{"id":5172,"date":"2011-10-12T11:24:11","date_gmt":"2011-10-12T15:24:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/?p=5172"},"modified":"2011-10-13T09:07:01","modified_gmt":"2011-10-13T13:07:01","slug":"school-board-to-vote-whether-to-investigate-school-reconfig","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/?p=5172","title":{"rendered":"School board to vote whether to investigate school reconfig"},"content":{"rendered":"

Supporters say moving away from ‘neighborhood’ school plan could save $1m, parents worry about impact on education<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

By Kelli Siehl<\/strong>, Staff Writer, UnionvilleTimes.com<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>EAST MARLBOROUGH \u2014 \u201cWhat is sometimes difficult is to do what is right,\u201d Unionville-Chadds Ford School Superintendent Dr. John Sanville told the crowd near the conclusion of Monday night\u2019s Board of Education Work Session.<\/p>\n

Sanville was referring to the board\u2019s pending decision whether to continue further study into last school year\u2019s findings regarding building utilization.\u00a0 If board members vote to move the goal into the coming year, the next step would be to form a committee of parents, non-parents, community members, administrators and others to perform an extensive review and look at the pros and cons of reconfiguring the district\u2019s four elementary schools.<\/p>\n

The board is expected to vote next week on whether to build a study of the matter into goals for the 2011-12 school year.<\/p>\n

According to information published at the Board\u2019s Finance Committee Meeting, the proposed goal is for the investigation of building utilization \u201cwith active participation of all stakeholder groups.\u201d The stakeholder group would look at curriculum and instruction, social and emotional impact on students, parental impact, budgetary effects and transportation costs.<\/p>\n

Currently, all four elementary schools offer a \u201cneighborhood school\u201d – K-5th<\/sup> grade configuration, however, imbalances in class size and overall student population might warrant a look at changing Pocopson and Unionville to a 3rd<\/sup>-5th<\/sup> configuration, with Chadds Ford and Hillendale housing K-2. The schools would be paired, with Chadds Ford feeding students to Pocopson and Hillendale students moving to Unionville.<\/p>\n

The initial suggestion came from an April 2010 community conversation and was then built into the districts\u2019 2011 goal plans. The results of the study were four scenarios presented to Administrators and School Board members this past May. At that time, former Superintendent, Sharon Parker stated that there were no recommendations associated with the summary and assured families that \u201ca decision of this magnitude would need careful study and input from the community.\u201d<\/p>\n

Monday night,\u00a0 Sanville made similar assurances. He cautioned that the School Board is voting on whether to incorporate going one step further by moving the investigational study into the 2012 district goals. Although discussion began during the Finance Committee meeting, some of the commentary spilled over into the School Board Work Session where members of the audience were invited to speak.<\/p>\n

Community members expressed concerns about the effect any transition might have on students\u2019 emotional well being and questioned the possibility of long bus rides to and from schools. Some clearly supported the forward thinking and asked for a more comprehensive study which would include looking at other configurations as well as addressing overcrowding at Patton Middle School.<\/p>\n

The prevailing theme for supporting the investigation continues to be a projected savings of over $1 million dollars coming from the need for about 12 less teachers.<\/p>\n

The School Board will vote on the coming year\u2019s goals at the Board\u2019s Meeting on Oct. 17 at Pocopson Elementary School beginning at 7:30pm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Supporters say moving away from ‘neighborhood’ school plan could save $1m, parents worry about impact on education By Kelli Siehl, Staff Writer, UnionvilleTimes.com EAST MARLBOROUGH \u2014 \u201cWhat is sometimes difficult is to do what is right,\u201d Unionville-Chadds Ford School Superintendent Dr. John Sanville told the crowd near the conclusion of Monday night\u2019s Board of Education […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5176,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,7,16],"tags":[624,44,43,24],"class_list":["post-5172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-featured","category-schools","tag-reconfiguration","tag-school-board","tag-schools-2","tag-unionville"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5172\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}