To: The Southside Boundary Committee

From: Residents of the 2012-13 River Grove Elementary School Area

Date: March 17, 2012

We strongly support the construction of an addition to River Grove Elementary School for these reasons: 1. It is much less expensive than the option to re-open Palisades School. Over 10 years, Palisades $13, 800,000 vs. River Grove Addition $2, 133,000 2. Most of today’s new home construction is located in the River Grove School Area. There is a much higher concentration of children in these new areas. 3. The Addition would bring River Grove School to a size comparable to other LO Schools. It is currently the smallest southside school. 4. No additional boundary changes would be necessary for any school. 5. Previous committees have voted to keep only three southside schools open, as this option does. Why go to the taxpayer expense of running four southside schools? 6. River Grove School has more available land than any other LO School and there is room for sufficient expansion without compromising playing fields. Considering that this option gets an A+ in every one of these areas, why was it ignored by the committee, with some members referring to it as a “Portables Option”? No other option comes close to meeting all of these criteria as this option does. Please re-open this matter and evaluate all of the options using a set of established criteria—the same for all options—to be absolutely fair in your method of choice, and to avoid personal bias. Also please change the composition of your committee to reflect an equal number of votes from residents of each elementary school area. Committee members from high school and junior high all live in east side locations. Not one is in either the Bryant or River Grove area and this gives the perception of unfairly skewing the results.

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