By Jennifer Eisenbart
Editor
The third of four community input sessions Monday for the Burlington Area School District had a familiar theme – focus on Montessori educational facilities.
With parents and students in the Karcher Middle School library Monday night – with a handful of teachers that happened to have students in the district as well – the plea for a separate Montessori elementary school and a grade configuration of K through sixth grade was heard again.
Several parents spoke up about the importance of the Montessori grade-school model, which they said is a rarity in public education.
Among them was Anneke Thompson, a Montessori teacher at Dyer Intermediate as well as a parent.
“If we had a program that was expanding, we would have that (interest coming in),” she explained. Other parents said that people they knew were considering moving to the district for the Montessori program, which is currently at capacity.
School Board President Jim Bousman reassured parents that the opinion has been heard.
“It’s been a consistent point,” Bousman said.
The meeting Monday also touched on some of the same themes that have been cropping up, mainly that putting the middle school students and high school students on the same campus could pose problems due to different social levels, and that every school had to have the same programming available.
Kristine Gohlke-Lairy said she has one student at Winkler, and another at Waller, due to the special education programming her son needs from Waller.
She said she understood where the Montessori parents were coming from, but also facilities had to address everyone’s needs.
The idea of putting the middle school and high school students on the same campus drew a comment from Jessica Smith, a junior at Burlington High School who was there with her parents and her brother.
“It’s a bad idea,” she said. “I cannot begin to express how bad an idea it is.”
She also questioned whether fifth grade music options would remain a starting point for students if Dyer Intermediate becomes a fifth elementary school.
The meeting drew more questions than the previous two, as parents had questions on everything from potential costs to a timeline for the construction projects that may result.
Plunkett Raysich Architects’ Nick Kent, a contracted consultant who has led the meetings and laid out the options at each of them, called the time frame “a little bit nebulous,” but the focus at the moment is developing the best options for the community.
“I guarantee we’ll have more options developed,” he said.
The fourth and final meeting is set for Monday at the Karcher Middle School Library at 6:30 p.m. The general public is invited.
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