Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Board of Education Sponsored Workshop Tonight!

Middletown Public Schools hired JCJ Architecture to figure out how to solve school overcrowding at Moody and bring Macdonough school into racial balance with the district's average. JCJ presented their findings at the last Board of Ed meeting. There, they decided to host two public workshops to help inform the public of the various options.

The first of those meetings will be held tonight, December 1st at Macdonough School at 6:30 pm. The second will be on Thursday, December 3rd at Keigwin Middletown School at 6:30 pm.

The Board of Ed would like public input from the public, so please attend if you can. This WILL affect the North End. Our kids are at the heart of this study. North End children who attend Moody School may be districted to another school and the lines for who attends Macdonough may change. The report also suggests making Macdonough a magnet school to solve racial imbalance. Please attend so that the North End is educated.

Also, NEAT will be hosting a meeting next Wednesday, December 9th (our regularly scheduled NEAT meeting, just a location change) at 7:00 pm at Macdonough School to discuss what the neighborhood wants its school to become. Based on the JCJ report, there are a lot of different options, but they all involve changing Macdonough in some way.

It is very important that you attend the December 9th meeting. We will discuss what we want in a school, what we'd like to preserve, what our ideal attendance boudaries would be, and how to keep a community school and conform to the state's mandates.

This meeting will be run by NEAT and you will have greater ability to express your views and concerns.

If you can only attend one meeting, please attend the December 9th meeting.

Childcare will be provided and there will be dinner for everyone. This is open to anyone who would like to participate, no matter what school your child attends, or even if you don't have children. The entire North End will be affected by this change, your property values depend on having a good school, your friends and neighbors will be affected.

Please call NEAT for more information or email neat@neatmiddletown.org. You can click the links below to download the report from JCJ.

Click here for the November 17, 2009 Presentation from JCJ Architecture (9MB)

Click here for the November 10, 2009 report from JCJ Architecture (3MB)

click here to read about this issue in the Middletown Press

click here to read about this issue in the Hartford Courant

click here to read about this issue in the Middletown Eye

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