| Topic | Notes |
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| Presentation | Information presented was a shock to some parents present and not a surprise to others. As revenue declines, unemployment go up, demand for government services go up. We saw an 11% increase in the number of students enrolled in public school. Our free and reduced lunch count is up. There is a decline in State support for public education. |
| Facilities Committee | The facilities committee was comprised of people from all across the community -parents, DCAC, Chamber of Commerce, media, teachers’ association – a very broad based participation. They came up with the P-8 idea. |
| Cost/student | It costs more for Stout. Was it an option to close Stout? They did look at closing Stout and the issue was – none of those schools were equipped to handle additional students. It would have required massive construction. |
| Quincy | This is our only school north of the river. Quinton Heights is recommended to be closed. |
| Student reassignment | There is a possibility of not sending fifth grade to middle school. Some parents are concerned that if the school closed they will move to Avondale East and then to Ross. This will affect their learning. Two transitions, two years in a row. I can definitely understand this concern. Is there a plan to ease the transition? The plan had been to try to have all of the things that are here transfer to the new school. Ideally, the only thing that would change would be the building. Why can’t we do combination classrooms for the higher grades to reduce the need for transitions? This doesn’t make a lot of sense. If they had a combination class it would cause less stress. If you are a second grader at Linn, you will be a third grader at Avondale East, fourth grade at Ross and, a fifth grader at Eisenhower. The part where I can definitely understand the stress is the [initial moves] that occur until we have a P-8 campus. |
| Student Improvement Team | If they have a successful program at one building, how is that information transferred to the next building, and the next place, and the next? You’ve got a bunch of educators here that are very concerned for our children. We have put years of our lives into these students and we want them to succeed. We want assurance that this information will follow the students. In the past, the information has been scattered to the wind. |
| Staff assignments | There is no way the full staff is going to Avondale East. K going into first grade, they are combining into three classes. They will be integrated and have different teachers. That would probably happen anyway. The alternative would be to make more cuts to programs. It’s been our focus to try not to lay off teachers. The number one thing that makes a difference is the teachers. If we were not to close buildings, you would probably see some attempt to even out class size anyway. |
| Student transitions | The more transitions they have, the more likely they will not be successful or graduate from high school. These students have many home issues. Now where is the stability in the school? There is none. The lack of stability will cause students to have abandonment issues. After you save all this money are you going to pay for counseling? I understand your feelings. This is not where our Board wants to be. There has to be a better option than sending them to Avondale East for one year. Send them directly to Ross – build over the summer. What about teacher morale? They are not going to care…No, teachers WILL care. It is that teacher’s job to care about education, even if it is for one year. I certainly hope teachers would care. I don’t think [teachers] would stop caring. Is there any way they could go directly to Ross? She is worried that ELL/special needs students will fall through the cracks because of all the transitions. |
| Drop-out rate | There will be a drop-out rate that is higher than we want. Are there programs you will put in place for kids that are less mature other than – good luck – go to this school, to this school, to this school. I want to hear your ideas and make sure you are heard. |
| Teacher reassignment | I give it my all. To go to a school for one year, different philosophies, the people that are going to suffer are the kids. There is no way I am going to pack up my classroom, 90% of it is mine, pack it up, move it, just to know that I am going to move again. I care about every kid in my classroom, but for me it is going to be a get by year, a wasted school year. I want for you to be honest. Tell us what you know. Folks like us are support; you guys really do the work. Ask us how to save money. We can tell you four or five ways. |
| Mentors | We used to have Youth Friends. I remember I was a Youth Friend. If we could really focus on mentors and on the kids who are going through these crazy transitions, that would give a good role model. |
| ELL/Student Assignment | This parent wants to move her child out. Could she choose to apply to a different school and maintain ELL services? It depends; she could apply for a transfer. How likely is it that she will be allowed to transfer? She would have to call demographics. There is a Spanish speaking person there. And if they do not allow the transfer, then what? Right now Avondale East is not an ELL site. They will try to assign ELL students to the ELL site closest to the resident district. The problem is, according to the Brown decision, we need to make a good faith effort to not have racially identifiable schools. If we put an ELL site at Avondale East, we could be out of compliance. When will they know what school they will be assigned to? The Board hearing is tomorrow. After that, they will have time to think about community input before they vote. We will look at Listening Tour information, community meetings, on-line survey results, and everything we get from the hearing. We will take a vote on May 5. After May 5, parents will get a letter telling them where they will be reassigned. Parents will have ten work days to make the decision on whether they want to request a transfer or contest the assignment. It’s not guaranteed that you will be guaranteed a transfer, but if you miss the date, you could go through the regular process. |
| Special Education Teacher | I have a self-contained classroom. I came from a school of over 500 children and then I came to Linn. I would never find another school that has accepted these children the way the staff here did. What concerns me about these large school models, we have a number of children who are medically fragile. To put them in a K-8 setting is difficult. My student is loved; I know she can go to other teachers – receive acceptance and affirmation – my concern is that if we go to a bigger school, that isn’t going to happen. I’ve been in a rural setting that had a P-8 and it didn’t work. I grew up in Overland Park and I hate when we compare Topeka to Kansas City, MO. KCMO has had problems for 52 years. |
| Busing | - I found out I have a five-year-old that gets on the bus very early, and gets off at her house at 4:45. She’s on the bus before many people are up in the morning. When we have called the bus barn, it’s like…I’m within the law. I am doing it right. Are you going to have to spend the money to get more buses? We have an extremely liberal transfer policy. We have an extremely complicated busing scheme to try and get kids where they are supposed to go. I think the intent is to try and cut down on [busing] and have a less complicated busing scheme. Spend less on transportation and more on classroom resources. A lot of special education parents are not advocates. The mother said, “I didn’t know I could say anything about that.” I felt badly that I let this child fall through the cracks. Some of the parents are happy to have transportation; they don’t have to drive…
- Can we reduce busing costs from 1 to 1.5 and use those funds rather than close Linn? Reduce the liberal transfer and busing policies to save money.
