Courtesy of the Courier Express

The DuBois Area School District is looking to update two of the elementary schools in the district, Oklahoma Elementary and Wasson Elementary, while closing the rest of the remaining schools. This last summer the district decided to close two building that were low in the number of kids enrolled and funneled those students to the nearest schools. Those buildings were auctioned off for sale and sold. The money from the sales was put back into the district for much needed funding and supplies. The district is now looking to close two more buildings and repeat the same process, essentially forming three ‘super schools’ in Juniata, Oklahoma and Wasson. Juniata was just recently completely renovated, while Oklahoma would only require minimal updates and changes. However, this would require drastic renovations or even the complete tear down and rebuilding of Wasson as it is unable to support the anticipated number of incoming students with its current status.

The debate regarding what should happen regarding these buildings has been a hot topic in the community for the last couple of months. There are many factors that go into making decisions such as these and considerations to make. For example, you must consider costs, number of students, the bus efficiency, and teachers or faculty. When deciding to close multiple schools in a district, many teachers and faculty workers will be left without jobs. This has been the main opposition to these closings as many people do not want to see workers get laid off.

Those who oppose these closings also argue that there are too many students in the district to fall into only three schools. The DuBois Area School District covers a large span of Clearfield County as well as Jefferson County. Students on the very edge of the district line would be in for a bus ride that could last as long as an hour until they are dropped off at home after school. This would create long days for kids who are hardly ten years old yet. Many parents are upset with the possibility that there student could be subject to this. Additionally, the large enrollment numbers for the three schools would create larger class sizes for each grade, meaning that each student would receive less one-on-one time with the teacher regarding the school work and material. This would possibly lead to a less quality education do to the lack of support. The students could also get distracted by the large amount of other kids in the class and not be able to focus as well as in previous classes.

Those who are in favor of the closing of the schools mainly cite their reasoning the be that it will be cost efficient in the long run to only be supporting three schools. By selling the unwanted buildings that money can be put back into the three schools in order to help defer the costs. However, an outside contractor who came to give an estimate on the Wasson Elementary School building estimated that if the school was completely torn down and rebuilt from the ground up it would be between $25-$33 million dollars. I know, this sounds ridiculous. $2.5 million even sounds crazy. This has to some sort error made by a writer on this one. But anyways, this is a tall cost to tackle. The school would be nice and fancy with all of the bells and whistles, while being an investment in the future. Also, there would be little renovations or improvements for the future.

Courtesy of the Courier Express

The future of the district will be debated and voted upon in the upcoming board member meetings that are open to the public. Many opinions of the public will be heard and weighed into the voting of the future of the school district. As for my opinion on the matter, I feel as though it is in the best interests of the school district to find a more cost effective way to completely renovate the Wasson Elementary School Building in order to ensure it is in good shape for the upcoming future while still not taking the district into terrible debt. It is inevitable that the closing of the remaining schools is coming as the buildings are far out of date and will require many renovations and updates. The district will have to establish a strong bidding process that will bring in the most money possible for the sale of these buildings. The only concern that I still have no solid response to is the bus situation. Even when placing each child in the school that is nearest to them the longest bus rides could reach up to an hour. The district would have to come up with a solution to this before going forward with the closing of the schools and the forcing of these rides.