New Wellington school part of a 'forest' of options

By Gary Raham
Wellington Correspondent

Anew elementary school for Wellington continues to be an option for Poudre School District, but it's not a done deal.

On Sept. 19, a 17-member Student Enrollment Steering Committee presented preliminary recommendations to the PSD Board of Education for ways to solve the district's uneven growth problems.

The committee outlined three viable alternatives and two infeasible scenarios forwarded for public review. (All options are given tree names so as not to imply specific preferences.) The committee will be seeking public input during October and November, which will be analyzed at a work session with the board on Nov. 21. They plan to offer a final recommendation to the superintendent at the January board meeting.

Wellington schools and schools in southeast Fort Collins suffer from crowding, while enrollment is dropping in 17 of 30 PSD schools. Districtwide, more than 1,200 open seats exist in elementary schools. Projections for the next five years show either no overall growth or slight declines, which means that the district receives little or no additional per pupil funding from the state, as it did during times of expansion. The district is also having a more difficult time using boundary changes to adjust school population sizes as approximately 32 percent of elementary students attend schools of choice in other neighborhoods.

The Cottonwood and Aspen plans, among the viable options offered by the committee, would build new elementary schools in Wellington and southeast Fort Collins.

The Cottonwood plan would also close Moore Elementary, moving its students to Bauder and other schools; relocate Bacon students; and move the Lab School to an existing school with room so that the Washington facility could be closed.

The Aspen plan would move the Lab School as above, adjust Bacon's boundary area and conduct a "Small Schools Initiative" mill levy election in 2006. The Redwood plan would build only one school initially (in either Wellington or southeast Fort Collins) and reconsider construction of a second school after a 2006 mill levy election to see if voters approve a new budget to fund school operation. The district currently has the money to build two schools (from the 2000 bond issue) but not to fully staff and maintain two new schools. The school closure and condensation options in the viable plans would save about $475,000 a year in operating costs.

The infeasible options (Pine and Spruce) would either build no schools and scramble many boundaries (Pine), or build a school in Wellington and also cause many domino-effect boundary changes (Spruce).

Interested parents and community members in or near Wellington can attend either a meeting scheduled on Oct. 13 at Poudre High School at 7:30 p.m. or a meeting at Eyestone Elementary School in Wellington on Oct. 19 at 7 p.m. The same information will be presented at each location. Those attending are encouraged to provide feedback on a survey form.

The district also has complete information about the committee's recommendations, enrollment trends, and public meeting schedule on its web site at www.psdschools.org.