Amherst News-Times, 1999-05-19

              New Drug Mart's on its way — Page 3      Girls win SWC track title — Page 8
Amherst News-Time
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Crowded
schools
top BOE's
agenda
by PAUL MORTON
New3-Times reporter
After a year of studying overcrowding in the Amhent schools,
the board of education unveiled its
facilities future planning report, outlining four options to remedy the
situation.
They also acknowledged during
the meeting they may not use any of
them.
The report outlines problems of
overcrowding or inadequate facilities or both in each of the district's
five buildings and lists four options
to be explored.
According to the report, previous
efforts to deal with overcrowding
included adding trailers outside of
each building for extra classroom
space, adding on to Nord, Powers,
and Shupe schools, eliminating all
day everyday kindergarten, and increasing class sizes. In addition,
superintendent Robert Boynton said
students at Shupe eat lunch in their
classrooms and the hallways at Nord
are so small only one-way traffic is
allowed.
The report added that the science
classrooms at the high school are 30
to 40 years old and cannot provide
an adequate modern science curriculum. Also the high school and junior
high school gyms provide playing
and practice space for 20 teams, up
from eight teams in 1968.
*:- ^"o aggravate the overcrowding,
tne report cites enrollment projections from the state department of
education, showing an increase of
275 students over the next seven
years. School board member Ron
Yacabozzi said the schools' reputation is feeding the overcrowding.
"There's lots of builders out there
clamoring to build here" Yacabozzi
said. "If you ask people why they
move here, they'll say it's the
schools.'*
• The report included a copy of a
January newspaper article showing
a total of 348 new housing starts in
Amherst over die last five years; but
board member James Berthold said
that figure does not tell the whole
story, since many of the 428 housing starts in Lorain over that same
period are in the Amherst school
district.
"Sixty-five to 70 percent of hous-
i-a-g starts in Lorain are in the part
aafc in the Amherst school district," Berthold said.
. Boynton said the solutions given
in the report are merely ideas, and
more community input is necessary
to determine what should eventually
be: done.
"If this were a football game,
we're at halftime. We've spent this
last year looking at the problem internally," Boynton said. "The next
step is to go to the community.
There may be other answers."
The solutions given in the report
would involve reorganizing the
school system so that the preschool
handicapped programs, kindergarten, and first and second grades
would be housed at Shupe, third and
fourth grades would be at Harris,
fifth and sixth grades would move
to what would be called Nord
Middle School, and grades seven
through 12 would be at Marion L.
Steele Junior/Senior High School.
Boynion said such a reorganization plan without building aa additional school foulding would require
the junior/aa-nior high school to fellow • block split schedule format.
Under such a format, students ia
grades 10 through 12 would start the
school day around 7 am. and finish
at noon, and students in grades seven through nine would go from
noon until 4 pjn.
"It's not something anyone in this
room would want to do," Boynton
said. "But it's sn ciKion."
In addition to the reorganization,
the report lists four "awhaacemeat
options." ranging from upgrading
the science classroams snd building
a
Amhi'i st
fi
o
o
mAHtmam^
Pride Day volunteers clean up town
Nearly 200 people turned out to put a spring face on Amherst during the fifth annual Pride Day Saturday by planting
flowers, cleaning away winter's dirt and grime, and building
a playground.
The latter took place at Harris Elementary School, where
members of the Comet football team, parents and students
came to together to build the first phase of new a playground costing more than $35,000.
The project to raise money for the playground was undertaken late last year by students and a parent group. The new
equipment will replace slides and other things that no longer
meet playground safety standards.
,    School volunteers and high school students usually join in
the city-wide clean up, although this year the Harris playground took precedence for school volunteers. An Amherst
4-H group made the playground work a club project, according to principal Dan Trent
A total of about 50 people worked in shifts to complete
the project while dozens of other volunteers, including Girl
and Boy scouts and Brownies, worked around the city and
Maude Neiding Park.
Members of the city park commission planted 10 trees in
the park while volunteers for Century Telephone Co. removed
the cover from the park's swimming pool.
The Leo Club cleaned and planted around the Sandstone
Office on Aging, the Rotary Club spruced up the Amherst
Hospital park while members of city council worked on the
new Veterans Park at Tenney Avenue and Church Street.
While all that was going on, members of the Freedom Nation Motorcycle Club were busy cleaning up the small park
adjacent to the Beaver Creek along Milan Avenue.
There were those with individual projects, including Am-
CONTINUED on page 2
At top, rt-embers of
the Marion L Steal
High School footbaJ
team carry a piece of
playground equipment
put together by dozens of volunteers
during Pride Day. Volunteers Included pa-
 *■— (__     Wa—aaataaa      ■ aaaa—i a* m I
rents, tne ragn scnooi
student cound and
At
Park at Crturoh
and Tenney Avenue
gets the once over
from a host of volunteers as may plant
flowera and spruce up
M
remove tha pool
al	
S*>ajaaj_a _g_       feai____tt___________       (____■,
rant at preparaBaon am
the upcoming swim
*
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