http://www.miamiher
MIAMI-DADE SCHOOLS
Miami-Dade to consider closing schools
A controversial proposal to close 11 under-capacity schools will come
back to the Miami-Dade School Board Tuesday. Posted on Tue, May. 13,
2008 Digg del.icio.us AIM reprint print email BY KATHLEEN McGRORY
kmcgrory@MiamiHeral
Miami-Dade public schools officials' first attempt at closing
underenrolled schools earlier this year angered hundreds of parents,
leading Superintendent Rudy Crew to shelve the proposal.
Now, with the district's financial outlook worsening, the
controversial issue will come before the School Board again at a
workshop Tuesday -- but with a new format: Crew will recommend
choosing the criteria for ''repurposing'
later.
School Board member Martin Karp said having concrete criteria for
selecting schools to be closed could take some of the emotion out of
the conversation -- and lead to more community support.
''For a parent or an educator, hearing that your school will be
repurposed could be devastating,
rationale, people can buy into it a little more. They can recognize
that it wasn't an arbitrary decision, but something that was well
thought out and received a lot of attention.''
Said Board Chairman Agustín Barrera: ``It's a great opportunity for us
to rethink how we use our underutilized schools, especially when we're
not funded the way we were in the past.''
But School Board member Marta Pérez said she is not likely to support
the repurposing of any school, criteria or not.
''Certainly, there are other things I'd cut out first before I start
thinking about closing schools, like the marketing department and the
[School Improvement] Zone,'' she said.
Repurposing is the district's term for suspending classes at schools
and using the buildings for other academic, professional and community
functions. The board is currently considering repurposing 11 schools
for a savings of $11 million.
Last month, Crew put forth a procedure for selecting schools. It was
never discussed publicly, as the board elected to hold a separate
workshop on repurposing.
Should the School Board approve the guidelines, schools would be
chosen based on enrollment figures. Underenrolled schools would be
prime candidates, particularly if the surrounding schools could easily
absorb its students.
The district would also take into account academic performance,
building condition, housing trends in the area and parent involvement,
according to Crew's preliminary plan.
Crew declined to be interviewed for this story.
The guidelines were born out of lessons the School Board learned in
recent months.
When repurposing was first proposed in December, Crew announced a
tentative list of 10 schools that would be targeted for closure for
the 2008-09 school year for a savings of $9.2 million. The schools
were in neighborhoods where the population was not growing, district
officials said at the time.
LOW GRADES
Most of the schools were at less than 65 percent capacity, according
to internal district documents. All had received C, D or F grades from
the state -- except Emerson Elementary near Westchester, an A-rated
school.
Within days, Emerson became the center of an emotional debate about
repurposing. The proposal met strong resistance from parents, who
staged multiple protests in December and January.
The list of proposed schools also came under intense scrutiny by board
members, some of whom said the schools had not been chosen fairly.
Crew and his staff ''were hand-picking schools to punish board members
and to punish communities,
``There were other schools like Pinecrest Elementary that were more
underenrolled. Those schools never even came up.''
Logan also criticized the nature of the proposal, calling it a failure
of staff to build schools in the neighborhoods that needed them
most.
''Staff built schools where they were not needed,'' she said. ``We
were building schools in areas that had declining enrollment, and we
didn't spot it quick enough.''
Board members never got to vote on the unpopular proposal.
Crew announced in February that district administrators had found the
$9.2 million needed to keep the schools open. But he cautioned that
repurposing could come up again should the district's financial crisis
grow more dire.
It did.
Some School Board members now say the earlier approach to repurposing
was flawed.
''We never had a chance to have the discussion,'
Miami Herald. ``Unfortunately, when we were developing a criteria, the
superintendent already had an idea of which schools were going to be
selected. So at the meeting, when we talked about it, board members
were already asking about what schools would be impacted.''
REACTION TO PLANS
Some board members have already formed opinions about the new
guidelines.
Barrera, who believes any discussions on the matter should involve the
community, thinks there should be a limit on how many schools can be
repurposed each year. Board member Renier Diaz de la Portilla believes
A, B and C-rated schools should be exempt from repurposing.
''I would even be reluctant to repurpose a D school that's shown some
improvement,
Crew has recommended that the board repurpose 11 schools before the
upcoming school year, a plan Barrera called ``aggressive.
''It's going to be difficult, because we may not have time to have the
level of community involvement we want,'' Barrera said.
Board member Evelyn Greer believes the new approach is a better way to
address the sensitive matter of school closures.
''There are immense savings in repurposing schools,'' she said. ``But
we can't close A [rated] schools. We need to have intelligent
criteria.''
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