The decision process on what to do about Charles. F. Patton Middle School continues. Several dozen members of the Unionville-Chadds Ford School District — parents, other residents, school board directors, and school administrators — took a tour of the school and responded to questions as part of a community conversation Wednesday evening.
The session to solicit opinions is part of the feasibility study process, according to Superintendent of Schools John Sanville. As he has said before, the options are to maintain the middle school as is, renovate the school, or build a new one.
“Ultimately, this [meeting] is one step in the process to a decision the board will make in February” and, as he has said before, “No decision has been reached.”
Sanville went on to say one of the reasons for having these community conversations was to avoid repeating problems that happened years ago leading up to the high school renovation project.
“It was a challenging time for our community…Our community felt that the school district left people out of the decision-making process, that the district wasn’t as transparent as it should have been and that left hard feelings,” he said.
He continued by saying the district learned from that and wants to engage the community in the decision about Patton. He also repeated what he referred to as the “mantra for the feasibility study” that no decision has been made. “We are widening the circle of input before we close the circle of decision-making.”
“If we are thinking about what is appropriate from an educational perspective, from a behavior health perspective…we have to look at the facility and see what it can provide,” Sanville said.
At the time it was built, he said, the school was full of light. “It was state of the art. It was the pride of the community.”
The school was built in 1972 as a simple rectangular building with lots of light coming in through the classroom windows, he said, but various renovations over the years changed that. Each renovation wrapped around the original rectangle leaving many classrooms without natural light, while the plumbing and electrical systems are original.
(About 70 percent of the rooms are without any natural light, according to Assistant Superintendent Tim Hoffman.)
After the attendees took a tour of the building, they were provided with Post-it notes and asked to write responses to nine questions, then put the Post-its on boards corresponding to the questions.
Those questions were about the building and what to do with it. Among those questions were: Is the site adequate for vehicular and pedestrian traffic? Does the school meet academic and extracurricular needs? What is the biggest problem with the school? And the obvious question: Should the school be maintained, renovated, or replaced?
There will be another similar in-person community conversation at C.F. Patton on Dec. 9, followed by a report and recommendation on Jan. 6, and a vote on what to do at the Feb. 18 school board meeting.
About Rich Schwartzman
Rich Schwartzman has been reporting on events in the greater Chadds Ford area since September 2001 when he became the founding editor of The Chadds Ford Post. In April 2009 he became managing editor of ChaddsFordLive. He is also an award-winning photographer.
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