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PUBLIC FORUM Q & A'S
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September 23, 2024 Forum at CAMS South
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Q: Why was Grandview picked to build a new school vs. Falling Spring?
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A: Location primarily. If we utilize the 70+ acres we own at Green Village behind the Sheetz building for a future 4th-6th grade Intermediate School site then we can add a K-3 Grandview Elementary school on the same site and gain an economy of scale.
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Q: Is there any plan available for one school to have the sole focus on Special Ed?
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A: Not at this time. There was a discussion on developing an Autism school at one of the buildings impacted by the consolidation of schools. It is an idea only at this point.
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Q: How many students are expected to be lost to families moving to private & cyber charter schools, homeschool, or moving to more consolidated districts?
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A: I have no idea how to predict the impact of school choices. All I can share with you is our enrollment has been increasing very slowly for 30 years at a rate of 1% per year. While recently there has been more homeschool and cyber school students in the past 10 years it has not impacted the students that attend our schools physically as of yet. See the data reported in the State of the District Presentation linked here.
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Q: Is the district going to work with Greene Township on traffic flow if new school(s) are built using the Green Village space? 997 is a mess just with Grandview?
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A: Any building being added to the land we own in Green Village and the current Grandview site would require township approvals including permits and studies per their permitting and zoning laws.
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Q: How does the school district intend to alleviate the significant logistical impacts of splitting up families between more schools spread across the district?
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A: When the consolidations is complete the majority of students will attend the school where they reside. As it stands now, about 250-300 students do not attend their home/residing school due to the babysitter rule in place and additional students that must be moved due to a classroom or school being over subscribed. This is one of the primary reasons we are considering these plans at this time to eliminate or limit students attending school outside their homeschool. For example, the majority of special education classrooms are clustered at Fayetteville because we did not have space in other buildings forcing 50+ students to be bussed from all parts of the 250 square mile district. In scenario 4 presented, Marion, New Franklin, South Hamilton and Stevens would be the remaining schools with limitations on over subscriptions and lack of space.
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Q: When children are placed in schools in 2030, will the location of their school be based upon their address like it is now or will they be placed to any School?
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A: In 2030 when the Phased construction plans are complete, 95% of the students will attend the K-3 school were they live with the exception of some small special education populations. Then all students will attend the 4-6 or 5/6 and 7/8 as a graduating class together.
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Q: Has consideration been given to having multiple intermediate and middle schools, following the CAMS North/South model?
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A: We have ruled that out at this time with the idea we want our student to come together as a graduating class as soon as practical and possible. We found that waiting until 9th grade was too late to form relationships with classmates from various and diverse backgrounds.
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Q: Most of the daycares have closed due to lack of staffing, not space. How would leasing space to daycares alleviate the staffing issues?
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A The opportunity would exists to spur business that wish to expand day care options. We also would be applying for more state and federal dollars to pass through to headstarts/ first starts. However, CASD currently supports 6 Pre-K classrooms throughout the community not currently in our schools. At one time, we used to house all of the Pre K classrooms funded by Pre K counts money from the department of education. I can easily see more state dollars to support this initiative in the future and also run by a 3rd party provider and not CASD schools. This also allows other 3rd party providers such as alternative school models or other private partnerships to rent or purchase spaces we have vacated.
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Q: Has the district looked at additions to some of the elementary schools in zones where multiple schools may be closed, such as Guilford Hills and Falling Spring?
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A: Adding additions to all existing smaller school sites in not practical financially nor is it wise to invest in buildings that are 50 -75 years old. It can be more costly to add additions and renovations than it is to build new facility based feasibility studies. It all depends on the feasibility study and the desired future facilities we seek to have in our district.
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Q: If students aren't kindergarten ready, what resources are being provided to the parents so they know what is 'kindergarten ready'?
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A: Great question and suggestion. Now that we can measure readiness it will be our mission to support families ,day cares, and first start programs to assist in increasing our K readiness students. We can see a clear difference.
