PERRY COUNTY VOTERS, SCHOOL SEEK MORE SPACE; BUILDING NEEDS LOOM FOR DISTRICT

PERRYVILLE -- Perry County District 32 school officials are weighing space needs against voter concerns as they try to come up with a building plan to suit both.

Dr. Rex Miller, superintendent of schools, said district officials plan to ask voters to approve a building funding package in April.

The question is: What will that package contain?

The district's long-range planning committee has been working to come up with a building plan for more than a year.

"It is very difficult to come up with a plan that will take care of all our needs," Miller said. "We've got a challenge ahead of us explaining to the community what our needs are."

What the district really needs is more space, space for computer labs, early childhood programs, special education and general classrooms.

As of Thursday, the district's enrollment stood at 2,357, including 791 elementary students, 698 middle school students and 868 high school students.

The district's enrollment is "holding pretty steady, and that throws things off," Miller said. "People say, you're not having a great deal of growth, yet you need more space for kids. They don't understand, our special education programs alone have doubled over the last five, six years."

Five years ago, he said, the district had one Parents As Teachers teacher. Now there are five.

The Parents As Teachers, early childhood and special education programs all need their own classrooms, Miller said.

In addition, he said, the district wants to keep class sizes under 25 to help improve students' learning abilities.

"If you break up a couple of classes over 25, you have to have a couple more classrooms," he said.

A school isn't like a factory, where management can bring in a piece of machinery to make teachers work more efficiently, he said.

Making teachers more effective requires hiring more teachers so class sizes can be smaller, he said.

The school board recently approved hiring additional music, art and physical education teachers for the elementary school, Miller said, "but we don't have another music room and we don't have another art room."

To make room for the new teachers, he said, school officials have curtained off part of the elementary school gymnasium.

The schools also need larger library facilities, he said, and space for technology labs.

And the lack of space is preventing the district from beginning some new programs. The district got an A-Plus Schools grant, but doesn't have room for a program coordinator and secretary.

Miller would like to add a distance-learning classroom at the high school for satellite college prep and college courses, but there isn't any place to put one.

Teachers at the elementary, middle and high schools are carrying books and files from room to room on carts because they don't have permanent classrooms.

"Can they function that way? In some instances it's not that bad," he said. But teachers work better when they have permanent homes for files, records and supplies.

School board members, long-range committee members and school administrators have been meeting for several months with the community and with architect David Kromm to come up with a comprehensive building plan that will handle all the district's needs.

Most of the growth is at the elementary level, Miller said, but those students will move up to the middle and then high schools as they get older, and more room will also be needed at those buildings.

Board members had originally considered building a new high school, and redistributing elementary and middle school enrollment through the existing buildings.

But the price tag for the new high school -- nearly $15 million -- was too high, and district officials were afraid the required tax increase and bond issue would scare voters off, Miller said.

The latest proposal on the table is construction of an upper elementary school to house grades three, four and five. Cost for the new building is estimated at $6.5 million.

But school officials have already heard from faculty and residents concerned that a new upper elementary "couldn't be enough to take care of all our needs," Miller said. "We still need to look at the middle school and the high school."

"At this point, we're going to go back to the drawing board," he said. "I wish I could tell you we had something worked out, but we're still gathering some input, and the goal is to get a plan that would meet all of our needs districtwide."

The board of education plans to go to the voters in April with a bond election and levy increase and probably a Proposition C roll back waiver, Miller said.

To make the April ballot, the board will have to have its proposal finalized in January, he said.

In the meantime, Miller said, school officials need to make residents aware of the need for more room and garner support for the building issue.

"If we have to raise taxes for education, there isn't anything better in our society that we could spend our money on," he said.