LIVERPOOL -- The Liverpool School Board will not move forward with a significant student reconfiguration plan that would have pushed sixth graders into middle school and forced a shuffling of buildings. School board president Patricia DeBona-Rosier cited the potential $6 to 8 Million cost as a hindrance to approving the plan. The board would have needed voter approval on a bonding plan to get the necessary money.
"In order to do it, we would have to do - I don't want to say major reconstruction but a fair amount of construction on both the high school and the annex to accommodate the recommendations," said DeBona-Rosier. "And in this economic climate, I don't think the board feels comfortable making that recommendation and I don't think they think they can get a bond issue through."
A committee of the school board spent several months and considerable time reviewing options. Its recommendation was to move sixth graders from elementary schools into middle schools. That would have required converting the Liverpool High School Annex building from all freshman to a full sixth through eighth grade middle school.
If the Annex had been closed freshman would have moved to the adjacent main high school building. Some classes would then have been pushed out the other side of the high school complex into the former Wetzel Road Elementary school.
The school board did approve the concept of retaining all of the districts combined middle and elementary school complexes such as Soule Road Elementary and Middle schools or Liverpool Elementary and Middle schools.
The Liverpool School Board did not rule out reconfiguration in the future. DeBona-Rosier said it was possible that a task force would be formed in the fall to look at other options and how they could be implemented.