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Q: I read on the slideshow that you sent out via email about possible online learning. Is that something that is going to take place?
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A: We currently have our CVA - Chambersburg Virtual Academy online program. Nothing has changed with this program at this time. If the questions was geared to another areas of online learning please resubmit the question.
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Q: Can you fail a grade? I thought there was a no left behind PA law.
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A: Yes you can fail a grade and be held back. This usually happens in the early years through parent and or school requests. This does not happen too often. In addition, students in the middle school can fail a grade and or courses and be required to take summer school or credit recovery classes to progress to the next grade. Durin the high school years you progress via credits vs grades. You are either on track to graduate in 4 or 5 years or you must participate in credit recovery and summer programs to catch up. Some students get so far behind they need an alternative setting to focus their efforts on gaining credits to graduate in the future.
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Q: Do head teachers help when you have principals who head two schools? Would think you need more principals as well?
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A: Yes. We are changing the head teacher model to ensure a Principal or Head teacher is available in each school full time to assist with discipline and the operations of the schools they serve.
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Q: Please define “school of distinction”.
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A: There many ways to become schools of distinction. For example Hamilton Heights and the Career Magnet School are US News and World Report Award Winners from 2023. In addition CMS was also an Apple Distinguished School. Falling Spring was a National Blue Ribbon School at one time. When we start supporting the idea of Schools of Distinction we will outline all the possible ways a school can achieve this status. CAMS 6/7 building was a National Blue Ribbon School. Here are some examples but the list is not complete yet:
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Community Schools
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Middle Schools of Distinction (Schools) - This distinction is for middle schools only centered around best practice. https://www.amle.org/amle-schools-of-distinction/#1692190602565-0f2aaac9-8a50
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Core Knowledge Schools of Distinction(Schools) - https://www.coreknowledge.org/schools-of-distinction/
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Blue Ribbon Schools(Schools) - https://www2.ed.gov/programs/nclbbrs/index.html
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Baldrige Award (Departments and Schools) - https://www.nist.gov/baldrige
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Apple Distinguished School
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Us New and World Report- Top 25%
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Malcolm Baldrige Award
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Q: Is there consideration being given, to live streaming these sessions? Weeknights at most elementary schoolers' bedtime can make it rough for parents to attend.
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A: There was a live stream captured by 103.7 radio and posted on their website because they cared to show up on their own and provide the service. We will record future sessions and post online and if others would like to live stream we have no objections.
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Q: With money to promote supports and facilities, what is the long term plan to maintain these eventually costs? Can we guarantee continued funding?
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A: I can't guarantee more state funding but we can almost guarantee continued funding at current levels. If you look at the state allocations to schools there was only one time in recent history where schools lost state revenue. The plan, while increases costs in the coming years, this will significantly decrease costs in the long term. Every year you delay maintenance or facility upgrades costs go up 3% a year. Waiting only pushes the can and the costs to the next generation.
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Q: With sharing staff indicated as being a huge issue, would principals still share schools even with the change in head teacher model?
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A In scenario 4 we would go from 4 principals sharing buildings to one due to having 9 buildings. If we get to 8 buildings, we would not longer have principals lead multiple buildings.
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Q: How heavily weighted will the feedback from the community be in your decision of which scenario you go with?
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A Very heavily weighted on the preferred scenario. We must move forward with some form of consolidation of schools educationally and financially.
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Q: For the Elementary schools that are selected to be kept, will they all be k-3 or k-4?
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A That depends on if we select scenario 1 from the presentation or scenario 4 from the presentation. We have more study and analysis to consider before making a final recommendation in November/December of 2024.
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Q: How are we letting parents of soon to be students know about this? Parents that don't have any children in school now.
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A: We are using every channel of communications possible such as digital newsletters, social media,websites, email, public forums and a print newsletter to be released next week. All communications are documented on the CASD website click here.
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Q: For the schools shutting down, when will we know where our children will be going?
