I don't know any of the students or faculty
at the ALC but I want my tax dollars to educate all the students in the
district - even those who some would rather write off, some who have
already been written off by people that should care about
them. This whole discussion has the tone of why are we spending
any money on "those" kids.
Other points made in this discussion seem to forget
the length of time the discussion of moving ALC has been going on, seem to tie
the costs of moving ALC to the closure of Lincoln building and suggest that WAPS
should have polished it's crystal ball a bit better when asking for our tax
dollars for the last levy. I suspect there would have been an even larger
outcry if the district had tried to ask for an undetermined amount of money
because 'we know the ALC will move, we just don't know where to
yet'.
The current efforts to relocate the ALC
have been going on for at least a year and a half and have been covered more
than once in each print media, regular updates at school board meeting, in
editions of Inside Your Schools (district's newsletter to all residents).
Even during Bartleson's tenure, plans were
in the works to relocate the middle and high school level Winona Area Learning
Center.
Placing the program in existing district space was
determined not workable for numerous reasons, including vocal NIMBY; not in my
back yard, opponents to those locations.
Space has been considered all around the community--at least 20 spots.
Problems arose with location, zoning, high costs of remodeling the space etc. ,
proximity to hazards, etc. Also, if some of these business sites were
used, that business would then be taken off the tax rolls and this has a
community impact.
There were attempts to develop a partnership with
the City of Winona.
On December 28 Mr. May presented his proposal to build
a building (WAPS is not building it) for the WALC students and children.
His costs seem to be in line with square foot costs for other locations.
Any other property the ALC would have relocated to would have also been
leased--state lease aid would be used.
Housing the
ALC far out of town--maybe Rollingstone or the Ridgeway Building--satisfies the
desire to have these kids out of the general population (for the NIMBY's).
However, it puts them far away from the services they regularly have
appointments with (Court Services, Human Services, Public Health etc.)
These remote sites are also not accessible by public transportation and also
make it more difficult for students to come from their work to school, or from
school to work.
These efforts were never financially tied to the
referendum or referenced to it as a supported expenditure of a successful
referendum.
I don't know who Mr. May is but I'm grateful
he stepped up to the table with a viable offer.
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