Do Not Close Oak Springs Elementry for a Per-K Cen...

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Author: Bennie Heyward Jr.

Started: March 13, 2006, 5:18:50 am

Target: BTW community

Category: Education

Supporters:

Goal:

100,000

Goal Progress:

Status

Active

We(the residents)of Booker T. Washington Terri. and residents in the surrounding area of Oak Springs Elementry ask the AISD to please decline Dr. Forgione's proposed repurposing of Oak Springs Elementary School into a pre-k center.

This action will cause more hardship on parents, children, and teachers.

The majority of these families are single females as head of households; most have to rely on public transportation, many are low-income working parents or are unemployed, and many have limited English skills.
The achievement level of Oak Springs Elementary students has increased significantly due to increased levels of parental involvement, the hard work and commitment of Oak Springs’ faculty and staff, and the wrap-around services for BTW Terraces families provided by the Communities In Schools program housed at Oak Springs Elementary. These achievements have occurred due to the close proximity of parents and families to their neighborhood school and the level of trust that has developed over the years through the neighborhood school concept.
This will frustrate families many of whom have infants and toddlers at home, that will have to rely on public transportation to pick up their child.
Being able to walk to the neighborhood school and knowing the teachers of other grades are important parts of the positive school experience. Furthermore, the after-school tutoring and enrichment programs available at Oak Springs Elementary, due to the collaborative efforts of Oak Springs’ staff, Communities In Schools, the Housing Authority of the City of Austin, and the Boys and Girls Clubs, all within a two-block area, have added additional positive dimensions to the school experience for students and families. This educational and social network will be greatly diminished as a result of this proposal.
Pre-K could be left at each elementary and the responsibility for it could be moved from the K-6 Principal to a new Pre-K function within AISD. This could start at a selected elementary school where the Pre-K staff and the multi-location Principal(s) could conduct a 1-2 year pilot and gain lots of information, expertise, and focus on specializing in Pre-K. Then a shorter pilot to pick up the Pre-K at another school could be used to further test the concept and gain skills in running Pre-K's in multiple locations from a single/remote organization. Then, if the preliminary program works, it can be rolled out into whole regions or all of AISD. This scenario would allow the district to test the program, cautiously expand if it works, then roll it out fully when it has proven it works.
There are certainly other proposals that could be considered as well. This suggestion seems to be a lot more logical, friendly, less costly and disruptive, and does not break any neighborhood covenants of the past.
There must be a good alternative to solving the problem of providing the necessary resources to open new schools in growth areas of the city and providing more educational experiences for pre-K students short of busing 4-5 year olds and dispersing elementary school students from a school such as Oak Springs which serves as a social and educational anchor for an economically disadvantaged population.
We urge you to seek other alternatives.