Brad Hollerbach is the Director of Information Technology for the Southeast Missourian. His opinions are his own and do not reflect those of the newspaper or its editorial board. He writes this blog primarily for his own amusement and to parody the absurdities of the world we live in. He lives with his wife and two cats that don't really care for one another in Cape.

Are Fat Kids The Reason Cape Schools Need More Room?

Posted Monday, January 18, 2010, at 1:30 AM

I've been dumbfounded by the Cape Girardeau Public School district's proposal for a $40 million bond issue. Actually, I am dumbfounded most of the time about most things, but this proposal has me extra dumbfounded.

One of the things that has dumbfounded me the most is the fact the district says it needs more space even though the school age population of Cape Girardeau has essentially stayed the same for the last 30 years.

I suppose this desire for more space is to be expected in the era of McMansions. You just can't have too much space. We're Americans and we like our space. The more space the better.

However, those McMansions are personal choices of their owners and I'm pretty sure are not directly funded with taxpayer monies whereas public schools are.

But then I got to thinking that maybe census demographics don't tell the whole story.

While the school age population of Cape is the same now as it was in 1980, perhaps today's students take up more square footage on average than they once did. That's a politically correct way to say that today's students might be fatter than kids were five or ten or thirty years ago.

According to the Centers for Disease Control that's actually been a trend for all American's, children included.

The average American 15 year old is about 10% heavier today than in 1960. Of course, that's the national average. Missourians have always been above average in chunkiness. We're the 12th fattest state and probably one of the few that consider cholesterol to be an essential part of the "food pyramid," so it's reasonable to expect that our children are above average in that regard.

It's quite possible that our town's kids might be over-achievers and be 20 or 30 or even 50 percent heavier than comparable children in 1960.

While it is hard to say for certain if our local schools are populated by a bunch of sumo- wannabees -- public schools report a lot of information, but the fatness of their charges does not appear to be one of them -- the local school system released a wonderful Master Plan this past September that had the following details regarding the current average square footage per student and per school:

Alma Schrader Elementary: 108 square feet per student
Blanchard Elementary: 136 sfps
Clippard Elementary: 119 sfps
Franklin Elementary: 191 sfps
Jefferson Elementary: 186 sfps
Central Middle School: 169 sfps
Central Junior High School: 355 sfps
Central High School: 175 sfps

In the Master Plan, they also estimate the number of square feet of a space needed per student and school type:

Elementary Schools: 100 to 110 square feet per student
Middle School: 120 to 150 sfps
Junior High School: 130 to 165 sfps
Senior High School: 160 to 200 sfps

This information further increased my dumbfoundedness. Based on this information from the local district's Master Plan, every school BUT TWO already exceeds the maximum estimated amount of square footage needed per student and the two that don't -- Alma Schrader Elementary and Central High School -- are comfortably within the estimated range for their particular type of school.

So what am I missing?

Is Cape currently experiencing a baby boom that will affect our public education in years to come? Or does the city of Cape plan to annex Jackson and double the size of our school district (Our new mascot, The Tigindian)? Or are we expecting to have an influx of illegal immigrants whose children will flood our schools?

Or is the district just not maximizing the space it already has to its fullest potential?

I guess the voters will get to decide this coming April.

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Excellent article Brad. But once again you are attempting to use "logic." Logic is becoming a bad word in our educational system. Logic says we have enough space. But bloated salary administrators have to point to something like lack of space to justify the failure to improve education. Or maybe they just need to do "something" to justify their giant salaries.

-- Posted by ParkerDaws on Mon, Jan 18, 2010, at 6:42 AM
I realize that public school systems (Cape is not unique in this regard) have a lot of mandates and expectations that didn't exist 5 or 10 or 20 years ago, Just_Me.

But the square footage figures I quoted in this blog are direct from the local district's master plan which SHOULD have accounted for all those mandates. That's what really dumbfounds me. These are their numbers. I didn't make them up.

I'm not opposed to a bond issue although I do feel this $40 million request is excessive. I think the district is not using its resources optimally and that they find it easier to go back to the tax-payer trough and throw more money at the "problems" rather than coming up with lower-cost solutions.

