In its first meeting since the weekend defeat of the latest funding referendum, the school board tonight vowed to reconsider all options to solve the overcrowding in Ridgefield's schools. This will include relooking at alternatives to the current plan to build one very large grade 5-6 school. Options which had been rejected include building two smaller middle schools, or enlarging current elementary schools, or building a new elementary school.
The Board, which had previously been determined to build a 1,000 pupil grade 5-6 school, now recognizes that the building sites available in town may not permit a plan for this large a school to go forward.
Democratic school board member Bob Opotzner (left) spoke for many on the board, as he said "we must now consider ALL options. No alternatives are off the table." Noting that the town of Shelton, where he had also served as a BOE member, had just passed a measure to build a $40 million middle school, Opotzner stressed the need to build a true community consensus for any new plan. But he also insisted that the board needed to act quickly: "We need to develop a new workable plan, considering all the options, getting input from the entire community, but we need a new plan in place fast," he said.
Earlier in the meeting, two eighth graders had shown mulitmedia presentations on projects they had been assigned. Robert Choi (photo, right) gave a presentation (left) describing the life and works of inventor Alexander Graham Bell.
And classmate Lizzie Wilson (right) presented a fascinating slide presentation on Thomas Alva Edison. This was the first of what the school board and Superintendent Ralph Wallace have promised will be a regular feature of showcasing the work of Ridgefield's students during Board meetings.
No "School Resource Officer," For Now
In other business, the Board decided to decline the Ridgefield Police Dept. proposal to place a uniformed, armed School Resource Officer in the high school. Superintendent Dr. Wallace and several board members said the concept was a good one, but that work first needed to be done to improve relations between the Police Dept. on the one hand, and high school students and parents on the other, before such a proposal would make sense.
An "us vs. them" feeling toward the police on the part of many of Ridgefield's young people has been evident for some time, as this 1997 e-mail to www.ridgfielddems.org illustrates. Knowledgable observers, such as Democratic Police Commission candidate George Kain (see Kain's position paper from last fall's election), have criticized the current Commission for fostering the confrontational attitude between Ridgefield's police and its young people.
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