1. The plan/scenarios: Click Here

2. Sutton: 

We would like to leave Sutton “as is.” Having two campuses allows the 6th graders to ease into the middle school experience as well providing all middle school students access to resources like funds raised via concert parking at the 6th grade campus and access to the former high school facilities offered at the 7th/8th grade campus. Splitting the school would create significant disparities in funding and facilities, drastically altering the middle school experience.  Splitting the school could also cause inequities in the diversity of the student body.  Unless having students drive past one campus to get to the other, it would be very difficult to limit the imbalance of a division.  

3. Morris Brandon continuity of programming:

IB certification takes 3-5 years and we do not believe we could gain accreditation as early as 2027 and do not want our children attending a school without an IB accreditation. 

Assuming DLI is planning to be offered at both campuses, splitting Morris Brandon into 2 campuses would require the hiring of 6 additional Spanish speaking teachers and drastically alter the class sizes for both DLI (smaller class sizes) and non DLI (larger class sizes). The DLI program thrives when composed of both native and non-native Spanish speakers and boundary lines may jeopardize the composition of the classes as well as the school’s ability to operate a sufficiently populated DLI program.

4. Brandon Community Impact:

Community is, I suppose, one of the strongest ties a school can have, and it’s impossible to quantify the value of a strong school culture for consultants and Board Members who are focusing on seat-count-based data. It’s been evident in the virtual and in-person meetings that HPM and the APS Board have failed to account for the value of our collective community in their pre-conceived notions that Dual Campuses need to be closed.  Let us set the record straight - Morris Brandon and may have two campuses, but we are a single community and a single school. That community spans the length of Moores Mill Road and spreads across to Howell Mill Road.  Interstate 75 may run under or above our community, but it doesn’t divide us.  Every year, to kick off the start of the school year, kids from PreK to 5th grade gather at the Main Campus to enjoy – together – the Back to School Bash.  The Back to School Bash sets the expectation and the tone that we are one community and one school.  Our fundraising, through the Bee Fund, and our school programming, like the “Tall Small Ball” and annual art show, continue that sense of belonging to Morris Brandon Elementary School throughout the school year.  The scenarios that were released mere weeks after this year’s Back to School Bash, however, would have wide-spread impacts to the community that our principal, our educators, our parents, and our children have been fostering at Morris Brandon Elementary School.  We have heard Tracy Richter say repeatedly that a K-5 "neighborhood school" will provide continuity for the children it serves.  Respectfully, we have a neighborhood school already, and disrupting it is the opposite of continuity for the community and for children it serves.

5. Lack of hard data/facts/boundaries:

Even beyond Morris Brandon and Sutton, it’s the school communities – the parents, the neighborhood stakeholders, the teachers, the neighbor down the street with no grade-age students still at home, the City councilmembers, and the NPU leaders, just to name a few -  surrounding our schools who are pushing back and demanding more data, more information, more transparency, and more answers.  We have received no hard data on cost savings, no hard data for the impact on student success, no hard data on why all dual campuses should close when we have a very well run and thriving dual campus.

Rhetorical questions- 

Is it truly feasible for two schools within such a short distance, to really support the same level of programming on two completely separate campuses, without sharing these resources? How are existing community business partners or donors, who are dedicated contributors for the Bee Fund or other school fundraising efforts, going to be addressed?  Are we going to race each other to their doors, voicemails, or inboxes, in hopes of meeting the fundraising goal for one school - all at the detriment of the second school?  As a single community, and given the nearness of the campuses to one another, the Primary and Main Campuses have shared parent volunteers, community fundraising, and other resources.