Reporter Amy Phan writes:
The big news that came out of Monday night’s North Kitsap School
District closure committee meeting was that school board members
would revisit the idea of closing a school next year, even though
they decided
two weeks earlier to hold off on the idea until next year.
The bulk of
Tuesday’s story was devoted to this announcement, and left a
lot of the discussion among group members out.
But I wanted to summarize some of the interesting things the
closure committee discussed that night as well.
They examined how much closing Breidablik Elementary would save
if the district moved the school’s population of about 330 to four
other schools: Poulsbo, Wolfle, Pearson and Vinland. District
administrators said they picked the four schools because even with
the added students from Breidablik, the four schools still had
capacity for more students. The communities around Suquamish and
Gordon elementary schools are expected to grow, administrators
said, and adding more students to those schools next year would
reach the buildings’ maximum capacity.
Two informal votes taken by the committee have indicated that
Breidablik as the top choice to shutdown.
If Breidablik were to close, administrators ran a closure scenario
that distributes Breidablik’s students to 52 to Wolfle, 140 to
Vinland, 78 to Poulsbo and 63 to Pearson.
Under the distribution model, North Kitsap administrators said the
district would save around $21,000 in transportation costs, from
$140,811 to $119,800.
The transportation savings would be in addition to buildings
savings, which administrators estimated to be between $700,000 to
$800,000.
Dorothy Siskin, director of special services for the district,
which includes special education programming, told closure group
members Breidblik’s special education students would be split
between the four schools as well. Seven would go to Wolfle, 23 to
Vinland, 12 to Poulsbo and 10 to Pearson.
The district would likely need to require two 0.5 certified
positions to handle the additional special needs population
schools.
During Monday’s meeting, Superintendent Rick Jones said there would
be two closure meetings left for this school year. It is expected
that closure members will continue their work next fall.
Stay up-to-date with what the group is doing here: http://www.nkschools.org/site/default.aspx?PageType=3&ModuleInstanceID=2482&ViewID=047E6BE3-6D87-4130-8424-D8E4E9ED6C2A&RenderLoc=0&FlexDataID=1332&PageID=1.
