News Photo by Reagan Voetberg The Ella White SOAR Singers sang the national anthem at the Alpena Public Schools board of education regular meeting on Monday night. The SOAR Singers are a choir of fifth grade students at Ella White Elementary that started last school year.

By REAGAN VOETBERG

News Staff Writer

ALPENA — At the Alpena Public Schools regular board meeting on Monday, Superintendent Dave Rabbideau clarified some of the misconceptions that have spread since the introduction of the two master plan scenarios to the board and community last week.

The district hired KingScott, an architecture company, to conduct a facilities study on the district. Last week Monday and Wednesday, KingScott President Rob Atkins and Project Director Laura Casai presented their findings and two master plan scenarios. In both potential scenarios, the central office on Gordon Road and Sunset school would close. In scenario one, an intermediate 5-6 grade school would be created and Sanborn and Wilson would house grades K-6. In scenario two, Hinks would become a magnet middle school and Ella White and Besser would be split into a K-2 school and a 3-5 school.

Rabbideau addressed one statistic that he brought up last week at the KingScott presentations.

“I just want everyone to be clear, we do not receive 25% less than the seven larger districts,” he said, speaking of the seven largest districts by land area in Michigan. “The money that we spend on transportation is equal to 75% of those seven districts combined budget. So we are spending more than the seven districts that are larger. We have outsized spending compared to those districts.”

Rabbideau also said the rumor that the district is looking to cut transportation is false.

Additionally, the district is not looking to close buildings for at least three years, but if enrollment continues to level off or even increase, it could be anywhere from five to 10 years.

“We are looking three years down the road, three years or more, so we have the luxury of time,” he said.

The district is not currently in any kind of financial crisis and Rabbideau wants to use that time to plan as best as possible for the future.

At the community forum last Wednesday, the community was asked to fill out a survey regarding the master plan scenarios. Rabbideau shared that so far, results show that the community strongly disagrees that it is fiscally responsible to reduce the square footage of the district. There were 172 responses as of Monday.

“I understand,” Rabbideau said. “I don’t want to see change. Nobody wants to see change, but this is about preventing those what-if scenarios.”

Board Member Monica Dziesinski expressed that while she supported the idea of planning for the future, she was upset with the way that the plans were sprung on the community.

“Throwing out extreme or very bold scenarios…I think it was exactly…a trigger response caused a lot of unnecessary worry,” she said.

She said that many of the parents at the forum last Wednesday seemed frustrated and confused.

Dziesinski also said she thinks a lot of the study could have been done by the district without outside help. She plugged in the data given by KingScott to Artificial Intelligence (AI) and said that it responded verbatim with the two scenarios KingScott developed.

“I support 100% what we are doing, but I think it was shared wrong and I think we could have done a lot of this ourselves,” Dziesinski said.

IN OTHER BUSINESS

*Ella White Principal Meaghan Black presented Ella White’s good news to the board. The Fifth grade choir, the SOAR Singers, sang the national anthem at Monday’s board meeting. The group started last school year, Black said. This year, the group sang at the veteran’s day assembly.

*Rabbideau said that Thrun Law told him that board members are legally allowed to bow their heads during prayer at a board meeting, in response to controversy about members of the board bowing their heads when a community member prayed during public comment.

*The board entered a closed session to discuss a personnel matter. When they returned to open session, they voted unanimously to approve two leaves of absence.

Reagan Voetberg can be reached at 989-358-5683 or rvoetberg@TheAlpenaNews.com.