’re mixed with the fourth-graders. I
love being able to meet kids a year younger than me, but in a few of
my classes it seems like I’m just relearning what I know from last
year. I can tell the teachers are trying, but I can’t imagine it’s
easy to arrange two curriculums for one class.

I question the wisdom behind spending more money on the buildings the
schools are in than on the people in the buildings, especially now
that we’re having trouble even keeping teachers employed.

Martha Brasted-Maki

Eugene OR

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EDITORIAL: A vision for Eugene schools

New plan offers more than bricks and mortar

Register Guard    May 13, 2012

http://www.registerguard.com/web/opinion/28051770-47/district-schools-eugene-building-berman.html.csp

The Eugene School District is in the midst of a decades-long program
of school consolidation, replacement and reconstruction that began
with voter approval of a $116 million bond issue in 2002 and continued
with a $70 million bond last year. The district is gearing up for the
next stages of the program, but this time an important element has
been given added emphasis. The district intends to focus not just on
school buildings, but on what goes on inside them.

Superintendent Sheldon Berman offers a pragmatic rationale for
hitching educational goals to the school construction plan. As a
practical matter, the only way the Eugene School District can increase
its investment in education is through a capital program — property
taxes for operating purposes are at their limit, and the district has
no control over the level of state support.

But Berman thinks the district can build more than just new schools.
Berman is relatively new to the district, but he knows that its
patrons have long taken pride in having a first-rate system of public
education. He also understands that this sense of pride has taken a
beating in recent years due to ceaseless budget-related cutbacks. If
the district is going to spend a pile of money on new and refurbished
schools, Berman thinks it should be done in a way that rekindles
people’s feeling that their schools are extraordinary.

The plan aims to correct physical deficiencies and strengthen
educational programs in each of the district’s four high school
regions:

In the Churchill High School region, the Yugin Gakuen Japanese
immersion school would move into a remodeled Arts and Technology
Academy building, giving the Churchill region its first language
immersion school. Churchill, along with some of the schools feeding
into it, would gain a new focus on Asian studies and science,
technology, engineering and mathematics.

In the North Eugene High School district, Howard and Corridor
elementary schools would be consolidated in a new building on the
Howard site. River Road/el Camino del Rio dual language immersion
school would get a new building. North, the only one of the district’s
four high schools to receive a failing grade in an evaluation of
buildings’ conditions, would be torn down, rebuilt and given a new
focus on international education and the International Baccalaureate
degree.

In the South Eugene High School district, Roosevelt Middle School
would be replaced, either at its current location or on the Civic
Stadium site. If Roosevelt moves to the Civic property, Edison and
Camas Ridge elementary schools would be consolidated in a new building
at the current Roosevelt site. This would create a kindergarten
through 12th grade campus around South Eugene High School. If
Roosevelt stays put, the consolidated elementary schools would go into
a new building at the Camas Ridge site. The region’s alternative
schools would move to a new building at the old Willard School site on
29th Avenue.

The Sheldon High School region would see the fewest changes, mainly
because the region’s most urgent needs were addressed in earlier
rounds of the school repair and replacement program.

City of Eugene libraries might share space with school libraries at
Sheldon, Churchill and North. Efficiencies would immediately result
for both the city and the school district. Educational, social and
cultural benefits would follow.

A significant effect of the plan would be a rebalancing of the
district’s four high schools. Churchill and North, with their language
programs and respective focuses on science and international studies,
could expect to attract students from outside their regions, as South
and Sheldon do now. The result would be greater equity and increased
choice throughout the district, and all four high schools would be
better prepared to thrive in the competitive environment created by a
new state law allowing students to enroll in schools outside their
home districts.

All this adds up to $213 million. The money would be raised by a
series of three bond measures, with the first going to voters next
year. Much remains uncertain — including the property tax rate needed
to support bond repayments and the fate of Civic Stadium. Revisions
are likely — past school capital proposals have been greatly altered
from their initial forms.

But Berman recognizes that a big capital investment should buy the
district more than new boilers and plumbing. It can even buy more than
21st century school buildings. The next phase of the school
consolidation, replacement and reconstruction project can improve
education throughout the district.

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$213 million in bonds part of long-term schools plan

By Susan Palmer    The Register-Guard    May 10, 2012

http://www.registerguard.com/web/newslocalnews/28045790-41/schools-district-elementary-building-replace.html.csp

Six new schools — four elementary, a middle and a high school — to
replace eight aging and inefficient buildings are among several
recommendations being considered by the Eugene School Board in a
long-range facilities plan unveiled Wednesday night.

Unlike typical capital improvement plans, though, this one also
proposes academic changes and alliances with the city of Eugene and
other groups.

The price tag to refurbish, merge or replace dilapidated district
schools: $213 million — in the form of three property-­tax-supported
bond measures. The bond measures would be staggered in the amounts of
$113 million, $61 million and $19 million.

It’s the latest step in a long-range facilities update that began in
2002 and that has prompted bond measures backed by voters in the past
decade. Most of Eugene’s 35 schools were built from the 1940s to the
1960s, and two of them date back to the 1920s.

