Not at all
You have misread the newspaper article: the newspaper reported, not a report by the school board, but a report to the school board. If anyone was lying, it was not the school board but Mr. Stemen.
I seriously doubt, however, that Mr. Stemen was lying, or that his numbers were inaccurate. It would be too easy, in any case, to check them against the actual fall enrollments of the schools in question.
That having been said, a 432 student increase is still quite surprising. What about all the efforts this community has made to control the rate of residential growth? Have those efforts failed. Also, how do you square such an enrollment increase against the recent reduction in issuance of new building permits?
I don't have the answers, but I do have some suggestions on where to look. First, as you may recall, in the months leading up to the city's building permit moratorium, our old city government allowed builders to, essentially, ''stockpile'' building permits, for use during the moratorium. You can check the figures but, as I recall, the number of permits issued during this period dwarfed anything that had ever happened before.
I suspect that some of those permits may still be on the shelf, and that many of them were used to build ''spec'' houses, some of which may still be on the market. In any case, we should expect a significant lag between that building permit boom and the actuala building that it authorized.
We also should look at where most of the enrollment growth occurred. A considerable part of it, oddly, occurred in Fairfield Elementary, whose enrollment district has largely been built out for years. This may, however, reflect the significant new construction that has occurred recently in Haaf Farms.
The Heritage enrollment district appears to have experienced the largest increase. That, I suspect, may be due to all the new construction that is taking place along Diley Road -- contruction attributable, again, to the prior city administration. This may also be why the high school enrollment growth has centered in PHS Central, not PHS North.
Just a few thoughts on the subject. The numbers, I think, actually are as reported. We need to try to understand them, and their implications for our community's future. We also need to do all in our power to make sure that this is not repeated.
You have misread the newspaper article: the newspaper reported, not a report by the school board, but a report to the school board. If anyone was lying, it was not the school board but Mr. Stemen.
I seriously doubt, however, that Mr. Stemen was lying, or that his numbers were inaccurate. It would be too easy, in any case, to check them against the actual fall enrollments of the schools in question.
That having been said, a 432 student increase is still quite surprising. What about all the efforts this community has made to control the rate of residential growth? Have those efforts failed. Also, how do you square such an enrollment increase against the recent reduction in issuance of new building permits?
I don't have the answers, but I do have some suggestions on where to look. First, as you may recall, in the months leading up to the city's building permit moratorium, our old city government allowed builders to, essentially, ''stockpile'' building permits, for use during the moratorium. You can check the figures but, as I recall, the number of permits issued during this period dwarfed anything that had ever happened before.
I suspect that some of those permits may still be on the shelf, and that many of them were used to build ''spec'' houses, some of which may still be on the market. In any case, we should expect a significant lag between that building permit boom and the actuala building that it authorized.
We also should look at where most of the enrollment growth occurred. A considerable part of it, oddly, occurred in Fairfield Elementary, whose enrollment district has largely been built out for years. This may, however, reflect the significant new construction that has occurred recently in Haaf Farms.
The Heritage enrollment district appears to have experienced the largest increase. That, I suspect, may be due to all the new construction that is taking place along Diley Road -- contruction attributable, again, to the prior city administration. This may also be why the high school enrollment growth has centered in PHS Central, not PHS North.
Just a few thoughts on the subject. The numbers, I think, actually are as reported. We need to try to understand them, and their implications for our community's future. We also need to do all in our power to make sure that this is not repeated.
