The future of M.R. Reiter in question, public free to give input
Posted: Monday, October 28, 2013 5:31 pm | Updated: 7:16 pm, Mon Oct 28, 2013.
Though the future of the former M.R. Reiter Elementary School is up in the air, Morrisville residents can pitch their ideas next week.Town officials will hear opinions starting at 7 p.m. Nov. 6 during the Joint Morrisville Borough Council/Morrisville School Board meeting at the district building, 550 W. Palmer St.One idea is to turn the property into open space -- a pitch brought to the school district earlier this month by the Morrisville Environmental Advisory Council.
And the Historic Morrisville Society, whose headquarters abut the school, is on board with that suggestion.
Sharon Hughes, a member of the historic group, said having open space would benefit the community and a pocket park is needed in that area.
Reiter was one of two elementary schools in Morrisville until a furnace blast made it unusable in December 2008. In 2011, the school board closed the school, shifting children to other buildings.
If the school district sells the property, the historical society has “right of first refusal” to buy it, school board President Damon Miller said.
“I think there’s a great deal of discussion that needs to happen with regards to other ideas,” he said, adding that he doesn’t have any preconceived idea about what should be done with the property.
“Please, voice your concerns, instead of waiting until the 11th hour,” Miller asked of the public.
Hughes said the historic group has been talking, off and on, about the prospects of the property for the past two years, but hasn't submitted a proposal to the school district.
None of the three involved groups -- the school district, the environmental council and the historical society -- have money for the demolition, Miller said.
Hughes said the community has united to figure out details. “All of the five groups need to talk -- the district, the borough, the historical society, the EAC and the planning commission,” she said.
While some educators have a long list of needs, from professional development to money for remedial student tutoring, Charles Baltimore has only a few requests. Baltimore is principal of Thomas Alva Edison High School and John C. Fareira Skills Center in North Philadelphia, a high-poverty, predominantly Latino school known for its vocational programs.This year, as part of a turnaround initiative for low-performing city schools, Baltimore was granted the power to select his own staff, and he replaced half of the teachers with candidates he said he thought were better from elsewhere in the district. He is excited about the potential of his new team and eager to implement the new standards. But he has a problem in numbers: He has only 82 teachers this year, compared with 110 last year, the result of two major federal grants expiring at the same time as the city's budget crisis. Fifteen support staff positions are now 10; the school must now close its library at 11 a.m. because there is no one to supervise it later in the day. Meanwhile, student enrollment has ballooned from 1,130 to 1,310. Class sizes in some cases exceed 40, although not all are that crowded because the school serves a transient immigrant population where not all students show up consistently. Teachers are giving up their lesson-planning time to help supervise the hallways. The instructional coach has taken it upon himself to coordinate laptop distribution and technical support so that students can get extra help online, if not from a live teacher."What I need are smaller class sizes, more teachers," said Baltimore, who was his school's third principal in a year when he took over last year. He supports the idea of graduation exams in theory but says he needs classes of manageable sizes staffed by excellent teachers if his students are going to be prepared, and he needs time to phase in the requirement, as he is making up for years of inadequate instruction and assessments.If he can retain the right to hire the teachers he thinks would be most effective and remove those who are ineffective, Baltimore is confident the rest will eventually come together. Edison's instructional coach, Darryrl Johnson, said the Keystones would be a good motivator for students to focus on academics - assuming the school is in a place to sufficiently prepare them. He said students knew that the prior state assessments did not have personal consequences for them. "Now with it being a graduation requirement, if we provide all the support we can for them, they should take it seriously," said Johnson, a 15-year veteran of the school who is helping to review the city's math curriculum in light of the new standards.State leaders have been quick to point out that the Pennsylvania Core Standards are not curriculum. They are guidelines for what students need to know. For example, fourth graders should be able to "determine the main idea of a text and explain how it is supported by key details." Individual school districts are free to deliver lessons on the standards in the way they feel best. There are no mandated textbooks or reading lists.That point has helped appease some conservative opponents of the standards, who want to maintain local control of schools. But in Philadelphia, where budget cuts have resulted in far fewer content specialists to develop curriculum for the district, it poses a problem.For years, the city's schools had a highly scripted curriculum that teachers said took away their creativity. Now, the situation is the opposite. "For large numbers of new teachers in overcrowded classrooms, there is little or no time . . . to turn around and be experts in curriculum development," said Jones-Johnson, the union's education director.State Board of Education members argued heatedly over fairness and equity before voting to approve the new standards and exams last month. Dinniman, who represents portions of Chester and Montgomery Counties, said the state would be "putting a stamp of failure on increasing numbers of young people." Describing a hypothetical Philadelphia ninth grader attending classes with 40 other students, he asked: "How does that kid have a chance?"But board member Kirk Hallett countered that the state must put an end to students being able to collect high school diplomas and "think they have really achieved something," only to find out that they aren't prepared for community college classes. "That to me is criminal," he said before voting in favor of the standards and exams. 
