The Appoquinimink School District Building Utilization Committee has decided to postpone a referendum planned for this year until 2010.
Dr. Tony Marchio, superintendent of the district, said at the March 10 Board of Education meeting that due to increasing student enrollment, a new early childhood center will be needed by 2011, a new elementary school will be needed by 2012 and a new high school and a new middle school will be needed by 2014 or 2015.
He said the decision was made to postpone the referendum due to the current economic crisis.
“We are very aware of what’s happening in our community. We feel conditions are extreme,” Marchio said. “We will be in decent shape with a one-year delay. With a two-year delay, we’re not in good shape.”
He said the district thought student enrollment would decrease with the current decline in the housing market, but that is not the case.
“We’re using kindergarten registration as an indication of what’s to come,” Marchio said. “We had 500 new students register for next year.”
He showed data from the Wilmington Area Planning Council that shows population within the district from 1995, 2005, 2015 and 2030. In 1995, the population within the district was 20,220. That number more than doubled to 41,548 in 2005, and it’s expected to rise to 66,429 by 2015 and 97,098 by 2030.
The referendum next year will include a new early childhood center and site, a new 840-student elementary school and site, renovations to Townsend Elementary School, a classroom wing addition to Olive B. Loss Elementary School and a kitchen addition to Appoquinimink Early Childhood Center.
Marchio said the new early childhood center was not projected to be built so soon.
“We miscalculated the early childhood center,” he said. “It may be due to going to all day kindergarten.”
Another referendum will be needed soon after to fund a new 1,600-student high school and a new 1,000-student middle school.
A third referendum will be needed to fund another 840-student elementary school.
“This will do a nice job of keeping capacity ahead of enrollment,” Marchio said.
He said the district will continue to utilize its buildings as best as possible to serve its students.
Elementary research projects
Students in the district are learning ways to improve their research and reporting skills through various techniques.
Lara Crowley, district English Language Arts Specialist, presented to the board how first- through eighth-grade students are using the Big 6 research process and 6 Traits of Writing to better communicate information they’ve learned through research projects.
To coincide with the district’s 21st century skills approach, students in that grade now research and report on a culture.
Crowley said she remembers bringing home stacks of books from a library and regurgitating the information in a report when she did a research project about the Berlin Wall for school.
“We don’t want children to just regurgitate information,” she said. “We want them to be critical thinkers, evaluate sources and present what they find.”
Crowley said they teach students to narrow the scope of their project.
“The children will identify a topic within a greater topic,” she said.
Crowley said they also prepare the students for the project with helpful tips.
“If we want a child to identify and use research skills, we need to walk them through the process every year,” she said.
Christy Payne, library media specialist at Alfred G. Waters Middle School, said the Big 6 steps are task definition, information seeking strategies, location and access, use of information, synthesis and evaluation.
“Big 6 is something kids see every year over and over again,” she said. “We always identify standards we’re addressing. We prepare students with background information on what they’re researching and then they go to the library.”
Payne said students play a game called Trash or Treasure to decipher what information they need to keep and what is not pertinent to their project.
She said one important thing they talk to students about is plagiarism.
“From first grade we teach what it is and how to avoid it,” Payne said. “It’s something they continuously need to hear.”
Sue Howton, a fifth-grade teacher at Olive B. Loss Elementary School, said assessment of how the students research and report is the last piece of the project.
She said they assess the students by having them write to people in other countries, write reflective letters to Payne and write a letter as if they were going to another culture.
“Overall, they really enjoyed the culture unit,” Howton said. “We had great feedback.”
Payne said they hope students get more sophisticated in their research as they move through the grades.
“In eighth-grade, this was one of the first times we asked students to write a full research paper,” she said. “We get into thesis and outlining. It’s going really well. It has become a part of their learning.”
