Residents Give Thumbs Up to Boise, Idaho, School Plan

By Bill Roberts, The Idaho Statesman, Boise

Dec. 13–Parents and other residents overwhelmingly supported Boise School District’s $113 million plan to revamp its inventory of aging buildings at a public hearing that drew 150 people Monday night.

But historic preservation groups cautioned the district to think twice about some of the proposals, such as replacing 57-year-old South Junior High with a new building or tearing down Whitney Elementary School, built in 1923, and putting up a new building on the same property.

These schools have historic and architectural value that make them worthy of saving, said Dan Everhart, vice president of Preservation Idaho.

None of the more than 30 people who spoke at Monday’s hearing outright opposed the plan, and many echoed the sentiments of Michelle Crawforth, a resident with no children in the district.

“We are smart enough to know that children getting educated in those ancient schools will one day take care of us,” Crawforth told the school board. “Please go forward with this.”

Monday’s hearing was the first time the Boise School Board heard directly from the public on a plan the district has formulated over the past three years.

Administrators say the district must redo its buildings — renovate some, replace others and consolidate some — as a way to improve educational quality, reinvest in declining neighborhoods, improve worn-out buildings and pare operational costs as the district continues losing enrollment.

Rory Jones, board president, said trustees have not made a final decision on buildings, and the plan they adopt could look different from the one presented at Monday’s hearing.

The plan will now undergo further study by trustees, who could come back next month with a proposal for a $94 million bond election this spring to help pay for the first phase of the five-year building program.

Most supporters Monday came from South Junior High.

Anne Newton, who lives near South, said her son and a friend recently came home to shower after athletic practice because the school’s showers are “moldy, not lighted and with stuff growing there — God know what it is.”

The school’s inadequate wiring makes it difficult for students to run all the computers the school is allocated, South principal Kathleen McCurdy has said, and many classrooms are small and cramped.

But Terri Schorzman, Idaho’s representative for the National Trust for Historic Preservation, said those kinds of problems aren’t enough reason to tear the building down.

“I don’t believe the building inhibits the ability to learn,” said Schorzman. She encouraged the district to look at ways to modernize the building.

Preservationists also said the district ought to think about what would happen to parts of Cole Elementary that are more than 100 years old and to historic parts of Franklin Elementary if it closes the schools and sell the property. The buildings “are a record of where we have been,” Everhart said.

Much of the work proposed in the improvement plan would center on schools on the Bench, which would see $60 million worth of investment in new school buildings, said Virginia Pellegrini, a volunteer who has worked on the committee to draft the building plan.

The investment and the opportunity for kids to attend better schools make the project worthwhile, said Teresa McMurdie, a Franklin Elementary School parent. Franklin is one of four schools the district is considering closing and merging into two new schools — one near Borah High School and the other near Fairmont Junior High. Both schools would team up with Boise’s Parks and Recreation Department to provide community centers. Closing the four schools would save the district $2.4 million in annual operating costs.

McMurdie said she would like to see Franklin stay open. If she had her wish, “a new facility for this building would magically appear,” she said. “But that’s not likely to happen.”

The district must handle its resources carefully in a time of declining enrollment. It is not “fiscally responsible for the school district to think it can leave every school open in the (face) of declining enrollment,” McMurdie said.

—–

To see more of the Idaho Statesman, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.idahostatesman.com

Copyright (c) 2005, The Idaho Statesman, Boise

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.