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After years of trying to expand the alternative school, this is the year Rowan-Salisbury school officials want to do it – depending upon how much money they receive from the state.
With Henderson Elementary moving into a new building in August, the alternative school, now called the Independent Secondary School, will move into the old Henderson building.
If the state legislature manages an increase in funding, the Secondary School could more than double in size.
“This is very much so dependent on a certain amount of funding from the state,” said Superintendent Dr. Joe McCann. “We’d like to go as far as we can to meet the needs of identified students, but we’ll need financial support from the state.”
Although the Rowan-Salisbury Board of Education talked about it, members couldn’t find the local money to expand the program.
Without a final state budget, everything is preliminary. Even so, school officials are proceeding with plans to expand the school that takes in students with discipline problems and offers smaller classes and more individual attention.
McCann hopes to expand the school from 60 to 135 and to hire three new teachers and an assistant principal.
Cost for the new personnel and additional transportation would run the system $225,000.
“We don’t have a feel for what the General Assembly is doing,” McCann said. “But there is an awareness on the state level that there are students with a variety of needs, and a segment of those students need very special classroom environments. That is being recognized by the legislature.”
Principals send students to the Independent Secondary School on a case by case basis. As a result, student attendance at the school fluctuates.
Each high school principal has an allotment of student slots, eight last year; each middle school gets two. With emergency slots and superintendent slots, the school could hold 60 students total.
Because of the limits, each school often ends up with students on a waiting list.
With 135 slots, each high school would have up to 20 slots, and the six middle schools could send three each, for a total of 18.
With the new students, Associate Superintendent Howard Hurt hopes to keep the teacher-student ratio low — one teacher to 15 or 20 students.
Officials also are writing a grant trying to secure a second resource officer at the school.
The school also may have a second stand-alone metal detector. “We certainly will put a portable one over there,” Hurt said.
This summer, maintenance workers are converting the elementary school into a school that will house middle and high school students.
That money is coming from the schools’ maintenance budget, Hurt said.
Along with the Independent Secondary School changes, special education and exceptional children’s programs are moving to the Henderson site, too.
Those programs, located at the schools’ Dunbar Center, are KIT, a special education program, and the Alternative 45-day Placement. The 45-day placement program is for students on long-term suspension. Instead of those students getting a homebound teacher, they come to this program for 45 days. “It’s more cost effective,” said Secondary School Principal Catherine Rivens.
McCann also said he hopes to add a short-term suspension program at the Secondary School.
Students who are suspended for five or more days can go to this program “and keep up with their school work,” Hurt said. “This is something that the community really wanted.”
That new program also will require one new teacher, an additional $35,000.
Rivens said of the new program: “This will keep young people off the street and from being home alone.”
Also, the name will change again, hopefully to Henderson Secondary School, Rivens said.
“We’re moving into the Henderson building, so we were somehow going to keep the Henderson name in it,” Rivens said.
She anticipates the school board making some decision on the name change at its July meeting.
With so many students at the school now, will officials see increased discipline problems at the school?
That often is the question when the community sees so many children with discipline issues brought together.
“We certainly hope not,” Hurt said. “It didn’t indicate that when the school was smaller. We hope that doesn’t happen. We think the small class size and some special training for teachers will help resolve that.”
Whatever happens depends on the General Assembly.
“If there are no extra monies, then we’re confined to the same services,” McCann said. “Both needs are very real. We really need the money to address both those areas of need.”
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