Special Board of Aldermen Public Hearing Page 35
Fred Teeboom
Earlier on | made the statement, some could say accusation, that the 20 percent less attendance in
the school today than in the year 2000. When NASDQ did a study in 2008, it was something like 15
percent less and (inaudible) have so many in the school department. Outside of the comfort of their
own little School Board meeting, Superintendent — not you Mr. Mayor, somebody in the school
department tell us why aren’t they closing at least one school?
George Farrington
George Farrington, 24 Lutheran Drive. President of the Board of Education. Capacity is not a simple
issue. | think one of the things that gets ignored in all of this is back in the reference days that Mr.
Teeboom uses that we had a number of portables. | wasn’t planning on having to speak this evening
on this so | don’t have the exact details on that. We have eliminated a number of those portables and
so that has diminished the capacity we have in the schools. Another concern that the Board has had
over the last several years is getting our class sizes down particularly in the elementary levels. As
Mr. Teeboom | think is familiar, we also have class size issues as pertains to the contract in class
overages and things like that. Even beyond that, the Board | think generally speaking is interested in
keeping our class sizes down.
One of the issues that pushes us to that — | don’t know how far you want to get into this conversation
it could take all evening — because of the diversity of students that we have particularly in the
elementary school coming into our first grade with a variety of background and experiences and we
have first graders coming into our classes who are reading, and we have first graders coming into our
classes that don’t know their alphabet, the colors, their letters. That puts a real burden on our
teachers to try and teach and bring along and challenge such a diverse group of students. Hence Dr.
Brown was able to find a way given our capacity, the fact that we did have a little bit of room and be
able to take a little bit larger class size in some of our other elementary grades to be able to go to full
day kindergarten at all of our schools to try and give these students a more equal footing as they
enter first grade and address that problem that | spoke of earlier.
Is there a time in the future where we may decide to do something differently — reconfigure our
schools, close a school? | can’t say the Board hasn’t discussed that. We're in the transition period.
As everyone knows, we’ve been in a transition period this year and we'll be starting another one in
July. | think those are kind of the conversations that will come as we progress and look at
kindergarten and the effectiveness of it and how we want to move forward.
Fred Teeboom
| like a sane answer Mr. Farrington. | think you do a good job as a Board President. The first thing,
this conversation that we takes place in 2008. We paid over | think over $100,000 for the study.
George Farrington
That predates my — |’m just finishing my fourth year back on the Board.
Fred Teeboom
| was just telling you. Well you weren't here. You were here in 2008. You were Board President
before 2008. The other comment, there’s a law and physics. There’s a law of gases. It says gas will
take the entire area expense to all available space.
