By VICKI URBANIK

Consultant Robert Boyd asked members of the Duneland Key Communicator Committee the question many may have been waiting for:

“If you were to wave a magic wand over this school district, what would you create?”

The ideas that the school staff, parents and community members gave in response at Thursday’s meeting hinted at what they might end up recommending for Duneland’s school building needs. Their suggestions included:

--Build a new elementary school.

--Redistrict the intermediate schools to give a better balance between Liberty Intermediate, which is the only Duneland school with abundant space, and Westchester Intermediate, which is nearly at 100 percent capacity.

--Switch LIS with Liberty Elementary.

--Move the Duneland YMCA out of Chesterton Middle School to free up space for CMS.

--Move kindergarten classes out of the elementary schools and into one or more early childhood centers, with pre-school programs.

--Expand CMS.

--Expand CMS by building upward.

--Build a new elementary school with the students eventually going to LIS.

The Key Communicator Committee will next meet on May 1, at which time the committee is expected to get into more detail about what it intends to recommend for the Duneland Schools.

After hearing the committee’s ideas, Boyd asked the committee to think about a few summary statements and to come back to the May 1 meeting with their thoughts as to which way the Duneland Schools should go.

His conclusions: Duneland needs additional elementary school space and additional space at the middle school level. Further, the school corporation needs to address a renovation of LIS for additional program needs.

Thursday’s Key Communicator Committee meeting was held at Liberty Elementary, which is the most crowded school in Duneland, at nearly a 109 percent “functional” capacity. Functional capacity, as opposed to actual capacity, refers to the way in which school space is used, taking into account class sizes, support services and other programs.

Boyd began Thursday’s meeting with a recap of what the committee reviewed during its previous three meetings. Namely, that Duneland Schools have had a steady and consistent growth, with an additional 482 students in the past 10 years, or an 8.9 percent increase. Further, projections show student population growing by another 472 students by 2015.

Also, all but one of the elementary schools have a functional capacity in excess of 92.8 percent, with the least amount of space at LES (at 108.9 percent of capacity), followed by Brummitt (at 103.9 percent of functional capacity).

LIS, meanwhile, has a functional capacity of only 68.3 percent, while WIS is at 98.2 percent and CMS is at 95.1 percent.

Randall Eckley, Duneland Director of Media Services, noted that in 1995, another Duneland key communicator group was formed and that group recommended building a new Chesterton High School. The CHS project led to the restructuring that created the two intermediate schools for fifth and sixth grades and turning the elementary schools into K-4 schools.

He questioned what would have happened if that CHS petition process didn’t succeed and the restructuring never occurred. “Imagine another grade in all these five elementary schools,” he said.

Duneland Assistant Superinten-dent Monte Moffett noted that Indiana has been moving toward full-day kindergarten. As it is now, Duneland limits full-day kindergarten to two sections in each building due to the lack of space. Duneland’s enrollment numbers justify adding more full-day kindergarten, he said, “but the question is, where do we put it?”

It was pointed out that the space needs for kindergarten classes are significantly larger than for higher grades due to the type of instruction. “It eats up classrooms,” Moffett said of full-day kindergarten.

As he has said before, Boyd reiterated that Duneland has plenty of ability to bond for new school construction, but that there is a big difference between what is do-able financially and what is acceptable politically.

In Indiana, the general standard is that schools can have capital debt of up to 15 percent of their assessed value. Duneland’s debt, by contrast, currently is at 3.72 percent.

Without taking into account homestead and other deductions that lower one’s tax bill, Boyd said that for every $5 million of new school debt, the tax rate increase would be 1.8 cents for a taxpayer with a home at the median Porter County value of $127,000. That would translate into a tax bill increase of $22.86 per year for each $5 million of school capital debt.

Posted 4/18/2008