Hi South High Supporters,
A brief update on the special Site Council meeting and the Corcoran Neighborhood Organization meeting last night. Site Council meeting: Superintendent Graff stated that the ABE/T+ building is moving forward. There was no flexibility on this point. Mr. Graff went on to say that Jay Pomeroy of Anderson/Johnson, a landscape architect, was brought in to come up with an athletic field plan for South. When someone asked Mr. Pomeroy whether eight lanes would fit, he hesitantly answered “yes”. He was brought in just before 12/25/16, so he said he hadn’t time to plan it out. Mr. Pomeroy stated that he needed to know what South wanted. There is a good starting point that was done by the South High staff in 1995 and that was part of my presentation of the history of Barnard Field and the athletic field options that had been planned over the past 21 years. Jack Tamble of Adult Education and Rochelle Cox of Special Education gave a quick summary of their programs. Trent Tucker spoke briefly of working to have an athletic field for South. A Site Council vote was taken to form a committee to meet two times before the next Site Council meeting to have the workings for a plan for the South Fields. Mr. Graff would like to have the field done by 2018/2019. The goal is to include staff, students, coaches and community in the South High Barnard field plans. The CNO meeting had a presentation of the ABE/T+ to the Corcoran community by the two architects, David Miller and Rick Wessling from Urbanworks, Mark Bollinger, Jack Tamble and Rochelle Cox from MPS, Richard Mammon of Change, Inc. Mark Bollinger stated that MPS and CNO had been working on this project for seven or more years. At that time, Jim Davnie, District 63 legislator and South High parent, asked David Miller, lead architect from Urbanworks, what he was charged to do with this project. His response was to build for the two programs. Mr. Davnie then asked if he was asked to include South for input and Mr. Miller said “no”. Mr Davnie asked the same question to Mr. Bollinger, who worked on purchasing the property for MPS and his response if he was asked to include input from South was also “no”. Ray Aponte gave a viewpoint from South. I also said it would have been so much better if South had been included by MPS in the same timeframe as CNO. Unfortunately, it makes it seem to some that we are against ABE and T+, which we are not. The lack of having all the parties at the table from the beginning makes it seemingly pit against each other and that’s not what we want at all. CNO unanimously voted to approve the ABE/T+ plan for the CNO Board vote next week. Scott Schluter South High parent
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Scott Schluter
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