Good lord, I think I heard a rim shot when I read that.

I know what you’re talking about (consultants and “planning”), but in reality there appears to have been very little (if any) actual planning for K8s.

The costs continue to balloon, and we’re still nowhere close to providing the level of education that is available for far less money in a middle school.

Some school board members candidly acknowledge this, but there is a sickening reticence to move toward correcting this egregious error, even as at-risk students pay the price.

“Enough,” do want the “official” reason, or the real reason? Doug Morgan stated in a school board meeting back in 2007 that the reasons for the K-8 conversion were twofold: “to reduce the district’s footprint, and to do it in a way that raised achievement.” It is now two years later, and we can easily see that “reducing the District’s footprint” was grossly ill-timed, and there is nothing supporting the belief that achievement is better at K-8s than elementary/middle schools. (Research shows no difference.)

Susan nailed it, above: this was all about helping the builders and develoeprs in this town with their ongoing land-grab. I ask again, whatever happened to the concept of publicly owned lands?

Susan is right about the developers’ plans too–whatever happened to the concept of publicly owned lands? Of course, once the other schools have been rebuilt BIGGER, then it will be easy to declare RCP “surplus,” right along with Washington HS–remember how that worked out?

In short, I really liked my K-8 experience.

But then as an adult I taught 15 years in a junior high/middle school. I enjoyed that as well, especially in the last few years, when school reform really kicked in and all students and teachers were “teamed” and instruction was (mostly) integrated.

So I’m torn. There’s certainly an equity issue with the way PPS K-8’s have unfolded. The bottom line for me, however, is money –school funding is clearly inadequate– and the infamous PPS transfer policy.

Deal with those and I don’t think that K-8 vs. middle school is quite as big an issue.

BTW, two of my nieces attend Roseway Heights, one a first grader, the other a 4th (or 5th?) grader, and they’re doing quite well, thank you very much.

Of course they have yet to reach the middle school grades. So we’ll see.

The last public “K8 Action Team” meeting was almost a year ago. (Maybe we should call it the “K8 Inaction Team?)

The school board keeps throwing more and more money at the problem (which, though substantial budget-wise, does not rise functionally above the level of a too-small Band-aid), and Ruth Adkins has spoken publicly of the need for a middle school option in every cluster.

But the administration seems too distracted by the high school system redesign and the budget crisis to follow through on the K8 disaster which has many, many poor and minority middle graders trapped in completely inadequate elementary school facilities, getting completely inadequate preparation for high school.

Surely somebody at BESC can grasp that if you lose them in middle school, it doesn’t matter what your high school design looks like.

Re-opening Rose City Park is a whole different issue. It’s been obvious to many in the RCP neighborhood that this school was closed in order to be used as a swing school during the planned rebuilding and remodeling of Fernwood/Hollyrood and Laurelhurst, and then to be sold to the highest bidder. Hopefully, the Rigler community will also get a new school building before RCP is sold.

What happened to the boundary changes that would have helped alleviate overcrowding at Rigler and Scott? Was it really easier and more beneficial to send 8th graders to Madison? It is really cheaper to spend $2 million on portables? Is it really the best plan to move Faubion? Are these decisions really being driven by the ultimate goal of building strong and successful school communities with rigorous curriculum or for creating real estate for the benefit of Concordia and condo developers?

And what happened to the K-8 Team?