BSVDWatch.org

Steve Pomerance, former Boulder City Council member, had a nice column in the Daily Camera today.  

"The potential demise of Washington School as a landmark, public space and community asset in the name of more profit and increased density is a disaster in the making. This may sound extreme, but the way we treat irreplaceable assets as mere commodities is far too typical of the current perspective that any change is good, and that preserving what we have is somehow an outmoded way of thinking."

Click here to read the rest of the article.

PLAN Boulder has posted a letter on their website directed to the Boulder Valley School District. It outlines many issues it sees that BVSD needs to address.

Click here to read the whole article. Below is a quote from the opening paragraphs.

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Fair and Open Government: Lessons for Our Children
Letter to the Boulder Valley School District Board
February 26, 2008

The awe-inspiring turnout at our Colorado Caucuses this year brought home a powerful realization of the importance of citizen participation in an open government process. Unfortunately, the BVSD has not recognized the importance of such a public process in its decision making regarding historic significance and environmentally sensitive school decisions.

In Fall 2006, the citizens of the Boulder Valley School District (BVSD) approved a Bond Issue for $296.8 million to be used for purposes described in the District's Educational Facilities Master Plan. Citizens within BVSD clearly support improving our educational facilities, and our schools and teachers in general, and we are happy to see significant facility improvements marching forward. However, many aspects of the process and decisions about individual schools have led to significant citizen concern. These concerns include:

   1. Design Advisory Teams (DATs) have been populated by staff and BVSD-appointed community members for each school to provide advice on construction and improvement decisions. However, the DATs have been dominated by District staff. Furthermore, no communication has been allowed among individual DATs to discuss common issues and solutions and to have a common information source. Basically many in the community feel strongly that the DATs have not been provided complete or unbiased information. The little communication that has occurred with the communities has been too little and too late. Many believe citizen input is being ignored.

   2. Historic Preservation — Despite significant citizen protest, the DAT for Louisville Middle School (LMS) and BVSD recently decided to completely demolish the historically significant 1939 building because of "design compromises" and projected cost overruns. Suggestions that the process be delayed so that additional funds might be raised by a Louisville ballot initiative or through State and Federal historic funding programs were not accepted. A Louisville resident and architect whose expertise is historic renovations questioned the costs associated with preservation of LMS and this testimony was dismissed without discussion.

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Click on the link above to read the rest of the letter. 

The Broomfield arm of BVSDWatch.org will meet Monday March 17, at 7pm in the Eisenhower Room at Mamie Dowd Eisenhower Library.

Join BVSDWatch member Louise Benson to discuss asbestos in schools, separation/splitting BVSD, and to hear from the Broomfield community members about what they like/don't like about BVSD. Free, refreshments provided. Contact This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it for more information.

Thank you Shirley for a nice guest opinion in today's Daily Camera.

"I sympathize with those opposing the demolition of Casey Middle School or the demolition of Louisville Middle School's historic facade as part of that school's renovation. However, because of history, I feel less than hopeful for Boulder Valley School District challengers."

BVSDWatch.org hopes the board members will see the benefit  of having an Ombudsperson acessible to BVSD and their constituents when it comes time to review the budget for next year.

Click here for our previous comments on the topic. We will post an expanded article on the matter soon.

Two articles today in the Daily Camera about the Louisville Middle School demolition.

"Council to make last-ditch effort to preserve school facade", by John Aguilar

"The council agreed Tuesday evening to request a meeting with the Boulder Valley School District board and to draw up a resolution calling for the preservation of the school front.

Nearly two dozen residents showed up at the meeting, the vast majority of whom were in favor of preserving the historic portion of the middle school."

"BVSD does not maintain older buildings", by Dan Corson 

"In follow-up to Historic Boulder's recent guest opinion, one of the more telling comments during the February 12 meeting with school district officials and Casey Middle School architects was that the district wants a new building because it does not want to have to maintain it. This lack of a major maintenance fund or program is key to understanding why the district's buildings continue to deteriorate resulting in unnecessary taxpayer expense for major rehabilitation, or, as the district would prefer, demolition and new construction."

BVSDWatch.org has been talking to numerous people who feel BVSD is making the wrong decision in tearing down the facade of Louisville Middle School. We hope to see more effort from BVSD in finding a solution. How would Boulder citizens feel if the Louisville City Council owned Boulder High and decided it needed to tear it down and create a 21st century building? We bet that idea would not go over very well.... BVSD, please gain some perspective and empathy and listen to your constituents.  This issue is not going to go away anytime soon.

The Louisville community is getting louder and more motivated to fight BVSD so their Louisville Middle School does not get demolished.  Their group is getting the usual brush-off from BVSD board members, and the community forum Chris King requested last month for Louisville community members provided nothing more than lip service from Don Orr. 

Here is a GREAT document from that Louisville group titled "How the Boulder Valley School District Failed the Voters of Louisville". We recommend reading it and passing it along to your friends. Many of their points are things the Boulder Valley community has heard over and over though the years.

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Here are a few of the opening paragraphs from "How the Boulder Valley School District Failed the Voters of Louisville" to get you started: 

    The Boulder Valley School District (BVSD) has failed the voters of Louisville.  The end result, the demolition of the historic 1939 portion of Louisville Middle School (LMS), will be the tragic loss of an icon crucial to the character and culture of Louisville.  That result was achieved by a series of processes that by design or neglect excluded the community’s values and denied Louisville voters any meaningful participation in an extremely important issue.  As explained below, the process failures included:

➢    Setting up an unnecessary and divisive conflict within the community of preservation vs. children/education;
➢    BVSD’s use of deceptive language (i.e. “renovate” and “remodeling” in lieu of  “demolition”) to obtain support of Louisville voters for the bond issue, and to later minimize community reaction to the planned demolition of LMS;
➢    Failure of BVSD to give serious consideration to Louisville citizens’ value for preservation of LMS;
➢    Generally creating an illusion of public participation without actually having it;
➢    Delegation of the crucial decision about whether to demolish the historic portion of LMS to a handpicked “Design Advisory Team” (DAT);
➢    Formation of a DAT which included only members with strong ties to the project or to BVSD, and which had no true community representation;
➢    Failure to give the DAT any tools or options to seriously consider preservation;
➢    Failure to give the DAT any timely cost analyses of preservation;
➢    Failure to give the Louisville community any reasonable notice that the design included demolition of the historic portion of LMS until after the design process had ended;
➢    A series of conclusory statements with little to no data or analysis to support them;
➢    Denial of any true community participation after the design had been adopted;
➢    Disregarding recommendations made to BVSD in a 2004 Communication Audit.