New report on enrollment and infrastructure gives grave news to Pueblo City Schools
At Tuesday’s Pueblo City School Board meeting, the board of education received some harrowing reports regarding the districts facility conditions and enrollment numbers.
Jack Mousseau, a principal in the Denver based MOA Architects, presented his 2018/19 District Wide Master Plan In Progress Review to the PCS School Board. In the report were his findings after examining all thirty buildings within the district.
The numbers were scary.
Among all of the district buildings, $785 million are needed to properly repair them. 80% of the schools were built before 1968, many of which are falling apart.
Many of the facilities within schools are underutilized. At Tuesday’s meeting, Mousseau said the school district is spending $2.1 million dollars yearly to operate the school that is 66% full.
A major cause of this is the drop in enrollment numbers. The report says that trend is expected to continue. District 60 is expected to lose 1,000 more students in five years.
For the District, the next steps consist of informing the public of what’s in this report and moving forward.
“The school buildings, the vast majority of them, are well over 50 years old so to have these sort of needs is natural. But now we need to start establishing a plan on how we are going to address those needs moving forward,” said Dalton Sprouse, the Communications Director at Pueblo City Schools.
In November and December, there will be a series of town hall meetings to discuss this reports findings as well as solutions to the problems. The following are the dates, locations, and times of the meetings:
November 28, 6:00 – 8:00 pm, Centennial High School November 29, 6:00 – 8:00 pm, Central High School December 18, 6:00 – 8:00 pm, East High School December 19, 6:00 – 8:00 pm, South High School
A few weeks ago D60 updated their policies when it comes to schools closures. The two main criteria that justify school closures would be declining enrollment numbers and older infrastructure. District officials say it isn’t quite time to be having those discussions of school closures just yet.
