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| Knoxville Schools to Seek Bids on Elementary Expansion |
UPDATED 1:24am 4/23/09 It took two hours of a discussion during a meeting whose open session lasted four hours for the Knoxville School Board to decide to move ahead in the process to determine whether or not the district's elementary school should be expanded.
After the lengthy and sometimes heated discussion, the District-202 Board Wednesday night ultimately voted 7-0 to seek bids on two potential plans to expand Mabel Woolsey Elementary School -- both of which would see steel buildings constructed on site, either of which would address an uptick in enrollment but not enough space.
For his part, board member-elect John Putnam told his colleagues he didn't think moving forward was the right decision to make, he says, because the space the district already has can be better used. "I think with some restructuring of where we have our classes at, that we could easily spread across this district more than enough space for each child in this district," Putnam said.
Putnam, a teacher in the Galesburg School District, suggested moving fourth graders to Knoxville Junior High School and eighth graders to Knoxville High School.
But Knox County Clerk Scott Ericson, himself a district parent, says he doesn't like that idea at all. "I, personally, have a concern about bringing my fourth grader into the junior high," Ericson said. "I would have some serious concerns about how the logistics of that are going to play."
Teachers and administrators were all asked to speak, and most disagreed with Putnam's ideas, and all felt the time for expansion was now.
The proposals could cost between $2 million and $2.5 million dollars when bids come in, and the board would have to vote to either accept a plan or reject them.
The District-202 Board Wednesday night voted to spend $58,000 on the computerized grade book system "Skyward" -- the same system being used in the Galesburg, Abingdon, Williamsfield, and other area school districts, replacing a system administrators called ineffective and inaccurate.
(A full house attends Wednesday's Knoxville School Board meeting in the Knoxville High School Cafeteria. WGIL News Story and Photo by Will Stevenson.) |
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| 04 22 09 by Newsroom |
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