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Enrollment may say Pine School's fate
By Deborah Sederberg, The News-Dispatch
Fewer than 45 percent of Pine Elementary School students come from Porter County, according to Fred LaBorn, Michigan City Area Schools director of personnel and labor relations and communication.
So of the 288 students enrolled, about 130 come from Porter County, with the remainder bused to Pine School in Porter County from Michigan City.
That issue may or may not influence the site the school corporation chooses for building a new Pine School.
Eric Hanke, who has children in Pine, has been in favor of locating the school on or near its present site at 1594 N. Porter County Road 500 East.
One option discussed at Tuesday's School Board meeting was to build a new school just south of the present school on property the school corporation already owns. Another potential site is on County Line Road, where LaPorte County Road 400 North comes to a dead end. A third possibility is on LaPorte County Road 1675, also known as Old Chicago Road, just across from the WIMS radio transmitter.
Doug Wickstrom, a Fanning-Howey Associates architect, presented a design proposal of academic neighborhoods, with each grade level grouped around rest rooms and coat storage.
The school will be built to accommodate 600 students, he said, but should it become necessary, an additional “academic house” could be added, he said.
“This design is not tightly driven by any particular site,” Wickstrom said.
The school can be oriented to face the east regardless of which site the board chooses.
Assistant Superintendent Carla Iacona, who has been meeting with the Pine staff and a few parents who attended the meetings, said the group was divided about the sites.
“Some expressed a preference for (the site near Pine School) because it's always been there,” she said. Others said the alternate sites put the school closer to the larger population of students who attend the school.
Both teachers and parents have been asking for a new school. The present school, built in 1949, occupies five levels.
At the Sept. 12 board meeting, parents, teachers and Circuit Court Judge Tom Alevizos, who has been a volunteer at Pine, described the inconveniences and idiosyncrasies of the building, which include light fixtures that leak water.
Pine Principal Sally Roberts described areas in the five-level school in which a person hoping to go downstairs first must go upstairs to find a staircase to go downstairs.
Pine Township is divided between Michigan City Area Schools and Duneland School Corp.
Although plans are well under way to build a new Mullen and Pine, no one seems intent on turning the wrecking ball on the present schools.
At one time, the elementary facilities committee recommend using Mullen for a preschool program. One of Mullen's major problems is noise. In 1969, when it was built, team teaching and open-concept classrooms served as the gold standard.
“The open concept worked with kids who came from very structured families,” Mullen Principal Connie Bachmann said at the Sept. 12 meeting. “We now have the highest poverty rate in the district - 95 percent.”
Many Mullen students need quiet, self-contained classrooms, she said, but because of its design, with many areas cut into pie-shaped wedges, it is not feasible to enclose the classrooms.
At the time of the committee's presentation, Jan Radford, MCAS director of curriculum and instruction, said because the curriculum and instructional needs of preschool students are different from those of elementary students, the building likely would work for younger children.
Since that time, MCAS has opened the Eastport Early Learning Center on Michigan Boulevard.
“There are a variety of possible uses (for Mullen),” MCAS Superintendent Michael Harding said Tuesday. “We want to maintain it to use to our advantage.”
About Pine, Harding wondered whether Ivy Tech State College or Purdue University-North Central might be interested in offering classes there.
“I hope the people of Pine Township might be able to use it,” Harding said. “I don't believe they have a community recreation center there.”
MCAS will spend about $38.5 million to build Mullen and Pine, as well as an addition to Marsh School, which is well under way. The cost includes money for purchasing land for Pine, should that be necessary.
The school corporation will bring city water to Pine regardless of where the school is built, Harding said Tuesday.
Board members and the superintendent have discussed whether the cost of bringing water to an alternate site closer to the water lines might offset the cost to purchase new land.
Contact reporter Deborah Sederberg at dsederberg@thenewsdispatch.com.
By Deborah Sederberg, The News-Dispatch
Fewer than 45 percent of Pine Elementary School students come from Porter County, according to Fred LaBorn, Michigan City Area Schools director of personnel and labor relations and communication.
So of the 288 students enrolled, about 130 come from Porter County, with the remainder bused to Pine School in Porter County from Michigan City.
That issue may or may not influence the site the school corporation chooses for building a new Pine School.
Eric Hanke, who has children in Pine, has been in favor of locating the school on or near its present site at 1594 N. Porter County Road 500 East.
One option discussed at Tuesday's School Board meeting was to build a new school just south of the present school on property the school corporation already owns. Another potential site is on County Line Road, where LaPorte County Road 400 North comes to a dead end. A third possibility is on LaPorte County Road 1675, also known as Old Chicago Road, just across from the WIMS radio transmitter.
Doug Wickstrom, a Fanning-Howey Associates architect, presented a design proposal of academic neighborhoods, with each grade level grouped around rest rooms and coat storage.
The school will be built to accommodate 600 students, he said, but should it become necessary, an additional “academic house” could be added, he said.
“This design is not tightly driven by any particular site,” Wickstrom said.
The school can be oriented to face the east regardless of which site the board chooses.
Assistant Superintendent Carla Iacona, who has been meeting with the Pine staff and a few parents who attended the meetings, said the group was divided about the sites.
“Some expressed a preference for (the site near Pine School) because it's always been there,” she said. Others said the alternate sites put the school closer to the larger population of students who attend the school.
Both teachers and parents have been asking for a new school. The present school, built in 1949, occupies five levels.
At the Sept. 12 board meeting, parents, teachers and Circuit Court Judge Tom Alevizos, who has been a volunteer at Pine, described the inconveniences and idiosyncrasies of the building, which include light fixtures that leak water.
Pine Principal Sally Roberts described areas in the five-level school in which a person hoping to go downstairs first must go upstairs to find a staircase to go downstairs.
Pine Township is divided between Michigan City Area Schools and Duneland School Corp.
Although plans are well under way to build a new Mullen and Pine, no one seems intent on turning the wrecking ball on the present schools.
At one time, the elementary facilities committee recommend using Mullen for a preschool program. One of Mullen's major problems is noise. In 1969, when it was built, team teaching and open-concept classrooms served as the gold standard.
“The open concept worked with kids who came from very structured families,” Mullen Principal Connie Bachmann said at the Sept. 12 meeting. “We now have the highest poverty rate in the district - 95 percent.”
Many Mullen students need quiet, self-contained classrooms, she said, but because of its design, with many areas cut into pie-shaped wedges, it is not feasible to enclose the classrooms.
At the time of the committee's presentation, Jan Radford, MCAS director of curriculum and instruction, said because the curriculum and instructional needs of preschool students are different from those of elementary students, the building likely would work for younger children.
Since that time, MCAS has opened the Eastport Early Learning Center on Michigan Boulevard.
“There are a variety of possible uses (for Mullen),” MCAS Superintendent Michael Harding said Tuesday. “We want to maintain it to use to our advantage.”
About Pine, Harding wondered whether Ivy Tech State College or Purdue University-North Central might be interested in offering classes there.
“I hope the people of Pine Township might be able to use it,” Harding said. “I don't believe they have a community recreation center there.”
MCAS will spend about $38.5 million to build Mullen and Pine, as well as an addition to Marsh School, which is well under way. The cost includes money for purchasing land for Pine, should that be necessary.
The school corporation will bring city water to Pine regardless of where the school is built, Harding said Tuesday.
Board members and the superintendent have discussed whether the cost of bringing water to an alternate site closer to the water lines might offset the cost to purchase new land.
Contact reporter Deborah Sederberg at dsederberg@thenewsdispatch.com.