MILLIGAN
The wait is over – Tacoma School District Superintendent Charlie Milligan will make his recommendation to the Board of Directors as to which school sites to consolidate in response to declining enrollment at the school board meeting Nov. 9.
Milligan’s recommendation posted on the district’s web site Nov. 3 involves four schools: Grant Center for the Expressive Arts and Jefferson Elementary School in the North End and McIlvaigh and Gault middle schools on the East Side.
He proposes combining the student bodies at the two elementary schools and housing them at the Jefferson location beginning next school year.
This would essentially create a total student body of around 530 students, based on Jefferson’s current enrollment of 186 and Grant’s 345 students.
“The (Jefferson) building is big enough to accommodate it but maybe not with the particular students that we have now,” Milligan said, adding some boundary changes would likely be made, which would distribute students to other neighboring elementary schools as well.
The addition of portables to the Jefferson site may be another option, but that, he noted, “depends upon the configuration that the board accepts.”
Currently, Jefferson has a student capacity of 450 students with expansion capabilities, according to Milligan, who feels the core facilities such as the cafeteria and library were designed for 550 students.
“There’s a variety of decisions that still need to be made,” he added. “The first one is whether or not that’s a school for closure.”
At the Nov. 9 meeting, a recommendation will be made to the school board for the scheduling of pre-closure hearings at the school sites recommended for closure. The hearings at Grant, if approved, would be at 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. Dec. 12 and at the same times at Gault Dec. 13.
Milligan explained his recommendation was based upon input from the school consolidation advisory committee the district formed in January 2006 to evaluate the matter as well as his personal visits to the six school sites suggested for closures by the committee, which were the following elementary schools: Grant, Washington-Hoyt, Downing, McKinley, Roosevelt and Wainwright.
Even though the committee recommended no middle school sites, Milligan proposes combining the district’s two middle schools with the lowest enrollment – Gault at 358 and McIlvaigh at 460 – into one school on the McIlvaigh site since it’s larger, 27 acres compared to Gault’s 7.4-acre site. However, again he noted the likely need for boundary changes if the board approves his recommendations. “There’s going to be some boundary adjustments made,” he remarked.
As part of his proposal, Milligan suggests constructing a new building to accommodate the larger student body on the McIlvaigh site using funds the district has set aside for the replacement of Gault. “There are proficiencies within the law to move that money over to McIlvaigh,” Milligan said.
Construction of a new McIlvaigh, he explained, could be done on the site while students are still attending school in the current building. The hope would be to open this new facility by the fall of 2009, according to Milligan, if the board approves it. “If we pick a plan we already have such as the Giaudrone site then we can be done probably in 18 or 20 months,” he commented.
Milligan said the district has enough funds to accommodate this portion of his recommendation. He said $40 million is a preliminary total project cost.
The consolidation plan suggested by Milligan is estimated to save the district $750,000 a year despite one-time expenditures for portable buildings at both McIlvaigh and Jefferson as well as additional transportation costs at the middle-school level.
The public hearings in December will be a way for the board and district to gather input from the community. “We have a long way to go,” said Kurt Miller, president of the school board. “For the next 90 days, there’s a lot of information that still has to be looked at and discussed.”
Board members “really want to get the community involved,” he added.
For individuals with concerns, Miller suggested they attend the hearings. “We want to see what their concerns are and see how we can make it smoother,” he said.
The school board is slated to vote on the school consolidation matter in January after which, Milligan said he’d make a recommendation for the closure of two additional sites in February “at a minimum.” He explained he would use the same data as before with the addition of a demographic study district officials are currently commissioning an outside source to do using capital improvement funds to cover the cost.
Milligan estimates the study to be completed near the end of December. The study will provide the district with a three, five and 10-year projection using a wide range of information such as birth rates, census data and building permits. He said this close examination of demographics would allow district officials to “really take a look and see exactly what the needs of the district are going to be in outlying years so we can determine how many schools we need to keep.”
Milligan emphasized his recommendations are “very preliminary” as the board has the final decision as whether or not to consolidate any school sites.
An important issue for Milligan is what will happen to the school sites if the board approves closures. “That’s one of the things we’ll be looking to solve,” he remarked. “We can’t really do that in totality until we have gone through this process of getting (schools) closed.”
Milligan said he has had preliminary discussions with officials from Metro Parks and the city of Tacoma about “what some possibilities could be.” He noted the district has had one school site, Rogers Elementary School, on the market for a number of years.
“We need to work together as a community to make” this work, Milligan said.
For more information on school closures, visit www.tacomaschools.org or contact the district’s Community Relations at (253) 571-1015.