- Will kids be required to walk across 37th Street?
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| Instructional materials | I want some consideration about where materials will go. In a previous move, we had a large box. They just threw about half of the building’s resources in that box…just thrown in a box. It took two of us a day and a half to go through that box. I want some consideration. We’re surrounded by a beautiful library. Where is this stuff going to go? I’m really concerned about these resources. When we closed buildings before, this wasn’t handled well. |
| Safety | Do we know how many lock-downs Avondale East had in past years? As far as I know, Linn hasn’t had any. Do I need to find something about how to disarm guns and recognize guns? What are we doing besides putting resource officers on campus? Are we doing anything to make sure [kids are safe]? We do not have multiple lockdowns at Avondale East. I’ve taught over there for the past years. There may have been…they are going to check a house… they just don’t want us out. The kids were safe. The most dangerous area [is in a different part of town.] In my neighborhood, stabbings. It’s not so much the safety; kids are a product of their environment. When I drive down the road, kids are throwing sticks at my car. They are beating dogs with sticks. They run the neighborhood by themselves. The parents are using it as a daycare. How many sex offenders are in the area? |
| Transfer | If a transfer is denied, what happens then? Can they still go to the school they want? You can always decline ELL services but I would advise against it. I don’t know…if I tell you something now – a hypothetical situation dealing with a lot of factors – I’m not trying to evade, just don’t want to [give inaccurate information.] |
| Transitions | I want to reaffirm, say it again, that is my main objection. The district is moving kids that are at-risk, that live in highly unstable homes. |
| Principal | Dr. Gordon is the proposed principal at Avondale East. Are every teacher and para over there guaranteed a position, as well as Dr. Gordon? Yes. It is our intent, the primary thing we want to protect is children. We know the way to protect children is to protect [teachers]. Is the idea to scatter everybody throughout the district? No, we will try to bring class size to the district average, so there would be some changes if we didn’t close schools. In my opinion, jobs should be guaranteed for teachers and paras. Since we would actually be growing the campus, hopefully we could keep teachers together. We are going to build capacity, put more capacity there. |
| Construction | What is the projected completion date? This is not yet established. We haven’t made a decision. There are only four months during the year you can build. |
| Fifth grade | Are fifth graders supposed to go to East? Ross? There will be multiple transitions. That doesn’t make any sense. |
| Siblings | We have always had consideration for siblings. Part of our transfer policy, siblings, special situations …we have always given consideration to these situations. |
| Fifth grade in one school, younger child in another | One of my kids will go to Avondale East, one goes to Ross. That doesn’t make any sense. It’s hard enough to transition to middle school. Why don’t you just keep fifth grade with elementary? What would you do instead? I wouldn’t send kids to a school for one year. I would combine an elementary school and keep kids in the elementary school. I wouldn’t split up siblings. Gas is $4.00/gallon. You can’t get transportation unless you pay, so you are dragging a kid here/there, and taking the kid out of the neighborhood school. All kids in K-5 should stay in K-5 until there is a P-8. There are a lot of parents that already have problems at home and now you want to take kids from a comfortable environment and go into another environment. It’s not the P-8 model that troubles you; it’s that they would transfer to a school before the P-8 campus is completed… Do just one transition rather than two or three. This is the school I’ll go to next year and then I’ll be fine. The whole rationale behind the P-8 is …there is minimal transition. If you’re going to close a school down, close down at one time. |
| Ross/Eisenhower | If this were to occur the way you see it, Avondale East will not have ELL. When you were talking about P-8, would they have ELL services? The reason with why we are still in flux with ELL, we are trying to figure out what will happen. ELL programs have been placed away from where people live to achieve racial balance. We have families who decline services now because they don’t want to drive out to French. We want to hear from ELL families now, what they would prefer. If Eisenhower were to become an ELL site, they would have three transitions; try to avoid that by having things all set up. |
| P-8 | Are they going to try to do P-8 with all schools? Yes. Unfortunately, in this district, there is a history of having a lot of schools and “skinny” academic programs and less programs in [smaller schools]. By starting on the East side with kids who have done with less, they will be able to avail themselves of [opportunities that occur in larger schools]. |
| Equity | What makes [others] deserving of more services? Nothing, I agree with you. We are trying to work toward [equity]. In order to do that, some structural changes have to take place. Before we make [changes] we want to ask you all. |
| Property value | What will happen to property value? I don’t know. It depends on what happens with the building. If something is done with the school, property values don’t plummet and may go up. Where I lived, Gage Elementary has become the Civic Theater. But if you leave it vacant, it gets run down and falls into disrepair. |
