What should be the most important things to consider in planning the future of the buildings in the South Sioux City Community Schools District?
That was the question of the night as a reporter-estimated 150 people gathered for the second Cardinal Vision workshop Tuesday at the SSC Middle School gymnasium.
With most of the district’s nine buildings well past the nationwide 49-year average for school buildings — including the 100-year-old Covington Elementary — the district is asking the community for input on how the district should proceed, with options including patching up long-overdue problems to building new buildings to replace the older facilities.
During Tuesday’s presentation, Superintendent Dr. Rony Ortega noted that there have been many changes in how today’s students learn when compared to previous years and generations.
More than a third of today’s learning environment (35 percent) includes “hands-on” learning, followed by collaboration with peers (30 percent), independent learning (20 percent) and class lectures (15 percent).
Many of the classrooms within the district’s eight school buildings — including six elementary schools, the middle school and high school — were built when lectures were the predominant learning environment.
Those concerns, along with building needs, led to a 30-minute discussion around more than 20 tables in the gym as staff, community members and even middle and high school students shared ideas and presented them to the rest of the audience.
Security and safety, including building vestibules at the main entrance of each building, was one of the key items on the list. Addressing overcrowding concerns, with most of the buildings at or over capacity, allowing for more open collaboration within the district’s classrooms, and better overall utilization of space were among the chief concerns shared during the 90-minute meeting.
Ortega said he was happy with the concerns that were shared during Tuesday’s meeting.
“It seemed to be a more diverse group of parents and staff and kids,” he told the Star after the meeting. “Once they’re made aware of the challenges, people want to be a part of the solution. They want to address things and make things better, and I appreciated hearing about the immediate needs and the long-term needs as well. The community said a lot of things I was hoping to hear today.”
The age and condition of the district’s seemed to be the biggest concern among those who were at Tuesday’s meeting, a concern that Ortega said is going to come down to what the community wants to do, especially with the older buildings like Covington Elementary, Lewis & Clark Elementary and EN Swett Elementary.
“It comes down to return on investment, and we have three buildings in our district that, according to experts, wouldn’t be worth the money to sustain them,” Ortega said. “It doesn’t make sense to pour millinos into these schools to keep them open.”
What the public wants will be part of the next Cardinal Vision meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 29 at 6 p.m. at the Middle School gymnasium.
“Whether it’s the cost to build, cost to fix or cost to patch up, we’ll want to hear from the community about which option they think is most attractive to them and what’s the best option. We want to bring those options forward and hear from the community. Those are the conversations that, as a community, we’ve got to have.”
