Building a new El Sol Elementary at the school’s current location will not work, Kalamazoo Public Schools staff say.
At the first of three meetings held in the Vine Neighborhood Monday, the district laid out the options for the future of the school, which is set to receive a new building. KPS staff will make an official recommendation when trustees meet on Thursday.
Director of Facilities Karen Jackson said the El Sol property at the corner of Oak and Vine Streets is too small to build the school KPS envisions.
The district wants to build a 75,000 square foot facility for El Sol. Jackson said at the current location, the school would have the smallest playground in the district and some of the classrooms would open onto the parking lot.
Jackson said that would not be the case if the school was built at an East Side location, the site of the former Brucker Elementary School, which closed in 1981.
At Monday's morning meeting, residents said they were worried the district would demolish the 100-year-old building and pave the lot to add parking for programs at the Community Education Center and Chenery Auditorium.
Several residents told Jackson the Vine Neighborhood needs a school, and some suggested a neighborhood pre-Kindergarten to 2nd or 3rd grade school.
After the meeting, Jackson said an early education center is possible, though not something the district had considered.
“There was lots of good discussion here. I think we need to be good stewards and take some of that under consideration," she said.
As far as the parking lot is concerned, Jackson assured residents they would not blacktop the entire lot.
"I would look at us enlarging it but not take over the entire space for parking," she later clarified to WMUK.
"They promised us it wouldn't move"
At a strategy meeting on Friday night, a handful of people met to prepare for Monday's community meetings at the Vine Neighborhood Association.
El Sol parent Margaret Wilson, who lives in the Vine, said she had encouraged friends and neighbors to support a $197,000,000 bond in 2022 that would pay for the new school and other upgrades at other schools. Wilson said she worked hard to get voters to pass the bond because the district said the school would stay in the neighborhood.
“It was a bait and switch. They promised us, it wouldn't move," Wilson said. "The neighborhood association invested in moving it here after we had for decades no elementary school in the neighborhood. This is an early education desert, the neighborhood. [If] this leaves, we have nothing."
The VNA and an associated group raised $50,000 to help bring the school to the Vine Neighborhood in 2008.
KPS spokeswoman Susan Coney acknowledged at the Monday morning meeting that the district had told residents the new school would be built in the Vine.