Clarksville school district considers upgrade options

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May 4, 2012

Clarksville school district considers upgrade options

Feasibility study investigates New Tech potential

By JEROD CLAPP jerod.clapp@newsandtribune.com The News and Tribune Fri May 04, 2012, 07:30 AM EDT

CLARKSVILLE — Schools in Clarksville may move in a different direction with upgrades, but not until the district figures out how much it will cost.

The Clarksville Community School Corporation’s board of trustees unanimously approved a feasibliity study that would look at three options for making changes to their schools, two of which include a model of education called New Tech.

New Tech schools — according to information at www.newtechnetwork.org — center the education of students around project-based learning in which they make use of various kinds of technology, as well as promote a culture of school ownership among teachers and students.

The approved study will cost the district $33,100 and will investigate the costs of three options for each of the district’s schools — traditional model, traditional model with added New Tech for grades 9-12 and traditional with K-12 New Tech.

Doug Wacker, board member, said he was interested to see what comes from the study.

“I do think this is a neccesary first step in master planning to really see where we’re headed,” Wacker said.

Superintendent Kim Knott said now that the district’s finances are in order, the administration needs to concentrate on giving students and the community the best education they can offer.

“I’m going to be anxious to see what [George Link, representative with VPS Architecture, the contractor heading up the project] brings back from the conversations with the staff and having his engineer to look at that facility,” Knott said. “Cost is always going to be a factor and we’ll have to see what he comes back with.”

The board also discussed the roofing project on Clarksville Elementary School.

Link said a lot of maintenance that should have been performed continually on the roof wasn’t kept up with, especially on the older parts of the school.

But he said even easy tasks could eat up a lot of time for a staff member.

“Simple things like caulking caulk joints could easily be a full-time job,” Link said.

Knott said those services were previously contracted out and not handled in-house, which may have led to some of the problems in the roofing.

“For whatever reason, either that service didn’t have caulking or the services were just to repair leaks,” Knott said. “Some of the preventative maintenance has gone to the wayside.”