The class size amendment to the Florida Constitution has had a significant impact on our school capacity and is requiring the School District to spend an enormous amount of tax dollars to conform to this act. For example, the elementary schools that were designed to handle about 750 students each now only have classroom space for about 600. This translates into requiring five schools to handle the same number of students as four did previously. While there is little room to adjust the cost of adding new teachers and direct support staff, there may be ways to save on capital expenditures and maintenance funds by reducing the need for new schools.

A while back we expressed our enthusiastic support for an idea proposed by the senior member of our School Board that would have saved tax payers a lot of money and made good common sense to boot. That idea was to increase the student capacity of the new Palm City elementary school from 750 to 900 students by simply making the classrooms smaller to correspond with the mandated smaller number of students per class. We continue to be disappointed that this idea got little support. However, the Superintendent of Schools is now attacking the problem from another direction. She has directed the school staff create a plan to add additional permanent classrooms to existing schools with underutilized core facilities.

The concept is simple. Many of Martin County’s schools were constructed with a basic infrastructure designed for a given number of students, but they were constructed before the constitutional amendment was passed. The result are schools with “core facilities”, cafeterias, auditoriums, playgrounds, administration, libraries, etc., that are more than sufficient for the number of students that can now be supported by the number of classrooms. The deceptively obvious solution: where feasible, construct additional classrooms at these schools. This saves real dollars especially given the extreme shortage and resultant high cost of land within our Urban Services Districts where schools are required to be located.

The existence of preliminary plans for implementing this strategy came to light at a recent meeting of the Schools System’s Long Range Planning Committee. The Superintendent outlined the concept as the Committee wrestled with their recommendations to the School Board to achieve balance, comply with mandated limits and populate the new Palm City elementary school that will be coming on line. Many parents were understandably disturbed with a number of the proposed solutions that would require their children to move from one school to another. Early release to the Committee of the anticipated advantages of quickly adding 10 classrooms each to Seawind and Pinewood Elementary Schools allowed some of the more controversial proposals to be delayed. While it will still take a year or more to add these classrooms, and some student moves are inevitable, this type of outside the box thinking needs to be pursued by all of our County Officials.

In addition to pursuit of this excellent idea we encourage the School District to look hard and long at why the cost of school construction has risen from $18,698 per student in 2003 to $34,069 in three short years. Are we paying too much? Are we building overly complicated schools? Is there a shortage of qualified builders? We strongly encourage the School Board to appoint an oversight committee to review school costs. As one School Board Member told us, “It isn’t our job to know how to build schools, our job is education.” We agree, education is the main concern of our schools, however, accountability to the taxpayers is also included in their job description. Get the help needed, it is free and available.

MCTA OFFERS SCHOLARSHIP

Public education plays a vital role in our society. Democracy depends upon an informed and thoughtful electorate and many of our high school seniors will be voting in the next election. To encourage civic involvement, the MCTA is planning to award a $1,000 scholarship to a deserving graduate from one of the Martin County public high schools planning to attend college during the 2007-08 school year. Criteria for the scholarship include a subjective evaluation of the whole student to include grade point average, SAT scores, letters of recommendation and financial need. Final selection will be based on a 600-word essay that will be evaluated for inclusion as one of our “In Your Corner” editorials. This year’s subject is “How to make local government/school district more efficient”. Interested students should contact their high school guidance counselor as soon as possible for an official application.