COLLEGE PARK URGENTLY NEEDS YOUR HELP - TONIGHT, MONDAY, Sept. 10!!!
Full Description:
(Information provided courtesy of David Rose)I hope you saw the front page article in Friday's Orlando Sentinel. They reported that the Orange County Public Schools are seriously considering a plan that would rebuild Edgewater High School on the current site - adding no additonal land and that during the construction period of approximately one year Edgewater students would be bused from College Park to the former Evans High School campus.
This plan has serious and dramatic negative impacts that OCPS simply has not adequately considered and according to conversations that we have attempted to have with Anne Geiger, our School Board Member, and Ron Blocker, the Superintended of OCPS, have little or no intention in hearing.
Ms. Geiger will be presenting the state of College Park's public schools at the College Park Neighborhood Associaton Meeting tomorrow, Monday September 10th, and it is important that we have a strong showing of concerned citizen's at the meeting. The meeting room is very small so you may have to stand in the lobby or even outside and CPNA is making arrangements for audio/video feeds to the lobby and audio feed outside. I realize that this may be uncomfortable and that I am asking a lot but it is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT that we impress upon Ms. Geiger the depth of the communities concern. So please show up if you possibly can AND please invite as many people as you know to join us. One way is to simply send a copy of this email to everyone you know that lives in the Edgewater High School District. The meeting starts at 7:00 and Anne Geiger is scheduled to start her presentation around 7:30 or 8:00 (that is an update from the previously published 8:00)
Following are messages from Kathleen Shambis, Chair of the Edgewater High School Renovation Task Force and Anne Geiger, School Board Member, that will give you more information and a flavor of where we are in planning for the renovated school.
There is much to report, I will try to be brief. Please advise your friends, neighbors, and acquaintances of these most recent developments and share whatever of these materials you would like to share.
If you share, it bears repeating that the EHS Task Force has been meeting since early 2004 with the sole purpose of ensuring that the redevelopment of Edgewater High School be done in a thoughtful and equitable manner in order to ensure the school's continued success for the next 50 years. The Task Force is a broad-based effort that interfaces with many, many other groups interested in Edgewater High School. The Task Force seeks equity for EHS and seeks to have the broad and diverse EHS community be treated as a genuine involved party with OCPS in this important process, as promised by the Count Me In initiative and as was done at Boone and Olympia High Schools during their building or renovation projects.
As reported in today's Sentinel, The Task Force has confirmed that although, nominally, three plans (no land, addition of only shopping center land, and addition of shopping center and mobile home park land) are still being considered by OCPS for EHS, the only plan being seriously developed is to acquire no additional land for EHS. The plan favored by OCPS includes using a swing school to which EHS students would be bused during construction. The plan is to use Evans HS as the EHS swing school after the Evans students have been relocated to their new campus on the curent Evans 9th Grade Center site.
Despite our requests over the years and more recently the last few months, the Task Force has not been shown the plans for this most recent scheme. It is hard to imagine how it could provide all of the amenities that other high schools have. We have filed a public records request and may get the documents that way.
We are working to set up a website. Watch for further announcements.
I was called yesterday by the Sentinel for a comment. The full text of the statement I gave to them is attached, for what it's worth.
OCPS has no plans to present its most recent scheme to the community prior to a Board vote on the matter. The Task Force is working to make sure that a community meeting on this important subject occurs in early October. An announcement of date, time and location will be coming soon.
In the meantime, Anne Geiger is scheduled to speak to the College Park Neighborhood Association at its meeting on Monday, September 10 the meeting starts at 7p.m., Anne is expected to speak beginning at 8 p.m.. in the Community Center behind Princeton Elementary. A part of her presentation will be to give an update on EHS renovation. We are urging many people to attend and ask questions, if she will entertain them.
Master planning decisions for Edgewater High Schools's comprehensive renovations have not been finalized, but are now imminent. As we move forward, the community will be kept informed. There has already been substantial community input over the last three years, primarily through the Edgewater Reconstruction Task Force. What is desired by the task force members and school community is well understood and being well considered. Edgewater is one of the district's urban high school campuses located in an established, dense commercial/residential area. The cost of additional land is substantial and is an issue. It was three years ago and is now. Additional land notwithstanding, the investment in Edgewater is likely to be the highest ever for a district high school. The campus will be almost entirely rebuilt as new construction. The few more recently built facilities will be renovated. It will remain a hallmark educational institution and become a beautiful asset to the College Park community.
When it was decided last spring by the School Board that Edgewater should stay in its location, while under consideration for relocation at the time as a cost-saving option, the direction from the School Board to the Superintendent was: develop master planning options that are financially responsible, include creative solutions, and build upon the premise that Edgewater will continue to have adequate facilities to function as a comprehensive high school.
There is a committed focus by the School Board and Superintendent to invest tax dollars equitably-in balance- so that all schools undergoing renovation get a fair shake. With respect to Edgewater, this works both ways-to spend the amount of money commensurate with the school's needs and at the same time make sure that the costs of Edgewater do not hurt our ability to invest adequately in other campuses.
There are always avenues for community input so that the School Board and Superintendent have taken into account the opinions, concerns and ideas of the community as decisions of this kind are made. This has been the case with Edgewater all along and will continue to be.
Thank you for contacting me.
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