The city of Bremerton and Bremerton schools have been tag-teaming a study to find the right place to put a new west side middle school that would also serve a larger community purpose. The process has been dutifully marching along, with lots of involvement from the greater community.
But it just got easier to follow the doings of the project, with a new Web site.
Here is the link to the page on the city’s Web site.
The next meeting of the group is Sept. 22.
Andrew,
As a participant in the last two stakeholder meetings for this issue I have been very interested in many of the ideas being fronted and the discussion process itself. I have also made some great community contacts. Recently though, with the introduction two additional and somewhat similar proposals both further along in their process than the Jr. High, I am beginning to question the core reason for the existence of the Bremerton School Sitting Project itself. The two recent proposals I am referring to are the United Way Non-Profit Center in downtown Bremerton http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/2008/jul/21/united-way-plans-downtown-367-million-nonprofit and the latest story on the Naval Avenue Early Learning and Neighborhood Center http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/2008/aug/24/early-learning-and-neighborhood-center-planned .
Both of these proposals would in fact provide almost all of the community and early education services and supply needs (outside of the actual Jr High School itself) that have been recently been discussed in depth at the Bremerton School Sitting Project meetings. I understand a grant was applied for to do the current study on a proposed Jr High whose construction will not be needed in this area for several years. I am now questioning whether or not that the grant for the study should have been applied for in the first place and was the Bremerton School District awarded the grant when in fact it should have been awarded to a School District with a much more immediate need of such a facility.
I plan to continue my participation in the Sitting Project to in fact bring up these types of questions. So far we have been restricted from talking about the elephant in the room (funding… especially tax funding) in these preliminary stages, but I have been assured that discussions about it are scheduled for future meetings. I certainly hope that the Bremerton School District will use some of the suggestions included in the final presented document and possibly apply them to the Naval Avenue Early Learning Center proposal so that this study will appear to be less wasteful in its timing.
Email or call me if you have additional questions about this.
Best Regards,
Colleen Smidt