What to do about Enslow/Beverly Hills…?
By goodnessgraciouswv• I hope that a consolidated Enslow/Beverly Hills Middle School will not be built outside the city limits of Huntington. Our students are better served by neighborhood schools. Every effort should be made to maintain schools in the neighborhoods–if this means fixing their buildings, redistricting and building new buildings, closing Enslow and making its associated elementaries into K-8 schools, something, then these should all be considered. It is ridiculous for 13-year olds from Guyandotte and Highlawn and downtown Huntington to have to be bussed all the way out to Norway Avenue in order to be warehoused in what will be the second largest middle school in the state.
I’m afraid that I leave my hopes right now on the SBA not giving the County the money for the building, but I would love for there to be another way around this. I have several suggestions for other ways to handle this, actually. I know that I am not on your staff and I’m not an architect, but here are my rough, brain-stormed ideas that I hope you will give some consideration to:
(a) getting SBA funds to bring Enslow up to code–I have been told numerous times that the SBA only gives money for *new buildings* (not renovations, I believe I’ve been told) of a certain minimum size, but I know that is not entirely true. In March 2007, Cabell County was given $50,000 to replace the windows in Altizer Elementary under the auspices of MIP (Major Improvement Plan)–I believe they are trying to raise the limit to $1 million per project. Other similar projects must also qualify, right? I am not familiar with the building, I have only been in it one time, but I had the idea that with the Miller building it would have been possible to build a “tower” between the two wings of the building that had an elevator and maybe additional handicap-accessible restrooms.
(b) redistrict for middle schools. I know that this seems to be anathema to the Board, or at least to the central office, but I bring it up again. I have looked over WVDE policy 6200 and know that the SBA wants these Economies of Scale, but research shows that those are NOT actually saving any money (while the larger school atmosphere DOES hurt achievement and damages the community/personal support of students) Read “Jack & the Giant School” from the New Rules Project. So, Enslow is “too small”, but Beverly Hills is not, even by SBA standards. Perhaps some group of students that has been going to Beverly Hills could go to Enslow, and ALL of the students from Hite Saunders (and any other schools that send SOME students to Barboursville and some to BH) could go to BH. I don’t know all of the population data and cannot imagine all of the roads in my head, but there are probably other options (including, if BH really needs to be replaced, moving that middle school to another location to make the commute easier, while shifting some of those closer to Enslow to it.
(c) close Enslow and make prek-8 schools at the elementaries it serves. I believe the central office is opposed to k-8’s but that is the model that Dr. Stan Maynard is working toward with the 21st century model schools and many other school systems have had excellent results with them, including Cincinnati ( http://www.oppaga.state.fl.us/reports/pdf/0502rpt.pdf ).
(d) revisit Rotary Park site (or another site that is between the two schools geographically). This is what I hear from lots of people “on the street”. It was suggested that if Enslow were sold (for real money) that could help purchase another site.
