The Gainesville City School Board has released the questions they will be discussing at the four listening sessions to be held this month.
Each meeting will run the same, with different locations centering around different communities.
"Our goal is basically to have parents and families at the schools in those areas to be involved. So Gainesville Exploration Academy, Mundy Mill, we're going to focus them being at the Mundy Mill [meeting], the one at Fair Street will be more New Holland and Fair Street, we'll be able to take the middle school by itself and include Centennial and Enota with the high school."
There are six questions that will be discussed:
Topic 1 - 6th Grade Academy: With 6 elementary schools feeding one 6th grade, student identity and relationships are important. Would a 6th grade academy strengthen, weaken, or make no difference in student academics and behavior
Topic 2 - New Middle School: Discuss the educational advantages and disadvantages to maintaining one middle school or moving to two middle schools.
Topic 3 - New High School: Discuss the educational advantages and disadvantages to maintaining one high school or moving to two high schools.
Topic 4 - New 6-12 School: Discuss the educational advantages and disadvantages to maintaining all students together in grades 6-12 vs. an additional, separate 6-12 campus.
Topic 5 - 8th/9th & New GHS: Discuss the educational advantages and disadvantages to transition the current GHS campus to an 8th-9th grade academy and a new, state-of-the-art GHS campus.
Topic 6 - Career Academy: Discuss the advantages and disadvantages to a stand-alone career academy vs. embedding workforce development through a traditional setting. What skills do you want our graduates to have when they receive their diploma?
"This time we have a little more meat on the bones, this time we have the questions people are going to be able to see so they can look back on our board report and review the questions if they want to and just be able to know what our focus is," said Williams. "We're kind of an open book right now. We have a lot of opportunities to be able to grow, whether it's making adjustments at sixth grade all the way up to a high school, we want to make sure we get every opportunity to just listen to the community."
The listening sessions will take place October 10 at 10 a.m. at Mundy Mill Academy, October 16 at 6 p.m. at Gainesville Middle School, October 24 at 10 a.m. at the Fair Street Neighborhood Center and October 30 at 6 p.m. at Gainesville High School.
Also at the meeting, the board unanimously voted on a letter to send to Senator Steve Gooch regarding Senate Resolution 1068 and the calendar cycle for schools. "We'll make any adjustments we have to, but obviously we think the academic success of our students is important. In our case, a block schedule of 90 days one semester, 90 days the next semester, at least close to that, gives us a chance to give finals before Christmas," said Williams. "It could be an academic detriment to test students after Christmas, after they've had a break. We definitely are encouraged by the board's commitment to send the letter to Sen. Gooch and we're just interested to see how that study committee turns out."
