More on the Lebo HS Community Advisory Committee

The recent post (here), on the approval of a Community Advisory Committee to work with the School Board and the project architects on the design for a new Lebo high school, may have set a BlogLebo record for the number of comments on a single post!

In case you don't have time to read all the way to the end of that thread, I especially commend Tom Moertel's comment at the very end. Tom points out, correctly, that much of the disagreement over the direction, pace, timing, and cost of the high school renovation/replacement project can be traced to the fact that two distinct issues have been conflated: One issue is what to do with and about the current high school facility, which has some serious problems. A separate, distinct issue is what kind of high school facility Mt. Lebanon wants and needs for the next 30 or 50 years. People who are in favor of moving forward immediately and aggressively, with no further delay or review of designs, seem to be focused largely on the first, near-term issue. People who are in favor of reviewing the design, to ensure that the Mt. Lebanon invests its building money wisely over the long term, seem to be focused largely on the second issue. (Tom puts this conflicts more eloquently than I have.) It is not clear whether anything can be done about the fact that these two issues have been lumped together. It does seem to explain, however, much of the fact that groups of people in Mt. Lebanon have been talking past one another about the high school project for months and months.

Meanwhile, two School Board members have posted their own thoughts about the Community Advisory Committee and why they voted for it (Fraasch) and against it (Posti):

James Fraasch, in a long post, notes:

Contrary to what was said by some members of the public at the meeting, there is not a single board member who wants to start this group in order to delay the progress of the high school project. Accusations like that are just absurd. There is community buy-in on a high school project. This is something I have learned since I first got on the Board. We simply need to make sure we are collectively buying-in to the right project.

Jo Posti, also in a long post, notes that she supported the concept of a CAC but ultimately voted against it because of concerns over the process that led to its formation and because of unresolved concerns about the scope of its work. She wrote:

As for a mission, the resolution currently reads, “The purpose of the CAC will be to meet with the School District’s design professionals and design teams to provide input and recommendations to the School Board.” Mrs. Rose suggested clarifying this mission in order to better focus the committee’s work to read: “The mission of the CAC is to review construction design documents to see constructive and economical recommendations that do not significantly alter the design or increase the cost of the Project.” This, in my opinion, was an important point of clarification in order to make the best use of these volunteers’ time and expertise. Unfortunately, without clarification on the mission and timeline I was unable to support the resolution.