The new assessment does more than look at the condition of the
buildings, Superintendent Sheldon Berman said. It considers how well
the buildings work in meeting the district’s education goals.

“Although we think of buildings as brick and mortar, they are an
educational environment for our students,” Berman said. While new
buildings such as Bertha Holt and Cesar Chavez elementary schools
represent the best in school design, many older schools, in addition
to being inefficient, are not serving students well, he said.

The proposals — which come from the national consulting firm MGT of
America following an extensive analysis of all the district’s
buildings — suggest a number of academic changes.

The district’s four high schools, for example, all would have specific
world language programs. Churchill’s would be Japanese — so the
district would move Yujin Gakuen, the Japanese language immersion
school, from its current location near North Eugene High School to the
Arts and Technology Academy campus near Churchill.

Other big ticket changes: Roosevelt Middle School and North Eugene
High would be replaced with new buildings, and a new elementary school
would be built to accommodate students from Edison and Camas Ridge
elementary schools.

The locations of the new buildings is still up in the air: Roosevelt
could move to the Civic Stadium site and the new elementary school
could replace it, or Roosevelt could remain where it is and the new
elementary school could be built at Camas Ridge. The Civic Stadium
property is owned by the school district.

Churchill High would be remodeled to support an emerging academic
focus on science, technology, education and math.

Overall, the proposal calls for replacing six older elementary schools
with four buildings through consolidations and program relocations.

Howard Elementary, for example, would be replaced with a new school
that would merge with Corridor Elementary.

The district would sell surplus properties such as Dunn, Parker,
Bailey Hill and Crest Drive elementary schools, all of which have
closed in recent years. The Civic Stadium site also could be sold if
not used by the district for a new middle school.

Board members and consultants recognized that merging or selling
schools can be emotionally challenging.

Edison Elementary, a stately building in a historic south Eugene
neighborhood, has a lot of fans, for example.

“Edison is a community icon,” MGT consultant Dodds Cromwell said, “and
we don’t take that lightly at all.”

But the building’s historical value might better be maintained by some
other entity than a school district, he said.

MGT did a lengthy assessment of all the buildings scoring them on a
range of categories and rating them on a scale of 1-to-100, with
buildings scoring 60 and below considered unsatisfactory and schools
scoring 80 to 89 considered to be in good condition. New schools, such
as Holt Elementary, received scores of 90 and above.

Under the ranking system, Roosevelt’s overall score was 52.4. Edison’s was 63.4.

Cromwell said that for any school with a score less than 70, the
district might get more benefit from replacing rather than
refurbishing.

The district estimates the potential savings from merging,
refurbishing and replacing old inefficient buildings at $700,000
annually.

While there aren’t any concrete plans yet, Berman said the district
has begun discussions with the city about the possibility of
co-locating libraries in district schools as a way for both the city
and the schools to save money.

“We have a lot of mutual interests, but there’s a lot to be worked
out,” he said. Initial discussions with City Manager Jon Ruiz and city
Library Director Connie Bennett suggests there’s interest in putting
city branch libraries at Sheldon, North and Churchill high schools.

The district continues to work with the YMCA, meanwhile, about the
possibility of constructing a new community center, either at the
Civic Stadium location or near North Eugene High at the site of the
current Corridor/­Yujin Gakuen school.

The changes would be divided into three phases, with bonds that would
need to be approved by Eugene voters.

The district’s most recent bond — $70 million for a variety of repairs
and remodeling — passed in May 2011. The district set that bond up so
that payments on it would not kick in until previous bonds are paid
off, thus maintaining the tax rate for bonded debt at about $1.30 per
$1,000 of assessed property value. The district does not yet know what
the tax impact of any new bonds would be, Berman said.

Because of the way Oregon funds schools, capital improvements are one
of the few ways residents can have a say in local school funding, he
said.

Board member Craig Smith, who has been part of board decisions to
close or consolidate 12 schools, said he knows such decisions can be
wrenching for community members. “Every one of them has been
difficult,” he said.

But the school mergers that led to the construction of two new
schools, Chavez and Holt, were positive, resulting in schools that are
much better at meeting student needs, he said.

“You hope people look at it, not only in terms of their own kids, but
in how well it serves future generations,” he said.

The board plans to spend time reviewing the proposals at a board
retreat later this month. Board members won’t make any decisions about
the recommendations until next fall.

The process will be transparent with opportunities for public comment,
board chairwoman Alicia Hays said. “Nothing is a done deal,” she said.

LONG-RANGE BUILDING PLAN

Highlights of proposal by high school region

South: Replace Roosevelt Middle School, either at the current site or
at Civic Stadium; combine Edison and Camas Ridge elementary schools at
new building, either at Roosevelt or Camas Ridge

North: Replace Howard Elementary with new building and merge Corridor
students; replace River Road/el Camino del Rio Elementary with new
building; replace North Eugene High; move Yujin Gakuen Japanese
Immersion alternative school to Churchill region

Churchill: Remodel Arts and Technology Academy to accommodate middle
school program and Japanese immersion; remodel Churchill for new
science, technology, engineering and math programs

Sheldon: Expand/remodel Sheldon High School; connect main building to
west and south quads at Gilham Elementary School

Full report: online at rgne.ws/4jreport