FCUSD Recommends Closing Riverview and Cordova Lane Elementaries
Superintendent Pat Godwin will recommend the closure of Riverview and Cordova Lane Elementary Schools to the school board, according to a statement released by the Folsom Cordova Unified School District.
The recommendation is the option first considered by Godwin, but was subsequentally re-evaluated after parent outcry. The school district said it used several factors to come to its final conclusion, and the school closures will save the district $600,000 in the 2010-2011 school year.
The statement listed the criteria determined to close each school under consideration. Cordova Lane’s “factors supporting closure” were:
- No increased transportation costs
- Creates efficient attendance boundaries
- Doesn’t offer State Preschool program
- No Measure N work has been completed
- Doesn’t have cooking kitchen
- Less experience with multi-faceted programs for bilingual and Title I services
- Good location for other community use
- No Newcomer’s program
Riverview’s “factors supporting closure” were:
- Doesn’t offer Student Care
- Doesn’t have a cooking kitchen
- Only has 9 permanent classrooms
- Can’t house all students from P.J. Shields
- Smaller multipurpose than P.J. Shields
- Measure N ($1.668 million) work hasn’t been completed
- Doesn’t offer district Spanish learning magnet program (FLES)
- No Newcomer’s program
The statement said the school district will create a transition team to smooth the process from the two schools and the team will consist of parents and school staff. The team’s duties will include welcoming students to their new schools, preserving programs and activities and addressing issues identified by the team.
The school district is also aiming to keep transitioning teachers in their current grade level. “Our plan is to allow the teachers from a closed school(s) to transition to the receiving school,” the statement said. ”A tentative agreement with the Folsom Cordova Education Association (FCEA) also provides for continuing the teachers in the same grade level to the maximum extent possible.”
Godwin will make his recommendation Nov. 19 at the FCUSD school board meeting. The meeting will be held at Mills Middle School, located at 10439 Coloma Road, starting at 6 p.m.
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I’m wondering if there is any way they can finagle diverting Measure N funds from Lane, Riverview, Kinney, Walnutwood, Cordova High, etc. to jumpstarting Mather High/Morrison Creek Middle Schools, which are Measure M (developer community property taxes, i.e. Aerojet, Elliott Homes, AKT) schools. Are Mather High/Morrison Creek still scheduled for construction in 2013?
I think it is absolutely ridiculous that one of the factors for closing Cordova Lane is the Title 1 funding and newcomers program! Our school is punished because we are not a lower income school, or not an immigrant. When did we start turning away middle class or non-immigrants in order to help those migrating to the USA…something is definitely wrong here.
“School closure is a sign of a community in the final phase of the death process, not a cause.” That’s how one study on school closings reported in the Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research concluded, with many other peer-reviewed studies showing similar findings. I’m a former teacher, having worked with a number of local school districts (including the FCUSD) and the Sacramento County Office of Education. Only a few years ago I served on the PTA of a Rancho Cordova public school. When my oldest child was in Kindergarten, you could usually count the number of parent participants at our monthly school PTA meetings on one hand. Years later, the number and parents in attendance was not much different. I can remember how I and other school PTA volunteers even went door-to-door, passing out fliers, and hoping to get some of our Rancho Cordova residents and neighbors to help volunteer. How many Rancho residents living near the elementary school did we find that were willing to help tutor elementary-aged kids in basic math, or help a local child learn to read? Zero. Going door-to-door, I saw how television reruns of Jerry Springer and Wheel of Fortune shows were much more important to R.C. residents than the needs of youngsters living nearby. With more-than-I-expected adults puffing on cigarettes and indulging in alcohol-laden drinks at home in the middle of the day, it was apparent that R.C. residents living on depression, unemployment checks, welfare, social security, and meager-feeling retirement had little inclination to help others. Other R.C. residents told me they were too stressed, overworked, or busy already to even be involved in helping youngsters. These days my children come home from FCUSD schools with notes and newsletters asking me to provide a ream of paper, pencils, and other basic school supplies. That is how pitiful our local school district has become: Local kids reduced to begging for pencils. Throughout the FCUSD teachers and administrators spend their energy and game students and parents into running bake sales, selling coupon books, provide materials for raffles, and doing other fundraisers to keep in operation–instead of focussing on what they were hired to do (teach and provide educational leadership). Yet, because of local school district fiscal mismanagement and the finagling that California school districts must play to spend taxpayer funding, the FCUSD still has plenty of millions of dollars to apply on SMART boards, new HVAC systems, computers, new buses and playground equipment, school remodeling and fixtures, relandscaping and other taxpayer-provided expenses. So close a couple of local schools. This insanity of educational spending on the wrong priorities has to end.