Tuesday, February 02, 1999
Clark Montessori may use Peoples
Eastern Avenue site can't be expanded
BY DANA DiFILIPPO
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Clark Montessori students may attend classes at Peoples Middle School in Hyde Park instead of their current East End home next year, if Cincinnati Board of Education members approve district Montessori leaders' recommendation.
Peoples will close this spring as the 47,400-student district continues closing its middle schools in favor of a kindergarten-through-eighth-grade structure.
Clark, which enrolls 275 students in grades 7-11, is outgrowing its Eastern Avenue facilities, Principal Tom Rothwell said. Expansion isn't feasible, because the school is in a flood plain on the banks of the Ohio River.
“The site that we're currently at is a beautiful site, but knowing the capacity of the building, there's just no way we could continue to grow
after next year,” Mr. Rothwell said, adding that a relocation would allow Clark to grow to 600 or 700 students within five years.
If Clark moves to Peoples, the Clark site should be used to house students displaced by school construction as the district's $697 million facilities master plan is implemented, Superintendent Steven Adamowski said.
The school board is expected to vote on the recommendations Feb. 22.
After officials decided to close Peoples, they suggested moving Hyde Park School or Sands Montessori to the 29-year-old Peoples property. Sands' building, in the West End, is 87 years old, and Hyde Park's is 98; neither was worth renovating, officials reasoned.
But community opposition prompted officials to reconsider, and Mr. Adamowski charged Montessori leaders from Sands, Carson, North Avondale, Winton and Clark schools to come up with suggestions.
The Montessori group surveyed parents at Clark and Sands. Three quarters of Clark's parents supported moving to Peoples. But while Sands' staff favored relocating to Peoples, 62 percent of parents wanted to stay in the West End.
One Clark parent applauded the recommended move but noted his worries about the relocation's timing.
“I've always recognized the fact that the Clark school was probably too small for them to expand,” said Tim Kraus, a College Hill father of two whose daughter is a Clark ninth-grader. “I just worry about how difficult it will be on the staff to get resettled and get rolling again.”
The Montessori group also recommended:
• Keeping district Montessori programs in a K-6 structure, rather than K-8. Montessori students in grades 7-12 should attend Clark at the Peoples site, they say.
• Relocating Winton Montessori, possibly to Schwab's or Clifton's facilities, to achieve a higher level of social and economic diversity. The school now is more of a neighborhood school with a Montessori emphasis, rather than a magnet school serving a quadrant as it should be, Montessori leaders said.
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