Post by gatordog on May 29, 2009 13:24:45 GMT -5
Lets think about the (long ago decided, if I may say so!) 3rd HS decision, far into the future.
Look specifically at today’s 1st graders. The class of 2020. (class of 2020….that is a cool and exotic number if you ask me!)
I took the district’s 2008/09 Enrollment report compiled by Jackie Horvath. For each ES, I assigned them to their appropriate HS. For HS enrollment, I took this class of 2020 and multiplied by 4. Assume no growth at all. Here is what I get for each HS:
2019-20 school year:
MV 2811 (94% cap)
WV 2605 (87% cap)
NV 3084 (73 % cap)
TOT HS 8500 (83% tot cap)
Comments:
1. This looks like a fair use of taxpayer resources to me. For the next dozen years, and more, we have 204’s three HS operating at near optimal capacity.
2. These HS enrollments are very much in line with the HS sizes that taxpayers in our neighboring communities have been willing to support. Consider the 19 other HS’s in the Upstate 8 and Dupage Valley atheletic conferences….there avg enrollment is 2500. We are completely in line with that now. In fact, all are still larger than average. We made the decision to not have “mega-schools”.
3. If you assume no housing growth on the southern real estate…its surprising to me that the far-future student population (based on 1st grader enrollment) seems to favor the the north! To me, this makes me think of the northern site in a different light. Imagine if a southern site were picked…maybe it would be the one hard to fill! This also makes me wonder: in a dozen years could we see some boundary shifts into NV? No need at all to get in to specifics on that! But one could imagine areas not going to their closest HS could be tweaked, perhaps?
Even though the decision to build a third HS is irrevocably behind us, for comparison sake, consider the alternative if we stayed with two HS’s only. Assume boundaries are unchanged from what they are today with the two HS’s:
Hypothetical 2019-20 school year, two HS’ only:
WV 4460 (106% cap)
NV 4040 (96 % cap)
I submit, this is very similar to the situation we are in right now, for 2008-09:
WV 3691 (88% cap)
NV 4677 (111% cap)
Comments:
1. Could this have been done? Yes, in a literal sense. But to me, and the majority of 204 voters agreed with me on this, this would have too much emphasized bare-minimum SD tax burden at the expense of education quality. One can make that argument "bare-minimimum" is the way to go, and that is fine. But the tradition in 204 since its inception has been favorable to supporting referendums to enhance quality, even if it adds to the general tax burden. We all know, there are many other SD’s where the prevailing thoughts swing toward the other end of that spectrum.
2. I think we all agree, even for this hypothetical scenario to work, we would have needed to build an additional MS. So some new building costs were inevitable.
3. There is an element of risk involved. The assumption of virtually no new growth would really need to hold true.
4. This is a bit anecdotal (yet significant to me): we would have been planning for a continuous state of our HS’s in the very state they are in today where: administration effort diverted to space-juggling as opposed to education, class opportunities canceled because not enough room, 9 am lunches, many students turned away from variety of extracurriculars, locker/hallway/parking lot etc crowding, and so on and so on….(just in general, not operating optimally). From my experience, this would have been a mistake.
Look specifically at today’s 1st graders. The class of 2020. (class of 2020….that is a cool and exotic number if you ask me!)
I took the district’s 2008/09 Enrollment report compiled by Jackie Horvath. For each ES, I assigned them to their appropriate HS. For HS enrollment, I took this class of 2020 and multiplied by 4. Assume no growth at all. Here is what I get for each HS:
2019-20 school year:
MV 2811 (94% cap)
WV 2605 (87% cap)
NV 3084 (73 % cap)
TOT HS 8500 (83% tot cap)
Comments:
1. This looks like a fair use of taxpayer resources to me. For the next dozen years, and more, we have 204’s three HS operating at near optimal capacity.
2. These HS enrollments are very much in line with the HS sizes that taxpayers in our neighboring communities have been willing to support. Consider the 19 other HS’s in the Upstate 8 and Dupage Valley atheletic conferences….there avg enrollment is 2500. We are completely in line with that now. In fact, all are still larger than average. We made the decision to not have “mega-schools”.
3. If you assume no housing growth on the southern real estate…its surprising to me that the far-future student population (based on 1st grader enrollment) seems to favor the the north! To me, this makes me think of the northern site in a different light. Imagine if a southern site were picked…maybe it would be the one hard to fill! This also makes me wonder: in a dozen years could we see some boundary shifts into NV? No need at all to get in to specifics on that! But one could imagine areas not going to their closest HS could be tweaked, perhaps?
Even though the decision to build a third HS is irrevocably behind us, for comparison sake, consider the alternative if we stayed with two HS’s only. Assume boundaries are unchanged from what they are today with the two HS’s:
Hypothetical 2019-20 school year, two HS’ only:
WV 4460 (106% cap)
NV 4040 (96 % cap)
I submit, this is very similar to the situation we are in right now, for 2008-09:
WV 3691 (88% cap)
NV 4677 (111% cap)
Comments:
1. Could this have been done? Yes, in a literal sense. But to me, and the majority of 204 voters agreed with me on this, this would have too much emphasized bare-minimum SD tax burden at the expense of education quality. One can make that argument "bare-minimimum" is the way to go, and that is fine. But the tradition in 204 since its inception has been favorable to supporting referendums to enhance quality, even if it adds to the general tax burden. We all know, there are many other SD’s where the prevailing thoughts swing toward the other end of that spectrum.
2. I think we all agree, even for this hypothetical scenario to work, we would have needed to build an additional MS. So some new building costs were inevitable.
3. There is an element of risk involved. The assumption of virtually no new growth would really need to hold true.
4. This is a bit anecdotal (yet significant to me): we would have been planning for a continuous state of our HS’s in the very state they are in today where: administration effort diverted to space-juggling as opposed to education, class opportunities canceled because not enough room, 9 am lunches, many students turned away from variety of extracurriculars, locker/hallway/parking lot etc crowding, and so on and so on….(just in general, not operating optimally). From my experience, this would have been a mistake.