Health & Fitness
Vote Yes: The District is at a Crossroads
Voting Yes is taking a positive route as district overcrowding brings us to a crossroads.
The future of the will be decided on April 3. We have four clear directions we can head in. The one thing that is for certain is that the Hudson School District will function in a drastically different way within four years. We have no choice. We've simply outgrown our infrastructure. (If you haven’t seen the numbers, check out my post )
Vote Yes to build a new secondary school (pass the April 3 referendum to start the ball rolling)
If we choose to purchase the dog track and subsequently vote to fund the building of a new secondary school, Hudson will within three years have a new high school or 8-9 building that will eventually be expanded to a high school. For more details on what that would mean for our existing facilities, click here.
The alternatives or back-up plan
The school district has presented its contingency plan options to deal with the overcrowding. There are three, which we can review in no particular order.
Find out what's happening in Hudsonwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
Increased class sizes as an option
The school district currently tries to keep class sizes between 22-27 students in grades 6-12. Class sizes have already started to climb. As reported by high school principal Laura Love at a recent board meeting, more than one-third of the core area courses (math, science, language arts) are already above class size guidelines. Geometry, a class most Hudson High School students take, has all but two of its sections over 30 students and the remaining two are almost at 27 students. I think every parent and student would agree that increasing the number of students in core classes is a disservice to learning and the goal to increase academic rigor.
Don’t be fooled by some who will argue that space is available if the district would get rid of “fluff” classes. HHS graduates deserve a well-rounded comprehensive education, which includes the arts, technical education, and business. If you visited the high school you would find choir and band classrooms that exceed 100 students. You will find classrooms below guidelines in special education and advance placement courses. Who would argue that these students don’t need extra one-on-one support? Many core classrooms are smaller than the recommended square footage for the number of students. Some of the classrooms are not big enough to fit students, desks, backpacks and equipment beyond 30 students.
Find out what's happening in Hudsonwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
Increasing class sizes is a temporary fix and won't alleviate crowding in common areas such as hallways, cafeterias and gymnasiums. Bottom line: it is a short-term, short-sighted solution that eventually requires additional space. You can only cram so many bodies into a limited area.
Then there are two “scheduling” options for parents to consider:
The Daily Split Schedule Option
The middle and high school student population will essentially be split in two. Half of the students will attend school from 6 a.m. until noon. The second half of the population will go to class from noon until 6 p.m. The school year may need to be extended to ensure the students meet the required educational hours. Operating expenses will increase because of additional busing, staffing and building maintenance. Extracurricular activities will have to adjust accordingly.
Do you give your kids a ride to school? Pick them up? When is your dinner time? Your family time? How will that 4:30 am wake-up call work for you? How do I participate in athletics if I end up on the noon to 6 p.m. shift? What about after-school jobs?
Multi-track, Year-round School Schedule Option
This is NOT just year-round school. In order to provide extra space this option
would require multi-tracks of year-round student schedules.
This option divides up students in middle school and high school into three or four different tracks. Each track is placed on a different year-round school schedule. At any given time of the school year, two-thirds of the student population attends school while the remainder is on break. For a family with multiple children, this means they may have a student on break while another child is in school. This certainly would be the case if a family has children in both the secondary and elementary levels. Elementary students would not be on a year-round multi-track schedule. What happens when the advance placement course my child wants isn’t offered on the track he or she ends up on? What about athletics? How does it work when my son is on break during football season? How do we plan family vacations?
When you say “multi-track” or “year-round school,” the truth is they don’t sound inherently bad. We all need to really think about whether perceived property tax savings as a result of not building a new school warrants the effect a very non-contemporary scheduling approach will have on students, families and ultimately the community.
I heard at the school board candidate forum there are over 200 school districts using this approach. It sounded like a lot. Here are some statistics: In the 2002 Census of Governments, the United States Census Bureau gave the following count of school systems in the United States:
- 13,506 school district governments
- 178 state-dependent school systems
- 1,330 local-dependent school systems
That means that at the most about 1.5 percent of them do this. That’s not much of a trend. In fact, I believe that’s what you call “statistically insignificant,” or being an
“outlier.”
Remember this is not the version of “year-round schooling” where our youth go to school more and get more instruction. I actually support that. But that’s very different from time-shifting to save money on infrastructure. In fact, schools that moved to this model actually lost students. Families began to move out of those districts because having students in one family on different school schedules is darn tough.
Do we really want to be the district known for our oddball scheduling? Honestly, what family would want this? It sure won't make our community a magnet for family home buyers or any home buyers for that matter.
The choice is yours, Hudson. Vote Yes April 3!
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Like us on Facbook! Click here on "Vote Yes Hudson" and get more information through our page there, too.
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For more information on the referendum, go to VoteYesHudson.com. There you will find lots of background information. The Vote Yes Hudson Schools Committee is a mix of parents who have children in all levels of school grades in the district, and a few citizens who have "no skin in the game" but believe that strong schools equal a strong community.