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• September 10, 1999 Centennial School District Facility Task Force Re: Centerville Elementary Dear Task Force Members, The purpose of this letter is to express our concerns over conditions at Centerville Elementary. Our children have attended Centerville for six years and we are very impressed by its staff. On the other hand, we are concerned about the conditions of the facility itself. It is obviously one of the oldest facilities in the district and is in very poor physical condition. In addition to the age of the school, we are back at attendance levels (approximately 930 students this year) comparable with what we had before the middle school opened. Hopefully, the task force would also address the issue of equity in the district. We are all very proud of Rice Lake Elementary and the new Middle School, but while tens of millions of dollars were spent on these two new facilities, very little was spent on Centerville. We understand that other older facilities like Centennial Elementary and the High School need a great deal of improvements too, and hopefully this time we can spend money to resolve needs that should have been met years ago at these older facilities. We would encourage you to seek solutions to both the overcrowding problem and the needed updates to Centerville. The following is a list of concerns we would hope the task force would address in a possible bond issue referendum in the near future. Air Conditioning/Air Quality Without air conditioning and a modern ventilation system we know that our children are expected to learn in substandard conditions compared to Golden Lake and Rice Lake. It is often hot and windows must be opened to help alleviate the heat. The screens have holes in them and the school often has bees in it in the fall of the year. It is also widely accepted now that poor ventilation in buildings leads to the spread of germs and bacteria. Clearly this can only make things worse in a school already very overcrowded. Lack of Space for Supplemental Learning Currently music classes must be held on the stage of the gynmasiurn which is often noisy and distracting. There are no rooms available for programs like Junior Great Books. Will our children suffer from lack of exposure to these special learning opportunities? Lack of Parental Involvement Currently our lunch and kitchen facilities which were built for 300 students are grossly overcrowded with 930 students. At this time there is no space for parents to share lunch with their children when they would like to. We also have no sibling care room for volunteers as Rice Lake does. This can only inhibit the amount of volunteers and parental involvement we can expect at Centerville.