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Garrett County board still not sure how to use closed school

From Staff Reports Cumberland Times-News

OAKLAND — After voting to retain ownership of the closed Dennett Road School, the Garrett County Board of Education has not yet decided how to use the building.

The board voted at its last public meeting to rescind a portion of a vote taken April 24 to transfer the school to Garrett County government, according to the board’s Public Information Office.

The transfer was reconsidered because of a $140,214 construction debt that has eight years remaining.

Possible uses for the building were discussed, including the relocation of the board’s maintenance de-partment, for a shared (board and county) information technology department, a satellite food service or as a Head Start for Garrett Community Action and the relocation of It’s In The Bag program, which is centered at St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church.

“The county didn’t have plans for the building but it was always in the back of our minds to use it as a maintenance facility,” said County Administrator Monty Pagenhardt, in a previous Times-News article.

The state Interagency Committee on School Construction requires the board to use at least 10 percent of the building for students, according to the board’s Public Information Office.

Dennett Road and Kitzmiller elementary schools closed May 30, following the board’s April vote to do so in a cost-cutting measure.

The board will meet today. Agenda items include awarding school bus contracts, the administrative procedure for a public charter school, sexual offender policy, a legislative recap and a discussion on the State Highway Adminstration’s archaeological investigation.

The meeting will start at 4 p.m.; at 4:15, the board will go into executive session and the public session will reopen at 6 p.m.

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‘With remorse’ Garrett County superintendent suggests school closings

Elaine Blaisdell Cumberland Times-News

OAKLAND — Garrett County’s interim superintendent of schools recommended Tuesday that Dennett Road and Kitzmiller elementary schools be closed due to a lack of state funding.

“We don’t have any wiggle room in the budget. I am a proponent of small schools and I agree that it takes a community to raise a child. This is definitely an emotional issue,” said Sue Waggoner, who said it was “with remorse” that she made the decision.

House Bill 660 and Senate Bill 586, proposed by Delegates Wendell Beitzel, Kevin Kelly and LeRoy Myers Jr. and Sen. George Edwards passed in the Senate but failed in the House, according to Waggoner.

“It is unprecedented. Who would have believed that the legislature would adjourn without passing it,” said Waggoner, who said she wasn’t sure if lawmakers would return for a special session to hash out budget differences. “I’m still hopeful things can change.”

The county stands to lose $1.5 million in state assistance in fiscal year 2012 and that number is projected to be $2.5 million in FY 2013.

The board will vote on the recommendation at a special meeting on April 24 at 7 p.m. Public comment will be taken before the vote.

The proposed bill would have limited the board’s losses in state funding to 5 percent for the next three years. If the bill would have passed, it would have capped losses at $1.5 million.

In closing Dennett Road and Kitzmiller, it will save the board $1.2 million and $279,000 respectively, according to Waggoner. However, the board would have to add $170,750 in unemployment compensation to its budget.

There was no public comment on the school closing recommendation.

Contact Elaine Blaisdell at eblaisdell@times-news.com.

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Dennett Road is the best place for special needs children

To the Editor: Cumberland Times-News

I have three children in my home who attend Dennett Road Elementary School. One is a son in fourth grade who has done amazing there and received a wonderful education.
He is very involved in extra sports and they use the gym for practice often. He has excelled in math and science and loves the special evening workshops. I would love him to finish his last year in this school.
I also have a granddaughter in first grade, who spends most of her day in a special education classroom. She isn’t vocal and has cerebral palsy for which she uses a walker.
I have a disability advocate who has given me advice. I know I could request her to receive services at our home school (Crellin) and the board of education would have to provide it.
After her coming to Dennett Road, I believe the BOE has a great setup there for her and decided this was best for her education.
Dennett Road has two separate special education rooms, huge bathrooms, separate changing area, sensory room and all therapy in one place. To change something so well structured is a terrible injustice to kids who need structure the most.
My third child, a granddaughter, is in kindergarten. She isn’t vocal and has cerebral palsy. She is in special education only for one hour for speech and sign language. The rest of her day is regular classrooms.
She has done wonderful and deserves to be in the regular class, where she best fits in. Next year the BOE predictions say 30 kids in each first grade class at Yough Glades. I toured the school and desks for 30 kids would make it so tight she would be tripping over things, not handicap accessible at all.
Bathrooms are a big concern. As with most children with CP they are longer to toilet train. One tiny bathroom in the old Head Start class with no private area to change and clean them would be very embarrassing to them. They deserve to be treated with dignity and respect.
I am against closing Dennett Road School. I hope you will find a different solution and help not just the special need children but all the children in Garrett County. May God guide you in your decision.
Shari Ashby
Oakland

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Closing Dennett Road bad for special education students

To the Editor: Cumberland Times-News

I am disappointed that no mention has ever been made of the special education population at Dennett Road Elementary School.

