Another poignant reminder of why tax increases, whether for school bonds, property assessments for the Parkway, or other public needs, meet such resistance from a public increasingly skeptical of public leadership’s ability to utilize the new money wisely.
Editorial: What if they build a school and nobody comes?
Board pushes ahead for new high school that only 61 students say they will attend
Published 12:00 am PDT Tuesday, April 1, 2008
The Sacramento City Unified School District board seems hell-bent on opening yet another small high school in September, though only 61 students have committed to attending. At a time when the school district has a $24 million deficit and current high schools are far from full, this is utterly nonsensical.
Even after district staff sent a message and fliers to all 4,000 eighth-graders in the district and made personal visits to every middle and K-8 school, the proposed new small high school has drawn only 61 kids. (Thirteen listed it as a second choice).
Instead of using that lack of interest as a signal to engage in fresh thinking, district staff and the school board are plowing ahead.
On one track, they're proceeding with renovating the Marian Anderson elementary school to turn it into a high school. They have set aside $8 million for this, at the expense of other projects. That may seem affordable, since voters approved $225 million in bonds in 2002 to upgrade existing schools and build new schools. But by 2005, the district had $356 million in proposed projects. With so many needs, voters should be outraged that the district plans to spend money on a school few want.
On a second track, district staff are pursuing the idea of placing the 61 ninth-graders who are interested in the new high school at Kit Carson middle school as a one-year "incubator" while Marian Anderson elementary is being transformed into a high school. To this end, the district is planning to survey parents of the 1,800 seventh- and eighth-graders at Kit Carson and Sutter middle schools, asking them if they would send their child to ninth grade at Kit Carson and continue 10th-12th grade at the renovated Marian Anderson site.
