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With all due respect to the dissenters, they appear to be the types who howl after decisions are made and didn't inform themselves while the open process was being played out. How else to take the charges that this was rushed? We went thru a preliminary process all of last year as the committee looked at closing Gorton. The truth is, the majority of the current long-term facilities planning committee actually disagreed with the closing of Gorton last year (there were a few abstentions which led to the razor-thin recommendation last spring). The main complaint was that a more comprehensive study was not undertaken. That has been remedied this time around. (For documents and research, go to http://webmail.warwickschools.org/ltfpcpublicdocs/ and read the documents).

Warwick has been losing students for years and the tax base cannot continue to support an underutilized and aging infrastructure. The fact is that the building that houses Warwick Veterans High School will be kept and repurposed - it will NOT be shutdown. There was no targeting of Vets; the building will remain and even be more fully utilized than before, just as a Jr. High instead of a High School. Remember: the ultimate goal is to close the two Jr. High Schools built in the 1930's (Aldrich and Gorton) and replace them with a newer, better building.

School re-districting is hardly an unknown phenomena in Rhode Island or the rest of the country where many districts re-draw lines every 3-5 years! Bottom line is that the arguments against closure will mainly be emotional ones, which is what we are and will be seeing. Students don't like change and will definitely take cues from the adults in the room (so to speak). But regarding a couple specific points brought up, 1) by contract no more than 20 teachers can be fired in the entire district in one year, 2) frankly, I've heard for years from various athletic coaches about how their teams would be so much more competitive if the 'talent' in Warwick wasn't watered down by having 3 high schools! Also, believe it or not, having a bigger population within a school building provides more opportunity to provide a more diverse curriculum (including AP programs) as there is a greater chance there will be enough students to justify offering those courses. Basically, because of contract requirements, there won't be much impact on student/teacher ratios, there will just be more of each in the High School buildings.

Finally, the real travesty is that all of this vitriol will be targeted at the school administration, this committee and the school committee while the city council and Mayor will skate (and may even try to score some political points--wait until the hearings before the school committee to see which councilors "step up" to blame the schools). As has been pointed out many times before, the Mayor repeatedly refused to let $20 million in bonds go to help fix school infrastructure that was required by state law to be fixed--the result was the school department floating bonds on its own (something that has never been done before); 99% of the tax increases in the past 5 years or so have gone to pay for city-side (not school side) service increases and raises (and the population of Warwick hasn't gone up any) while the schools cut staff and programs. There is no where else to cut but in infrastructure. The committee has done more than enough due diligence this time around to justify their recommendation.

From: On a roll to save Vets High

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