The PTA has been working diligently to educate the CHCCS district board on the uniqueness of Glenwood. We encourage everyone to follow the meeting schedule and attend the meetings when you can to show support.
Summary of Feb 19 meeting
Please see the Friday 2/20 email from Dr. Trice, we will soon be sending out a Sign Up Genius to make sure we have Glenwood family representation at each meeting.
Our KDL room parents did such an amazing job of an update that we are sharing their words below. Thank you Kayan, Biana and Erin!
“Thank you for showing up, speaking up, submitting comments, and offers of childcare & transportation to advocate against a potential Glenwood closure. Attending these long, late board meetings is difficult but necessary. Let’s continue to show up for our students, teachers and staff. Please mark your calendar for the next school board meeting on the evening of Thursday March 5th.
For those who missed the meeting last Thursday night, below is a summation by Bianca and you can also find the video recording of the meeting here.
- The Board reaffirmed its plan to make a decision by June 2026, noting that delaying would reduce financial savings and leave too little time for the required districtwide redistricting. They revisited alternative cost-saving options but shared that avoiding school closures would likely require eliminating around 60 teaching and staff positions, which the Board is very reluctant to do. Consequently, they continue to focus on closing schools rather than cutting people or programs.
- The Board Chair emphasized that closing academic programs is not being discussed at this time, only school buildings, though there was limited detail on how programs would be preserved if schools close. One Board member raised concerns about the cost and complexity of relocating high-enrollment programs, such as those at Glenwood and FPG.
- Much of the meeting focused on how schools will be evaluated. District staff initially identified 64 possible criteria and recommended substantially narrowing the list. Administrators proposed prioritizing four core criteria, including suggested weights, and invited Board members to add others, aiming for 15 or fewer total criteria. The criteria the Board agreed to continue considering include:
- Capital maintenance costs over the past 5 and next 10 years
- Feasibility of rebuilding on site while students remain enrolled
- Adjacency to middle or high schools
- Cost of facility replacement
- Transportation costs
- Campus safety and site adequacy
- Alignment with town planning
- Equity impacts, including impacts by race, socioeconomic status, disability status, and multilingual learners
- Our Glenwood families showed up strong during the Public Comment period. Some highlights include:
- Magnet and dual language programs attract families, increase enrollment, and support district revenue
- High enrollment at Glenwood and FPG is not coincidental, but driven by strong, sought-after programs.
- Closing a high-utilization school like Glenwood would be especially disruptive because:
- The programs cannot be easily absorbed elsewhere due to space constraints.
- Closure would likely require splitting programs, which would undermine diversity, global learning, and heritage language education.
- Higher enrollment means higher costs to relocate programs.
- Speakers urged the Board to take a longer-term, systems-level view of school closures, including downstream impacts on enrollment, diversity, and community trust, not just short-term financial savings.
感谢各位出席、发言、提交意见，并主动提供托儿和交通方面的帮助，共同反对格林伍德小学可能关闭的计划。参加这些冗长而晚的董事会会议虽然辛苦，但却是必要的。让我们继续为我们的学生、教师和员工挺身而出。请在日历上标记3月5日（星期四）晚上的下一次学校董事会会议。
如果您错过了昨夜的会议，以下是Bianca的总结，您也可以点击此处观看会议录像。
- 董事会重申了其在2026年6月前做出决定的计划，并指出推迟决定会减少财政节省，并且留给全区重新划分学区的时间也太少。他们重新审视了其他节省成本的方案，但表示避免关闭学校可能需要裁减约60个教职员工岗位，而董事会对此非常不情愿。因此，他们仍然将重点放在关闭学校上，而不是裁员或削减项目。
- 董事会主席强调，目前讨论的只是关闭校舍，而非关闭学术项目。不过，如果学校关闭，如何保留现有项目的细节却十分有限。一位董事会成员对搬迁招生人数众多的项目（例如格林伍德和Frank Porter Graham的双语项目）的成本和复杂性表示担忧。
- 会议的大部分内容都集中在如何评估学校上。学区工作人员最初列出了64项评估标准，并建议大幅缩减。管理人员提议优先考虑四项核心标准，并建议赋予每项标准相应的权重，同时邀请董事会成员补充其他标准，最终目标是将标准总数控制在15项或以下。董事会同意继续考虑的准则包括：
- 过去 5 年和未来 10 年的资本维护成本
- 在学生继续就读的情况下，原址重建的可行性
- 与初中或高中的相邻情况
- 设施重建成本
- 交通成本
- 校园安全和场地适宜性
- 与城镇规划的一致性
- 公平性影响，包括种族、社会经济地位、残疾状况和多语言学习者的影响
- 在公众意见征询期间，格林伍德学校的家长们积极参与。一些亮点包括：
- 特色课程和双语课程吸引了家庭，增加了入学人数，并支持了学区收入
- 格林伍德学校和Frank Porter Graham学校的高入学率并非偶然，而是由其优质且备受欢迎的课程所驱动
- 关闭像格林伍德这样利用率高的学校将造成特别大的破坏，因为：
- 由于空间限制，这些课程很难在其他地方得到容纳
- 关闭学校可能需要拆分课程，这将损害多样性、全球学习和母语教育
- 入学人数越多，搬迁课程的成本就越高
- 发言者敦促董事会从更长远、系统层面看待学校关闭问题，包括对入学率、多样性和社区信任的后续影响，而不仅仅是短期的财政节省。
Note column B, 10 year facility needs, ALL the other schools under consideration have higher upcoming costs than Glenwood
Source- Woolpert Report *OC-Optimization-Plan-Final
Woolpert State of the Facilities 2023 Report
Data on all CHCCS schools, including special programs, demographics and test scores-district link Microsoft Power BI
Link to past/upcoming meetings and agendas for the board and to watch the livestream of the board meeting– https://chccs.granicus.com/viewpublisher.php?view_id=2
From the board agenda- COMPLIANCE WITH THE AMERICANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT- Interpreter services are available for non-English speakers and individuals with hearing impairments upon request. Please provide advance notice by contacting Sandra Pereira at ext. 20324 or translation@chccs.k12.nc.us.