Re “ACLU Enters the Case of Culver Parking Lot High School”
When you visit the saddened, evidently short-term, campus home of Culver Park High School these days, teachers and former faculty commonly use the phrase “we used to have…”
As in “We used to have three buildings but now we have two,” said Teachers Union President David Mielke, who taught 19 years at Culver Park.
The refrain tends to be repetitive.
What happened?
“El Marino took the rooms.”
Culver Park also:
• Used to have a fulltime counselor.
• Used to have a Special Ed program.
• Used to have a 50 percent larger faculty.
• Used to have eight classrooms, twice the number it has in the dog days of life in Sunkist Park.
• Used to have a fulltime bilingual aide.
• Used to have a principal. The last one left in March, says the faculty, with seven days’ notice.
• Used to have stability.
Culver Park teachers and students are in their final days of sharing a grassy campus in Sunkist Park where they have prospered for most of three decades alongside El Marino Language School.
Their new digs, a grassless parking lot – isn’t that a superfluity? – will be ready at a hazy date later this year, probably around Labor Day.
Against its will, Culver Park has been directed to pioneer a new concept in learning, Parking Lot Education. This experiment is scheduled to start whenever the considerable rehabilitation of the parking lot behind Farragut School has been achieved. The recovery job is so extensive no one could be found who would hazard a guess on when it will be suitable for continuation school students.
Culver Park’s present 67 students need to disappear so El Marino can expand its kindergarten from half-day to full day.
For the last two school years, life has been volatile for the continuation school designed for 16- to 18-year-olds. Down to this afternoon, students and teachers feel like the booby prize at a rummage sale.
Meanwhile, people who don’t have to move there or live there tell them how lucky they are.
Here is a succinct outline of the exasperating recent history of Culver Park High School, charted by teacher Leslie Johnson:
Spring 2011:
• Staff is told we would be moving to accommodate El Marino program.
• Superintendent was looking for a suitable site for CPHS.
• Superintendent told us the portables (in the parking lot) were not suitable, that the Adult School building on Overland Avenue was promised.
• Move didn’t happen. We opened 2011-2012 at our current site.
Spring 2012:
• Once again we were told we were moving to accommodate all-day kindergarten.
• Told the Overland building won’t work. No time to get (state architecture department) approval.
• No other building anywhere in the city without paying rent.
• CPHS was going to the portables in the parking lot.
• Teachers and students addressed the School Board, expressing our concerns, which were: Site location, deteriorating, nearly 40-year-old physical structures, health and safety issues. Superintendent was directed by the Board to keep looking for a more suitable site.
• March 23: It was announced to staff and students we were moving to the Overland site in September.
• Same day, March 23: After a thank-you email had been sent to the School Board and the Superintendent, and the students had gone on a two-week Spring Break, the Superintendent replied the move to Overland was not happening. We were going to the portables.
• The reason given by business manager Ajay Mohindra was that it would cost over a million dollars to get the Overland site ready for CPHS.
(To be continued)
