Disclaimer: The comments in this blog are my personal opinion and may or may not reflect an adopted position of the city of Glendale and its city council.
On Thursday, February 25, 2021, the Glendale Elementary School District (GESD) held a meeting to take comments from the public regarding its plan to close 5 elementary schools within its district boundaries. I am providing information about this meeting to keep my Yucca district residents informed. Here is the link to the video of the meeting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehx1KVJCOik
There is one misconception I would like to clear up. The western boundary of GESD is 83rd Avenue. Some speakers asked what would happen because of the development of Stonehaven, between 83rd and 91st Avenues, Bethany Home Road to Camelback Road. Those 1,365 homes reside in the Pendergast Elementary School District (PESD) and those children will not be attending any schools in the GESD.
One of the speakers was Martin Nowakowski, a Yucca district resident, and my appointee on the Glendale Planning Commission. He spoke from 1:38:50 to 1:43:32. He made several particularly good points that, in my opinion, deserve further exploration and answers from the GESD Board.
- He stated that the process has been flawed. The proposal to close schools during the COVID pandemic is ill advised. The pandemic has been an impediment to allow full participation by the community and has resulted in little to no parent involvement.
- He called for a forensic audit of GESD’s budget and contended that community perception is there is a pattern of “top heavy” spending.
- He questioned what costs for transportation would be incurred because of a realignment of pupil attendance boundaries.
- He said that the district uses the rationale for closures because of declining student enrollment and asked how many students are learning online.
- He expressed concern about the possibility of increasing class sizes. He questioned will there continue to be class sizes of less than 30 students per class and if that number increases, how does it affect the quality of education for struggling students?
- Lastly, he characterized the school board’s actions as discriminatory by focusing on closing schools in more disadvantaged neighborhoods and catering to wealthier neighborhoods by keeping those schools intact. He referred to Isaac Imes as being known as the “Mexican school.”
It appears that the community is genuinely concerned and to date has expressed nothing but opposition to the GESD proposal. Perhaps the Board would be advised to slow its proposal down until it has made a full explanation to its community as to why their actions are necessary. There may be good reasons and then again, there may not be but until the community understands why the Board has chosen this path it will be met with distrust and anger. Just think about all those parents who have no idea what is about to happen to their children…and there will be many.
© Joyce Clark, 2021
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Mark had some very good comments and myself being in education at one time completely agree with him. If they would open th schools like Peoria has they would not have the problem. Now many parents have put their children in charter schools or some other district and home schooling. the teachers should be vaccinated and get the kids back in school where they belong. If the enrollment is down good ,better education, cut administration salary so they cab get through the pandemic. Pay the teachers better and maybe they will come back to work. Pschologically this has been very difficult on the kids and parents by closing the school for such a long time.
Making the decision to close five schools during the height of the pandemic? Bad timing and extremely unfair to the community and making it difficult for those involved to be heard in the normal setting required for such a decision. I rarely agree with Jamie Aldama, but he made many good strong points on behalf of his constituents as did the community organizer speaker that followed him. Unfortunately I don’t know all the facts surrounding this issue, but it appears money is the issue and not enough thought has been placed on the children and families that will be affected. I was a long time Glendale resident with a long memory and still recall the City of Glendale closing O’Neil Pool which was the local pool in the same area. For some reason there was never funding available to fix the pool or build a new one for those kids. Perhaps too much was budgeted for the lazy river at the Foothills rec center or the new Sporting complexes. Either way the kids in that neighborhood got the short end of the stick. Take some time to make this decision. It’s about more than money. We currently have a President that wants to shower schools with funding. Why not look at that angle before you close the doors?
Before they requested to repurpose some existing schools was there a Citizens Committee involved in the decision making process to look at the feasibility of doing something like this or was this an arbitrary decision recommended by staff & approved the School Board? What type of research was done & when was it done & by who? My initial reaction was declining enrollment. But I think parents should be shown solid research with facts, figures & projections.
It is time to get children back to school! They have already lost a year. And, the
Elementary District should be unified with High School District to provide continuity. Another “hot” discussion for another time!
Thanks Bob for your comments. Being a former teacher and my wife teaching for 60 yrs we both think it is a terrible decision if they decide to close 5 schools. They better be listening to the parents and kids to solve the problem of low enrollment by opening the schools back up and the children will come. Peoria has stayed open most of the time and doing real well. No wonder we have so much more crime and sucides. Kids will be a year behind already so get the schools back open and make it work.