UPDATE: Parents, teachers plead to keep Chester Middle open

By: | Times-Dispatch
Published: December 16, 2009

Scores of people applauded and cheered as several dozen speakers pleaded with Chesterfield County school officials tonight to keep Chester Middle School open.

Many parents, students and teachers who came to a community forum at Thomas Dale High School argued against a school district proposal to relocate Chester Middle students and use the building for Thomas Dale’s ninth-graders next fall.

“We are a successful school, a model school. Why mess with that success?” said Debbie Bailey, a teacher at Chester Middle for more than 20 years.

The school district’s plan would ease crowding at Thomas Dale, which has about 2,400 students, nearly 600 over capacity. The proposal splits about 700 Chester Middle students between Elizabeth Davis and Carver middle schools, which are under capacity.

Under the district’s proposal, about 620 Thomas Dale ninth-graders would go to the Chester Middle facility. The changes would keep the four affected schools below their full capacity through at least 2018, according to school officials.

The proposal to restructure Chester Middle was chosen as the best option out of eight scenarios school officials considered.

Some speakers asked school officials why some of those other options were not given more consideration. Others said they believed the decision already had been made on the plan.

“Look at the plans again, I beg you,” said Amy Bartilotti, a Chester Middle teacher, told school officials. “Look at the plans, but with different eyes.“

Some speakers presented other alternatives to school officials.

Georgia Faison, a member of the Save Chester Middle School’s parent committee, proposed moving programs that are not geographically based to other schools. The parent committee’s plan includes:

•moving students in the Southside Middle center-based gifted program to Davis Middle;

•reunifying the east and west campuses of Matoaca Middle;

•housing Community High School students at one of the Matoaca Middle campuses;

•and sending Thomas Dale’s ninth-graders to the Community High campus.

Chester Middle parent Kent Dodd presented a detailed alternative on the behalf of former Carver Middle principal Jim Copp which would keep Chester Middle open and devote some of the school’s classrooms to Thomas Dale students.