| School’s
out for the summer but when 1,800 students flood the Owen County
School System in August, where will they go?
In their June monthly reports to the board of education, three
of the four principals in the district stressed space issues at
their buildings.
Faced with setting up classrooms in the cafeteria, middle school
principal Jo Wallace said, “Space at MBMS is at crisis stage.”
In the elementary school, teachers and administrators are being
squeezed into faculty break rooms and under stairwells.
At the primary school, principal Mark DeCandia is converting the
faculty lounge into a classroom for a special education teacher
and aide to provide assistance to students with emotional and/or
behavioral disorders.
Schools aren’t the only facilities dealing with overcrowding.
Superintendent Mark Cleveland announced at the June 19 meeting
that several employees at the board office are being shuffled
around with the basement being taken over by offices. That space
was previously used as a conference and meeting room.
The primary school, opened in 1991, currently accommodates more
than 500 students, teachers and aides, in addition to the Family
Resource office. At its end-of-the-year awards ceremony, the bleachers
were packed, chairs were set up on the floor and more than a few
people were left standing — all surrounded by a sticky heat,
the result of too many people in too small a space.
Owen County Elementary School has long been in a tight spot, but
Principal Charlotte Elkins said she thinks the problem is getting
better.
“We have space,” she said. “They aren’t
great, but it’s space.”
Elkins added that there is “somebody in every space. We
don’t have rooms dedicated to storage.”
Though teachers and students usually complain about the school’s
lack of walls, Elkins says that aspect of the building has enabled
her to change classroom sizes and make room for an increased allocation
of teachers from the board. The elementary school will add a third-grade
teacher in the fall because of the size of the incoming third-grade
class.
“It’s a good problem to have,” she said.
Cleveland says it is the additional teachers and new programs
that have created the space issues in the schools.
“There aren’t really any more students, but we get
new programs and have to make room for them,” he said.
This isn’t a problem Cleveland said he sees going away,
either. “We just need to get a little more inventive in
how we share space,” he said. “I want kids to have
the same opportunities as kids at bigger public schools.”
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