As you may or may not know the Philipsburg-Osceola School District is considering what to do with their five facilities. There are proposal to renovate all five schools, to move to a four building option, or to a three building configuration. The pros and cons of each proposal will be presented twice this month. That information is below.
It seems from initial discussion that a five building option is not popular. This is disturbing to me because that could mean the closure of the Philipsburg Junior High. From an economic and community development perspective, and from a preservation perspective, this deeply concerns me. It is the main reason I joined the committee. The loss of another community school would be detrimental to our community. I am hoping that anyone with a like mind will show up and voice this opinion. To me, if the district must close a building, North Lincoln makes more sense. But I feel that all five schools can be renovated and therefore smaller class sizes can be maintained. At the end of this email I will provide a link to the school’s Web site and you can review the proposals for yourself. I am also including an exerpt about why community and historic schools are important to save and a link to success stories. Most importantly, you will see and hear about some very large numbers involved with all of these projects. The bottom line is, give or take a few million, any option is going to cost the district tens of millions of dollars. Money should NOT be the deciding factor here. I will say it here and you will read it again below, I believe our focus should be on VALUE not COST.
The first public forum on the school building committee for the Philipsburg-Osceola Scool District will be held on Jan. 12 at 7:00 p.m. at North Lincoln Hill. The second public forum is scheduled for Jan. 26 at 7 p.m. at the junior high school auditorium. This will be the same exact presentation/format as the Jan. 12 meeting, except for the fact that this will only be a public forum and not a board meeting, too.
I hope to see you at one of these meetings!!
School Site
National Trust, examples of success stories
Emily Gette-Doyle
Philipsburg
