Pottstown Moving Closer to Re-Opening Edgewood

The former Edgewood Elementary School is now being used by several tenants.

Dogged by constant complaints about behavior problems at Pottstown Middle School, the school board and administration are moving to a solution that calls for re-opening the former Edgewood Elementary School, last used as a Pottstown School building in 2014.

During Thursday night's school board meeting, Superintendent Stephen Rodriguez said last week the board discussed issues with the administration building on Beech Street, problems at the middle school and moved closer to responding to them with a plan to re-open Edgewood.

That discussion happened during the board's Jan. 10 workshop meeting.

Rodriguez said the board concluded there are really only two viable options available and both involve using Edgewood in some way to take students out of middle school.

Without outlining the other option, Rodriguez said the board and administration have concluded the most economic way to make use of the building to address problems in the middle school is to turn Edgewood into a fifth grade center.

However, no change would be made before 2020/2021 school year, said board member Thomas Hylton.

In the meantime, School Board President Amy Francis said, the board should make efforts to involve the public, "and the teachers," added Vice President Katina Bearden

Board member Bonita Barnhill said efforts should be made to ensure the public meetings are held on weekends and during the day as well as the usual weeknight to ensure that everyone will be able to make time to attend and offer input.

Rodriguez was charged with setting up dates for public input meetings, and said he believe they should all be held at the Edgewood building.

The decision to close Edgewood, the district's newest building, and renovate the remaining four elementary schools was made in 2012 after many years of proposals, counter proposals and indecision.

Currently, the building is rented out to two tenants — Head Start and Cottage 7, a private special education school to which public schools send students in need of emotional support services.

There has been a growing consensus among the administration and teaching staff that moving the district's entire fifth grade into Pottstown Middle School, where behavior problems continue to frustrate teachers and administrators alike, was a mistake and must be undone.

In other business, the school board also re-financed an $8.4 million bond, but made no mention of how much taxpayers will save as a result of the vote.

Here are the Tweets from last night's meeting:

Close to the Edge(wood)

Appreciation, Opposition & a Not-So-Secret Meeting

Photo by Evan Brandt

The Pottstown High School Show Choir is introduced by teacher Thomas Marsden during the Jan. 23 2017 school board meeting during with the choir performed "Love Train" for School Board Appreciation Month.

It helps, if you're only going to have just one meeting in a month, to have five pages worth of business be lumped into one vote.

But then, I'm not complaining as I like to get home to my bed as much as the next guy.

There were a lot of items crammed into last night's school board meeting, but one of them, outlined at the very beginning by Acting Superintendent Stephen Rodriguez, slipped by pretty quickly, but it's important because it may indicate a shift away from secrecy.

The school board's "workshop" meetings that have, in the past, been closed to the public under the rationale that they are not violating the open meetings law because they don't "deliberate."

They've taken a little bit of heat in these pages and on the pages of The Mercury for that practice.

The board held another one on Jan. 19, but this one was different because it was open to the public ... they just forgot to tell anyone.

Hey, you don't expect them to get everything right the first time do you?

To his credit, Rodriguez threw himself on the grenade and apologized for the district's failure to place a public notice about the meeting. He tried to make up for it by outlining what was discussed at the meeting and the board even posted the meeting minutes on the district web site.

You can read them by clicking here.

A quick look reveals a there was presentation by Community Relations Director John Armato on "branding" the district and "telling our story," a look at board goals such as improving academic achievement, installing stadium lights, looking at early education options and, of course, "austerity."

On to regular business.

As you have no doubt read by now on the front page of today's Mercury, the board also adopted a formal resolution opposing President Donald Trump's appointment of Betsy DeVos as the U.S. Secretary of Education.

The board also approved about $216,000 of building repairs which I suspect I'll write about later in The Mercury, as well as settling a set of over-due tax bills on three properties owned by a man named William B. Fretz.

Some of you may recall he came to council last year and made a plea for a deal to get his properties productive again. They agreed and now, months later, the school board has agreed as well.

Three years before  pleading for a tax deal with local boards, Fretz was agreeing to a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission in which he paid $6.8 million

And of course, there were performances by high school and middle school musicians in honor of School Board Appreciation Month. You can see videos of those in the Tweets below.