Thursday, September 21, 2017

And now we're going to close one. . .

Yesterday, I posted this:

Lex Anteinternet: Hindsight: The lost NCHS swimming pool and the Pa...:




The Star Tribune has this headline this morning:

Pathways' enrollment remains low, but principal says new system, 'baby steps' will bring facility to capacity

Today the news comes that the district enrollment is so declined at the grade school level that the closing of a school is nearly inevitable, after this academic year.

About 1,000 students short, in fact.

Closing elementary schools, and not filling up a "campus" of the other four high schools (yes, there's four, not two, like people so often wish to believe).

When things started to slow down a couple of years ago, I was defending the deposition of a businessman in Riverton who commented that the root of the school funding problem was over construction and over spending.  I don't know if that is, but it does seem that the current funding model is broken.  Here in this district we're closing an elementary school for the second year in a row, it seems, while we're in a slow panic about not being able to fill up a very expensive new structure. That is bad.

But it was predictable as well. 

Laissez les bon temps roule, we're some times told.

Yes, but keep in mind that les bon temps are often followed by les mal temps, particularly with our economy.

And we haven't even seen what the completion of the two major projects here locally will mean as they start wrapping up over the next year.

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