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These leaders have been going around in circles for years and wasting valuable time and resources for our children. Some are the same leaders who emphatically voiced opposition to any studies of new school buildings in the last $300,000 consultant engagement just a few years ago - the one that community members begged for - and advocated to not only create a long term vision for our school buildings, but to base building and consolidation decisions on educational planning for our students. But all leaders could do was to focus on consolidation, and the "immediate" needs to get our schools up to satisfactory condition (conditions that are still a long way off), not long term vision or educational planning that should drive building decisions. Any additional studies need to assess the educational programing for all high school students in the city. We need to look at updating and expanding our CTE programs (ones that allow students that wish to pursue four year college degrees have access to), possibly creating "academies" as SMMA suggested years ago, changing our geographic focus for high schools to an educational/interest based focus where we can leverage resources to expand opportunities. Building one new high school for the city would be the most cost effective - and provide the most opportunities for students. Just a few examples - AP classes (and others) could be offered in more than one period giving students more flexibility in their schedules, more classes and opportunities could be offered than may not currently have the numbers to make sense, extra curriculars that are inconsistently offered at both high schools could be available to all interested students, teachers would be in same building to plan and coordinate curriculum - CTE students wouldn't have to chose between staying in their district or pursuing a specific program, we could attract the best administrators, department heads, etc and provide students with consistency in curriculum, other opportunities, guidance, processes, rules. However, if we are not going to pursue one city wide high school, we need to fully examine the high school educational programming across the city and create a long term plan to bring all programs and buildings up to standards. This CANNOT be another small minded, narrow focus on buildings for the short term - and most importantly, one more dollar cannot be spent on assessing one building replacement without looking at the entire high school educational structure. Planning needs to be based on creating the best educational system and 21st century learning opportunities for ALL students in the most cost effective manner - the buildings follow the programming and Warwick is long overdue for improvement in both. Warwick has much potential but needs leadership that has long term vision and skills to achieve it. Any leader that does not insist that any building studies need to based on a comprehensive analysis of educational programming for our high school students, should not be in a leadership position.

From: New school plan takes 1st step

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