Published: July 22, 2008 10:07 pm            

Board OKs PikeView Middle

PRINCETON — After making detailed and even impassioned final arguments for or against building a new middle school and reconfiguring four other schools, the Mercer County Board of Education voted Tuesday by three to two a motion to approve the plan.

During eight public hearings the board of education heard reasons for accepting or declining a $12.5 million state School Building Authority grant that would fund the construction of PikeView Middle School. Under the plan, Oakvale, Lashmeet/Matoaka, Spanishburg and Athens schools will be reconfigured into K-5 schools. Their middle school age students will go to the new facility.

Board President Greg Prudich and board members Ted Gillespie and Mary Alice Kaufman voted in favor of the project. Board members Lynne White and Gene Bailey voted not to proceed.

Before taking the vote, each board member explained why he or she did or did not support the idea of building a new middle school and reconfiguring the four schools that would send students to it.

“In my opinion, each of us will vote on what we feel is the best for the children,” Bailey said, adding that he had listened to the reasoning of people who supported the new middle school. Most said the school would give children more academic and extracurricular opportunities. Bailey said there was new technology that would allow smaller schools to share classes; in fact, students could even have classes at home.

Recalling her experiences as a teacher and principal, Kaufman said children old enough to attend middle school have “unique characteristics” that are best served in a middle school facility.

“The majority of educators who have spoken to me about it are in support,” she said.

In explaining her opposition to the project, White said extracurricular programs such as music and athletics are already available at the four schools and that greater percentages of students participate in them than at middle schools. The travel times students face when riding buses to and from the PikeView campus are also a concern, she said. Nearly a quarter of PikeView High School’s students have bus rides lasting an hour or longer. Students can be offered more opportunities without a new middle school, she said.

“We have other alternatives. They are available and affordable,” White said.

No matter the type of school or its configuration, what truly makes a school work is its teachers and administrators, Gillespie said. Gillespie added that he did not like the PikeView area’s attendance zone, but he was in favor of the project.

Prudich, who spoke last, said the decision was not easy to make. The board members were elected to make the best decisions they could reach with the best facts they could find, and “not be guided by the emotion of the moment.”

Some parents have expressed concerns that a middle school will be a “distant place” for their children, Prudich said, but many of the same sixth- through eighth-grade teachers who work at the four schools will likely be the same ones teaching at PikeView Middle School.

        

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