Harrisonburg City Public Schools
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Harrisonburg City Public School division is the home of the Blue Streaks and is comprised of a high school (Harrisonburg High School), a middle school (Thomas Harrison Middle School), four elementary schools (W.H. Keister Elementary School, Spotswood Elementary School, Stone Spring Elementary School, and Waterman Elementary School) and a vocational school, Massanutten Technical Center. It is located in the heart of the Shenandoah Valley in Harrisonburg, VA.
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[edit] Enrollment
More than 4,000 students are enrolled in HCPS, and of these more than 35% are English language learners (English as a Second Language, ESL), making the school system one of the most diverse in the state of Virginia. The top foreign languages spoken by students are Spanish, Russian, and Kurdish. More than 30 additional languages are spoken by students.
[edit] School Board
The Harrisonburg City School Board is a six-member elected legislative body whose primary function is to ensure that an educational program of high quality is established and continually maintained. Meetings are held at 7:00 p.m. on the first and third Tuesdays of each month. All meetings are open to the public and citizens are invited to attend. The system is administrated by a superintendent. The superintendent is Dr. Donald Ford. The assistant superintendent is John Heubach. The school board members are:
- Michael Walsh, Chair
- Kerri Wilson, Vice Chair
- Greg Coffman
- Tim Lacey
- Tom Mendez
- Sallie Strickler
[edit] History
In recent years, controversy has surrounded the construction of a new high school as well as the use of the old building. At first it was to become a 5th and 6th grade intermediate school, however, the Harrisonburg City Council leased the old high school property to James Madison University, leaving significant overcrowding problems at each of the other system's schools.
The school board is in the process of acquiring land to construct a new elementary school and a new middle school within the next few years.
[edit] Recently
At the June 21, 2005 School Board meeting Dr. Ford, school superintendent, presented to the board for discussion whether when a new combined elementary school/middle school is opened it should open as a K-4; 5-8 or a K-5; 6-8 configuration. The issues are:
- Making that decision up front will have implications for actual design and construction of the facility.
- The preferred configuration of staff and community based on past discussions and present practice is K-5, 6-8 but retaining that configuration in the future would require construction of another elementary school (perhaps an additional $13-15 million in construction costs). Construction of the combined facility and either initial or ultimate use of it as a K-4, 5-8, along with changing other elementary schools in the city to K-4 and Thomas Harrison Middle School to 5-8 would utilize the new combined school and existing schools in a way that would not require building an additional elementary school.
- The question that had been previously raised by board members was whether it would be better to do an initial redistricting for the new combined school and keep the K-5; 6-8 configuration as long as possible after it opens, and then when elementary schools become crowded, change to a K-4; 5-8 and redistrict again; or would it be better to make the change to K-4, 5-8 division-wide when the new school opens and thus avoid having to redistrict again. Of course, at any point in the future redistricting might be necessary due to population shifts in the city regardless of grade configuration choices.
School board member Kerri Wilson proposed an alternative to the above that the board consider. Her proposal is to make the four current elementary schools K-3 schools, using Thomas Harrison Middle School as a division-wide 4-5 school. And instead of building a combined school, build a new 6-8 middle school for the city. K-3 students would attend existing elementary schools and the size of each school would eventually be 400-450; 4th and 5th grade students would be educated in a single school facility at Thomas Harrison and the enrollment there would eventually be 850-900; and grades 6 to 8 would at "build out" be in a single school of 1300-1400 students. Each school would, of course, begin with smaller numbers than those listed above since there are about 325 students per grade level currently division-wide. Mrs. Wilson discussed her reasons for her proposal and agreed to send to the board her list of advantages for this configuration.