I do not know if everyone knows that Dennett Road is the special education center for the entire southern end of Garrett County.

At Dennett Road, there are two large classrooms, a kitchen area to teach life skills, safe Time Out area, a private changing area for children who require this type of assistance, sensory room, handicapped equipped playgrounds, and ample handicapped equipped bathroom stalls and facilities separated into “Girls’” and “Boys’” bathrooms to serve the large number of students taught at this school.

The consolidation plan calls for these students to be shoved into two cramped classrooms at Yough Glades with NO private changing area, NO sensory room, NO safe time out area, NO kitchen skills and safety teaching area, NO handicapped equipped playground, and ONE toilet and sink (NOT Handicapped Equipped) to be shared by BOTH boys and girls.

I am sure that the staff of Yough Glades have good intentions and are highly qualified teachers, but their school is poorly designed, and will not allow for the inclusion of these students in the regular education setting, as they are included at Dennett Road.

This large special education population deserves better than to be shoved into a corner of leftover space in a building that doesn’t provide enough room for a walker to fit in a bathroom or in classrooms.

I recall one mother saying, at the Garrett County Board of Education meeting at Southern High School, “Just because my daughter is non-verbal, does not mean that she will not feel humiliated being changed in front of other students/adults. It does not mean that she will not feel hurt because she is not able to be included in activities because her walker doesn’t fit into the areas that the other students can access.”

I have dealt with similar situations during my wife’s life-ending illness. She was in a wheelchair for approximately ten years. Not having access to stores, restrooms, parks, etc. that non-handicapped people could access was humiliating and depressing.

Is this the message we really want to send to the special education students and their families? I think not. Send the right message. Make the only right decision. Keep Dennett Road Elementary School open.

Darrell DeWitt

Oakland

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Closing Dennett Road would be major blow

Cumberland Times-News

My name is Kaitlin Shaffer. I went to Dennett Road Elementary School for five years: first through fifth grade. I am very distressed to even think about Dennett Road closing.

If Dennett Road closes, over 320 children will be taken out of a learning environment they are used to being in. Plus, they will be taken away from their friends, because the students of Dennett Road School would be split between three different schools.

The third graders would suffer the most, though. They would be expected to attend Dennett Road in third grade, a different elementary school in fourth grade, and possibly the Middle School in fifth grade!

Three schools in three years will not allow these children to make the connections with fellow students and teachers that they need to have a successful learning environment.

Now, onto the fifth grade situation. I have been informed that the Board of Education is thinking of putting fifth grade at the middle school in the tiny pods in between classrooms.

Those pods are five-sided and can fit 15 people in them at the max. There simply isn’t enough room or lockers for those students in addition to the sixth, seventh and eighth graders that are already there.

I also have heard that the second choice is to take the fifth graders and distribute them among Crellin, Yough Glades, and Broadford schools and close the schools the students came from. If this is done, the class sizes would be huge, which I know from experience isn’t good either.

I am in sixth grade honors classes at the middle school. My teacher’s job is made more difficult due to a very large class size of 29 students.

We have to learn lessons very fast so we can complete our state curriculum, and if there is something you don’t understand and want some help you are faced with a choice, go up to the teacher and wait for a long time because there are so many other kids in line.

Or, try to figure it out by yourself, which doesn’t always go so well. There is the option to go for tutoring in the mornings, but when there is homeroom, you sit in the back with about 20 people in the classroom.

If fifth grade is placed at the other elementary schools in Oakland, their classes will be much like mine.

In my fifth grade year, I had 20 students in my class and it was a lot easier to get help and learn because my teacher, Ms. Simms, didn’t have to divide her time between nine extra students.

I had a wonderful connection with her, because she simply had more time to get to know me.

So, if Dennett Road closes, those kids are deprived of that. And if the school closes, it doesn’t just affect fifth grade, it affects the entire community! Some excellent teachers will lose their jobs, everyone is forced to move somewhere else, and all the schools will be overcrowded. So it just causes problems for everyone.

I sincerely appreciate you taking the time to read my letter. I hope that the Garrett County Commissioners and the Garrett County Board of Education will truly consider my thoughts, as I am just one of hundreds of students who feel this way.

Kaitlin R. Shaffer

Oakland