Superintendent Erwin Garcia intends to close Washington Elementary and turn it into an extension of the high school. By doing this, he would be sending the 205 students that currently attend Washington to Newman, Broadwater, and Miles Elementary primarily, but a few will be dispersed to McKinley and Orchard.  That is 205 students that risk losing after school care or can no longer walk home after school. Garcia claims that the teachers will go to these schools as well. I have contacted these schools, and while some will fit within current classes, putting them at maximum accreditation sizes, these schools have 0 empty classrooms for any overflow.  The announcement was made about the potential closure of Washington on January 2, 2024, but Garcia has been planning for a Charter School as early as October, as he indicated in the October school Board meeting. 

A meeting was held with parents on January 3. Garcia spent his time outlining how this change would help the school budget deficit. However, his solution failed to outline actually numbers to indicate this. He plans to move part of the deficit from the elementary school to the high school deficit. He indicated applying for "base" funding to start the "Innovation Center" but failed to indicate this funding has been secured or how much this funding would total. Again, he failed to provide any actual numbers to what this would cost. If funding has to be applied for, could the new school lose it in the future, dumping the cost back on the community? He claims that no staff will lose their jobs as they will be moved to the other schools and will be used to fill the positions of the staff that anticipate leaving at the end of the school year. So he anticipates maintaining the Washington staff else where, which would require new staff to be hired at the new school. You also cannot forget the changes that would need to be made to the building to accommodate teenagers, instead of young children or the cost to furnish age appropriate desk and other equipment needed for this school. So in summary, the school district would continue to have the cost of Washington staff and the school continuing to operate, but would have the added cost of the renovations, new furnishing/equipment and new staff. 

Nearly all of the parents expressed their concerns. Everything from transportation barriers to the special education services their children receive from Washington that they were not able to get elsewhere. It was clear that Dr. Garcia was not interested in hearing peoples opinions as he was called out by one parent for smirking at parents sharing their concerns and multiple parents had to re-ask questions, indicating to Garcia he failed to answer them. Many questions he simply just did not have an answer to. It is clear that this is a poorly thought out plan and Garcia is hoping that if he rushes this, he can fool the school board and community into accepting this. The meeting was recorded by multiple news sources, so I encourage everyone to watch it for yourself. 

Update: School Board meeting held on January 22, 2024, resulted in the school board voting yes to the proposal. During this meeting, Garcia did another presentation on the proposal, once again failing to include viable information needed to make an informed decision on this matter. He threw out many large numbers, at one point referencing the school district is set to make a profit of about $4 million over the 5 year period, but failed to present how this was concluded. He also failed to mention during this meeting that the Charter School Funding he plans to use, in fact is not going to fully cover the cost of this new school. He indicated he planned to negotiate higher pay rates for staff at the upcoming negotiations, which if that was the only factor to consider, would mean the deficit would increase. So we take that anticipated increase of cost, plus all these additional costs, and the school district ends up in a more dire situation. What happens if in the rush to start this facility, Garcia does not do something he is suppose to and the state terminates the contract for this school and pulls the funding? Even if we make it the full 5 years, funding ends in 5 years, so then how will this be funded? More tax dollars? 

If Washington is closed and students dispersed, the surrounding schools will be nearing capacity, if they are not at capacity. Which means as more students come into the district, the district will be forced to continue to redistrict to try to spread kids out amongst the schools. What happens when all elementary schools are at or over capacity? 

Many questions have been presented to Garcia and the School Board regarding this proposal. Some have been answered, some were answers that did not answer the question asked and some questions have went completely unanswered. This leaves the community to be concerned about not only the lack of transparency from Garcia and the School Board, but also if they lack the knowledge to be making such a grand proposal. 

To learn more about the questions posed to administration, read the Charter School bill Garcia is relying on for money, watch school board meeting, or simply ask questions, please join the School District 2 Discussion group: https://www.facebook.com/share/6oaWa1NqRBRqCnyf/?mibextid=I6gGtw