Thanks for reading.

-- Posted by Brad_Hollerbach on Mon, Jan 18, 2010, at 8:52 AM
Schools need to make better use of the space they have instead of tearing down and rebuilding every few years.

-- Posted by redpen on Mon, Jan 18, 2010, at 10:16 AM
Maybe they have to rebuild all of the doorways wider or reinforce the floors so they don't collapse under pressure?

Anyways, I have a solution to our weight epidemic. Twice a year when a child is 10-18 years old, they are subject to a mandatory physical exam. If they are obese, they must go to a fat camp to lose their extra weight and discourage them from being unhealthy.

Furthermore, the parents have to pay a hefty sum for this fat camp. This will discourage them from getting their child Pizza Hut and Taco Bell for breakfast, lunch, dinner and dessert. We will then have enough room in our school systems again!

-- Posted by almighty on Mon, Jan 18, 2010, at 11:13 AM
Why have we not had a proposal to build a second high school? It seems that as Cape grows, we will eventually need to build one. If we built one on the north side of town, you could divide up Cape and decrease the student count at Central considerably. It is something we will eventually need, so why waste more money expanding Central?

Additionally, I think obesity is a serious issue in this country, but I think the recent bond proposal has nothing to do with the obesity rates of our children. Let's focus on the people asking for the money and not blame children for the greed of adults.

-- Posted by SteveM on Mon, Jan 18, 2010, at 11:23 AM
SteveM, while I was being somewhat facetious about the "fat-kids" aspect -- please note, the name of this blog is "The Irony Of It All" and I tend to take a humorous and sometimes radical approach to topics -- the fact of the matter is that Cape's public school age population has not grown in 30 years and the school district already exceeds the square footage estimates it has published in its OWN 2009 master plan in all but two of those schools.

As far as a second high school, that's a bad idea.

We don't have the population to support a second high school and the expense would be enormous. The district would have to hire a lot more additional staffing in addition to the cost of construction. And let's not even talk about the whole issue of race.

The ACLU would be swarming this town faster than you can spell S E G R E G A T I O N if we tried to build a second high school for the north side of town.

TFR

-- Posted by Brad_Hollerbach on Mon, Jan 18, 2010, at 11:45 AM
I attended a PTA meeting addressing this topic at one of these schools and you know what the best excuse they had for building the stadium and auditorium was? That SEMO could, at anytime decide to not allow them to use Houck for thier games.....seriously.

-- Posted by random_opinions on Mon, Jan 18, 2010, at 2:04 PM
Voting no on the tax plan is the only logical thing to do.

-- Posted by Make no mistake about it on Mon, Jan 18, 2010, at 3:21 PM
If the drop out rate continues to rise, there will be plenty of room and plenty of text books. Also that will increase the square footage per student. Less teachers will be needed, less administrators and less of about everything else. Results: Lower tax rates. Problem solved.

-- Posted by howdydoody on Mon, Jan 18, 2010, at 6:03 PM
Insightful comments.

The irony is that the plan duplicates existing auditorium space that is already under utilized. That makes no sense to me. Maybe CHS and CJHS should just switch places.

-- Posted by IonU on Mon, Jan 18, 2010, at 9:06 PM
Just to stir the pot further. Central Junior High is what, two blocks from Franklin? Why build a new Franklin? Why not move it to the under-utilized building at CJHS?

-- Posted by Professor_Bubba on Tue, Jan 19, 2010, at 6:49 AM
Actually, Professor_Bubba I have given some thought to that as well. The Junior and Middle Schools sit on 31 acres. One would think that much space could be better utilized. But that's another blog for another day.

Just_Me, I completely forgot about the wasted space of the halls. We should be conducting classes there as well! I'll gladly fund a bond issue that involves folding chairs and lecterns on wheels...

On a more factual note, while I haven't been in CJHS (I was in it when it was the High School), my wife did attend school there when it was CHS and had 3 grade levels rather than just two as it does now. They had between 800 and 900 students, or about 300 more students than they do currently.

TFR

-- Posted by Brad_Hollerbach on Tue, Jan 19, 2010, at 9:17 AM

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