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A: Upon the conclusion of a school board decision and preliminary design of facilities to ensure we can deliver on the recommendation, this would take us 4-6 months to analyze and finalize attendance boundaries within CASD boundaries.
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Q: Would the 4-6 or 5-6 building operate as a middle school or an elementary school?
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A Both a 4-6 or a 5-6 will operate as an elementary school or more formally called an intermediate school.
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Q: if there is a 4-6 school, how many admin will be there?
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A : Preliminarily we would staff each wing/grade level with a principal and a 1-2 dean of student affairs to focus on discipline and behavior.
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Q: Is this new plan in conjunction with the possibility of going to a 4 day school day? Or is this a separate issue?
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A: This is a separate issue. We are studying a variety of school calendars and we have an internal committee reviewing options and opportunities. The calendar is closely tied to the CAEA teacher contract and other employment contracts. We would need to study calendars and adjust contracts simultaneously and or agree upon MOU's (Memorandum of Understanding) to meeting legal requirements. The teacher contract and support staff contracts are ending in June of 2025.
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Q: What is the anticipated elementary class size?
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A No different than we are now overall. See the enrollment report from the latest board agenda/report by clicking here.
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Q: What do you need from families to make progress with your plan?
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A: Participation in the forums, surveys and also communicating with your board representative, and administrative staff.
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Q: Most districts with this model have several schools consolidated into one central campus or nearby campuses. Why is that not a major consideration here?
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A : We would be looking to so something like that if we built the 4-6 school on vacant land we own at Green Village in addition to adding Grandview on the same site as an example. If you have something else in mind please submit and additional question.
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Q: This will increase transportation time for many students. What is the longest students will be on a school bus per trip? Option 1? Option 4? K-3? 4-6? 7-8?
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A: We anticipate no more than 45-50 minutes for any route physically attending schools. We would need to look closer at the transportation options as the ideas evolve in the coming months.
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Q: Has model with lower el k-3, intermediate etc been studied from areas where it has failed. Charlottesville VA is now moving away from that model and back K-5
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A: Research Findings: Essentially we are moving from a K-5 Elementary approach to a K-6 Elementary approach. Having 9 -K-3 elementary schools and one 4th-6th grade school all delivered in an elementary model is supported by research. See excerpt below from Hanover Research 2017. However, there is no evidence overall that grade configurations are the determining factor. The quality of the staff, how the schedule is organized and the supports available in the school have stronger correlations to academic performance than only looking at grade configurations. The large 4th-6th grade school being considered will run as 3 schools within one large campus yet have the ability to have high quality gathering spaces for high interest specials classes as well as outside spaces such as playgrounds and green space for activities.

KEY FINDINGS: ELEMENTARY GRADE CONFIGURATIONS
Comprehensive PreK-3 alignment is critical to ensure successful transitions into formal schooling and maintain student achievement. A dedicated PreK-3 framework ensures that curricula and pedagogy are aligned across early childhood and early elementary classrooms, and this sequences points to the efficacy of including early childhood grades with elementary sequences. Moreover, reading achievement by Grade 3 is highly predictive of later student outcomes—such as high school completion—and schools should stress proficiency by that time. However, ensuring horizontal and vertical alignment can be a time-consuming and resource-intensive process. Grade 6 students generally benefit from placement in elementary school in terms of both academic and behavioral outcomes. Elementary school children in Grade 6 gain more academically over the course of the school year and experience significantly fewer behavior infractions than their peers in middle school configurations.
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Q: Honestly- what if this plan is already set in stone?
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A: The only action decided so far is to provide the essential conditions staffing recommendations for adding intervention staff, English and a Second Language Staff, Content Specialists and Deans of Student Affairs to support the changes in the future and move us towards Schools of Distinction. The recommendations come down to two options thus far, Scenario 1 or Scenario 4. We are still analyzing the scenarios to determine the final recommendation to the board of education.
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