| BOE membership | Do most of the Board members live in Topeka? All Board members live in the district. |
| Holland | I work at Holland. It’s got character, as do buildings that are housing support staff. What if we close down those, give us time to build onto Eisenhower and Ross, and then close the schools down? It’s going to be uncomfortable. We’ve got fifty or more file cabinets that have to go somewhere. We have compliance issues that come up every day. Why don’t we just flip them and close down the buildings – do it the opposite way – and allow students to get used to a [new setting]? We have to have a transitional team put in place to come up with a plan that takes into account all of the things you are mentioning now so kids don’t fall through the cracks. |
| Transfer | Parents are saying they won’t go where 501 tells them to go. They will find a way. Parents are going to make the best choices for their children. That is the reality; we can expect them to do what they believe is in their children’s best interests. |
| Newton, KS | They closed schools. Ten years later, there was a surge in population and then they had to build new schools. Are the P-8 schools going to have enough room? Long term, we are projected to have declining enrollment. All of the rapid growth is happening outside our boundaries. |
| Transfers/AYP | We transferred in so we could be in the neighborhood schools. We came back to our school – it was a transfer because my child was enrolled in another school. My concern is that we only have five schools in Topeka that are meeting AYP. My daughter wants to be home schooled. Even a substitute throws this child into hysterics. If the adults can’t figure it out, how can the kids figure it out? What schools have made AYP? You could see scores weren’t very different between the two schools. We just put into place an entirely new curriculum. We empowered teachers – got teachers together to write a district curriculum. We had previously left it up to teachers. Now we have an assessment plan. How do you like that? We don’t do Scantron. |
| Instruction/transfers | You’ve got to let teachers be creative. I understand that, but our kids aren’t succeeding. All these transfers – it’s crazy making. Would you move out of your house before you know where you are going to go? There’s got to be a better way. You can’t expect kids who are in crisis…Just to make sure I understand, you want to have the p-8 model ready before closing schools. |
| Behavior problems | I would be worried about ELL students because they have additional concerns, language and cultural, and if we are not successfully addressing these concerns now, we need something for the ELL kids. |
| Parents declining ELL services | - I don’t think most parents decline ELL services.
- They have this idea that ELL is teaching them phrases/English.
- It hurts that administration/Board members/Committee members try to say that they know how we feel. You don’t until you are walking in our shoes, in our classrooms, making a difference in their lives. It’s sad, it’s sad you’re closing our school. You do not identify with how we feel. I understand, you have to make budget cuts. Until you walk in our shoes, please don’t try to identify with our feelings, because you don’t understand. We’re the ones working in the trenches. You don’t know the difference in these kids’ lives that we make. Come spend a day. Until you are in the classrooms, seeing the ah ha moments, it just kind of hurts that they try to identify with how we feel. I think the administrators were expected to do walk-through in the building. It was 9:30 in the morning. We had the paint out. And he said, “Oh we are doing art in the morning?” He judged me on what I was doing and I was doing the curriculum. Usually when they see special education, they run. Going back to this P-8 model, I have eight children, five of them are going into regular education and aren’t potty trained. I worry about those children being in a classroom of 1:22. Here, it’s, “I think you stink, please have Mrs. C change you.” In a regular classroom, 22 kids, that teacher will have to be incredibly patient to call and say this child needs [toileting assistance]. We want to make sure these children are not overlooked. I think it will be fine if it is implemented like at Avondale East. It’s implemented well and we have one student (fourth grade) who needs changing and he is accepted.
- I want to thank you guys for all that you have done. Everybody wants to complain but who has come up with a better plan? I think Dr. Singer has done a wonderful job. He didn’t have to have all the community meetings, parent nights. Everyone wants to rag on 501 and for once we need to say thank you for trying to make this an easy transition for us. Kids are resilient. If they see us trying to make this a good transition, the kids will be fine. I think Dr. Gordon will be just fine. She is a wonderful principal and leader. I appreciate all the comments; they are taken into consideration. You all definitely think of things we haven’t. We see ourselves as support staff. Our job is to make sure you have the resources necessary to do your job. I would like to leave you with the assurance that when it comes time to make a decision, we will review all the information we have. We will give it our most earnest effort to make the best decision we can. Children will be first, not adults. Working with what we’ve got, how can we make this better? What opportunities can we make?
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