SAN ANGELO, Texas — The San Angelo Independent School District and its board of trustees recently collaborated with an architecture firm for a facility study of its elementary school campuses. This was done to provide the best opportunities for students to thrive and be ready for the future, the district said.
Based on the study, the architecture firm provided the district with recommendations and data around the physical condition of aging district facilities, spatial adequacy and student capacity; and the resulting impact of those issues on the district's budget.
With the data and recommendations, the district will be moving forward for a “Sustainability Plan'' designed with the future of the district and annual operating costs and construction needs in mind.
At the September regular board meeting, SAISD trustees received a recommendation by the architecture firm to combine elementary campuses, moving from 17 elementary campuses to 14. No action was taken at the time.
"A question came up about if we're talking about combining schools, are we going to create any problems in the future? What has happened over the past ten years that could help us kind of decide what could potentially happen over the next 10 years. You can see each one of these graphs is the enrollment at each campus over the past ten years in general, most of the campuses are going down in Enrollment," Architect Parkhill, Smith & Cooper Facilities, RJ Lopez, said.
The district said the change has the potential to improve the education environment for its students and reduce annual maintenance and operational costs, while providing students and staff access to improved educational resources.
"When you look at some of these school merger options, it also creates the conditions for sustainability. When we look forward five, ten years down the road so that we can continue to provide our staff, you know, the opportunities and compensation that are needed to retain the masterful teaching and learning that we have going on in our schools," Superintendent San Angelo Independent School District, Carl Dethloff, said.
At October's pre-agenda board meeting, trustees looked at options from the architects for potential near-term and long-term changes, but did not take action.
During Monday's regular board meeting, the architect firm gave recommendations on target campus size, draft master plan and a summary of the major needs for some of the elementary campuses.
Trustees did not make a final decision on Monday's meeting.
More information, including costs to implement phases of elementary school campus changes as part of the potential "sustainability plan", will be presented to the board at future meetings.
In the release, the district said, "We understand this is a topic that some members of our community care deeply about, so this plan is an intentional, thorough process to allow us to hear from the varied perspectives and unique voices in our community. The process will include opportunities open to community members for input as well as other events designed for groups particularly impacted by the matter. More details regarding the Sustainability Plan will be released at a later date. We appreciate feedback and participation from our community in this process. Together, we will navigate through this process to a positive outcome for our students, district and community. The attached slide deck provides additional information and recommendations by the architecture firm relating to the Sustainability Plan. Note, you will see a reference to “long-term” which refers to projects that could take as long as five years to implement."
For up-to-date information on the San Angelo ISD, go to saisd.org or follow the district's Facebook and Twitter pages.