During its Aug. 5 meeting, Kutztown School Board authorized and directed the appropriate officers to execute the agreement of sale for the district administration building at 251 Long Lane in Maxatawny at $1,750,000.
“(We’re) excited for the opportunity to move into that next phase for district administration. We are almost completely moved into the middle school,” said Kutztown Superintendent Christian Temchatin.
“A sales agreement still is a long way to finalizing an agreement. There’s a lot of steps with real estate. This is something I brought to the board about a year ago,” he said. “I appreciate the board’s support in moving forward with looking to sell the district administration office to streamline operations.”
Also, the Kutztown community provided feedback on the proposal to potentially create sequential schools in an effort to better serve students while gaining operational savings for the district.
Community members had the opportunity to answer a few questions and provide their comments via an online survey.
Temchatin presented data compiled by the online survey on the three models of elementary configuration discussed at the July 15 meeting.
Model one: a K-1 building at Greenwhich Elementary and 2-5 at Kutztown Elementary.
Model two: a K-2 building at Greenwich Elementary and 3-5 at Kutztown Elementary.
Model three: a K-5 building at Kutztown Elementary, eliminating Greenwich Elementary.
Out of 107 responses, .3% opted not to select a preference of a model and 20.4% wanted to keep the status quo to not change anything while 13% selected model two and 1.9% chose model one, as well as 4% for model one or two.
Model three with K-5 all in one building was the most popular choice at 50.9%, said Temchatin.
Participating community members also commented on their view of opportunities related to their choice of model.
“The most prevalent was that students can grow together or there would be a district unity right from kindergarten in each of the models,” said Temchantin. “There was a positive opportunity for collaboration among staff, again in each of the models, because there would be a grade level collaboration.”
Temchantin said model three with all K-5 students in Kutztown Elementary clearly has the lower operational costs because there is one less building.
“The idea of one campus and coordinated services in model three was also called out very specifically as a very prevalent response,” he said.
Concerns shared in the feedback included larger class sizes for model three, but Temchatin said class sizes would be 20 students for K-3 and up to 25 students for grades 4 and 5.
The biggest challenge shared in the feedback was transportation time and the impact on sleep for all three models. Other challenges voiced by the community included cost, population growth north of I-78, families with students in multiple buildings and construction timing.
“I’m grateful to the people who took the time, and it did take time and that was intentional. We try not to make it a yes/no scale because I wanted some data that was going to be useful in planning and preparation going forward, versus just an opinion poll,” said Temchatin. “I really appreciate people taking the time to give us 107 responses.”
Community members still have the opportunity to comment online via the district website, which will be monitored periodically.
In other news, the board approved the KASD/Brandywine Heights Music Cooperation Agreement for marching band at football games.
“It’s the same thing as last year. It’s Kutztown and Brandywine students competing on the football field and (band director) Dustin Shirk appreciated having the Brandywine students along for marching band,” said Temchatin.
The board also approved the KASD/Muhlenberg School District Cooperative Agreement for Boys and Girls Water Polo.
“We had a small number of students that expressed interest in water polo in whether they play water polo in partnership with Muhlenberg and just recently Muhlenberg said they are open to that hence the agreement,” said Temchatin. “Anytime we can expand opportunities … for a few of our students.”
Kutztown School District does not have a pool. Temchatin noted that there are a number swimmers in the district that already provide their own transportation for swim events so he did not anticipate needing to provide transportation to water polo.
At this time, Temchatin said the arrangement would have limited to no cost to the Kutztown School District.
Source: Berkshire mont
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