By Jennifer Brennon

If you’ve been following the saga of the Capital Improvement Plan dilemma, it’s easy to see that things are just not adding up.

In September, the Suffolk School Board passed a capital plan that does not nearly address the issues of overcapacity in a number of our schools. The community from Northern Shore Elementary School spoke up and asked for more for their students. At the November meeting, the School Board, only after repeated community complaints, voted and upgraded the CIP to include a 22-classroom expansion for just that school. In December when the City Council CIP plan came out, this update for the schools was not included. Why? Where was the disconnect?

Again, after serious community input and time, the City Council stated during the meeting last week that they were “blindsided” by the issues that were brought to them. How is it that no one from the superintendent’s office or the School Board advised the City Council that one of their schools was so overcrowded that there are not enough bathroom facilities to accommodate the children? Did Dr. Deran Whitney just forget that this school has mobile units with moldy, rotting floors and leaking ceilings? A student in another school fell through a mobile unit floor in the recent past. Have we learned nothing? There are serious safety concerns that need to be addressed. How is it that the community has to badger our elected officials to get them the information to see what is really going on and do what is best for our children?

I do understand that government is a process and does require the community to get involved. What I question is why the superintendent’s office and certain members of the School Board are not communicating with the City Council about the true needs of the schools? There was a time when they agreed on school capacity numbers for approving housing developments, facility needs and planning. Somewhere along the way we went from a Unified Development Ordinance agreement with the city to the current “Effective Program Capacity.” This new EPC essentially gives Dr. Whitney a free-for-all to change capacity of schools dependent on the programs offered, funding sources and various other external factors instead of space, safety and the needs of the students and staff. This is a vague way of determining what our schools need to educate our children.

Take for example the capacity for Northern Shores Elementary School. It went from 718 in 2014 to 780 in 2018. Creekside Elementary School went from 721 in 2014 to 865 in 2018, even after students were rezoned to the new Florence Bowser Elementary School.

How is the capacity of our schools increasing when square footage is not? Also, if the actual capacity for Northern Shores is 780 as the superintendent says, then the school is only 80 students over capacity, as enrollment for 2018 was 864, but then why are there 150 students in mobile units? Something does not add up.

Another concern is that all this fuss is just for one school. Northern Shores has an excellent and very involved PTA that is on top of things and really working to make that school a better environment for their children and the community. What about the schools that do not have this? I am very concerned when I hear things like the Pre-K students at Elephant’s Fork Elementary School are playing on asphalt, as there is no proper playground space for them. These are 3- and 4-year-old children! I know that there are several other schools at, near, or over capacity and without the communities from those schools speaking up, I dare to wonder what is really happening at those schools that we would all be “blindsided” by.

I hope any parent or community partner that is paying attention to what is happening will become involved in making our schools better, questioning the status of our superintendent and certain School Board members and start asking them the hard questions we need to hear.

Transparency of our elected officials and our superintendent is important. We need trust and confidence, not concerns and double talk. We need to know how things add up, and it needs to add up in the right direction.

 

Jennifer Brennon is a military spouse, stay-at-home mom and Suffolk resident.