Letter to the editor — April 13, 2018

Dear editor,

According to sources familiar with Monday night’s School Board meeting, the members have given conflicting reasons for the decision to move art and music classes out of the Bowlus. The “safety of Bowlus students during a lockdown,” the “cost of using the building,” “consolidation of resources,” and “potential staffing changes” have all been suggested as primary reasons by school board members. As an architect, I believe there is not enough room to accommodate the arts in the high school building, which means they may be attempting to use this move as a reason to push for a new school building again — only this time it will be at the sake of transparency, and it will be under the guise of more innocent motives.

Many parents were on-board with the recent walkouts of their students, yet both groups say the demonstration quickly became a talking point for the administration. The current board claims our school buildings — the Bowlus particularly — are unsafe, and that the walk-outs were supposed to bring awareness to our vulnerabilities. The police department, on the other hand, claims that the Bowlus would be one of the safest places during a lockdown. Clearly, safety is not a good reason to move classes out.

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