Board Sees Urgency In Building School
Posted on: Monday, 12 September 2005, 12:01 CDT
Albuquerque Public Schools board members have finally joined West Side families in expressing urgency for building a new high school to help ease overcrowding at Cibola.
The school board voted Wednesday to approve the acquisition of land needed for the school and to also go ahead with a scaled-back plan to open it. The new school could open in 2007 with ninth- graders only for the first year.
West Side families and Robert Lucero, the West Side representative on the board, have been saying for months the new school can't be built soon enough. Earlier this week, board members fretted that fast-tracking a new school would be at the expense of maintenance and construction projects at other schools.
Lucero has been continuously drilling into his fellow board members that relieving Cibola -- with its 3,000-plus students this year -- is not only a West Side or APS education and potential safety issue, but it has been categorized by the state Public Education Department as being priority No. 1.
Certainly, some projects need to be addressed by the district, and the proposal passed Wednesday did just that. Construction projects at five other schools -- Manzano Mesa, East San Jose, La Mesa and Mission Avenue elementaries and Polk Middle -- can be accelerated next year, while plans for the new school go forward.
East San Jose parents complained to the board Wednesday that their school wouldn't get its asbestos removed for another two years if the high school was fast-tracked.
But board President Paula Maes said delaying the entire school's opening to 2008 would have meant further problems for a bulging Cibola. She also said APS still needs to work on safety measures and other fixes at Cibola while the new school is built.
The APS decision to get moving on a new West Side High School is a good sign. Even if it starts with only freshmen, it shows that even the school board sees the urgency in moving forward, quickly.
Source: Albuquerque Journal
Related Articles
- Five School Boards and Superintendents Selected to Participate in Executive Governance Training to Improve Student Achievement
- Upper Canada District School Board Selects Nevis to Secure 100+ Schools
- School Board Struggles to Keep Projects Within Budget
- City Offers 45 Acres for a School: The Broward County School Board is Considering a Proposal to Build a School on Land to Be Donated By Weston
- School Board Approves Kindergarten Construction Project
- School Board Votes to Spare Music Program; Waukesha Officials to Cut Classroom Teachers
- Charter Schools Considered: School Board Member Hosting Keyswide Meetings
- Miami School Board OK's Aug. 14 Start
- Departures to Shake Up EBR's School Board
- Twin Falls, Idaho, School Board Hears Need for New High School
 |
 |
User Comments (0)
RSS Feeds