For some, it’s too soon
to ask voters to shoulder a tax increase for school bonds; for others, the
election should have been held months ago. In the meantime, whether a bond
election is held on the tentative date of April 13 or not, AISD is going to
address problems of crowding at some of its schools.
The AISD Board of Trustees on Monday voted 7-0 for a plan to build
eight-classroom wings at four elementary schools — Boone, Cook, Kocurek, and
Wooldridge — and a 10-classroom wing at Harris Elementary. (Board president
Kathy Rider and trustee Diana Caste�eda were absent from the meeting.)
The projected cost of the permanent additions is $5.7 million. But even that
expenditure doesn’t begin to cover the problem of population growth all over
Austin. Trustees also approved $1 million in additional construction of
portable buildings, which will buy about 20 structures (or 40 classrooms in
all).
Another $1 million has been approved to address “critical health and safety
needs” (buckled gymnasium floors and busted toilet stalls are some examples).
Finally, about $333,000 will go toward developing educational specifications
for school building designs and plans, and hiring the firm of Total Program
Management, Inc., to help AISD develop a method of determining whether to
renovate or replace some of its schools. The tab for this interim plan is $8.1
million, which the district says it will fund from accrued interest in the 1990
Bond Proceeds Fund. The plan will be put in place during the next 18-24 months.
The schools selected for wing additions are among the most overloaded in the
district, in terms of enrollment percentages over the buildings’ actual
capacity. Some schools — such as Walnut Creek Elementary, which has more
portable than permanent classrooms — weren’t included because there is
literally no more space to add on or install more portables. Neither were any
middle schools named for emergency relief in this plan. Deputy superintendent
for school operations Oscar Perry suggested at an October 30 work session that
students who move into newly developed areas of town may have to be assigned to
other middle schools if their zoned schools are too crowded.
Other news: Austin City Councilmember Eric Mitchell added his voice to the
protests of about a dozen other African-American citizens to the September 28
reassignment of LBJ High School principal Eddie Orum. Orum was removed from his
post and assigned to central administration, pending the outcome of an
investigation of operations at the school. Since then, angry LBJ parents have
regularly appeared at citizens’ communications, demanding to know the reason
for the decision. Many speakers on Monday openly stated that they believe Orum
was removed from the school because he wanted to make the curriculum from the
LBJ Magnet Science Academy (which has some of AISD’s highest achieving
students) available to all the students at the school.
Mitchell told the board that only Orum himself would be able to quell the
anger of the group, pending a satisfactory resolution of this situation. Others
quietly murmured that the public outpouring for Orum, while heartening on one
level, may actually do him more harm than good in the long run. In any case,
the ugly accusations of “institutional racism” swirling around LBJ call for a
fearless examination of the “school within a school” concept and how it may
isolate a population (inadvertently or not) that has been historically
underserved. n
This article appears in November 17 • 1995 and November 17 • 1995 (Cover).