School Board Vote on Dickey School Set for March 12
BALD EAGLE TOWNSHIP – The Keystone Central School Board is tasked to vote next Thursday, Mar. 12 on the future of Dickey Elementary School in Lock Haven.
District Superintendent Jacquelyn Martin confirmed next week’s vote at a school board work session Thursday night. She detailed additional refinements to the district’s proposed “reconfiguration” which would send Dickey students from grades kindergarten through fourth to Robb Elementary. Meanwhile affected fifth grade students would be absorbed into the Central Mountain Middle School in Mill Hall. The plan would also send fifth graders from Robb, Liberty/Curtin, Woodward and Mill Hall to the middle school.
Martin spent considerable time detailing the change, stating the district would not be “pushing students into a building,” terming it a reconfiguration. She said the middle school is under-utilized in terms of space and that incoming fifth graders would have the same course offerings as present, but would have more school activity opportunities. She talked of research to support the new grade 5-6-7-8 set-up at the middle school. She returned to the transfer proposal later, stating it would not be “jamming” the fifth graders into the middle school, but “educating them in a different facility.”
The superintendent unveiled a “transition plan refinement” chart which includes detailing transition planning with parents and teachers, reclassifying the facilitator position at the middle school to assistant principal, middle school visits from elementary principals and counselors and staff site visits to schools already with the grades 5-8 middle school configuration.
There was little public comment on the Dickey closure proposal and few comments from board members Thursday night.
At previous board meetings this winter, district officials had detailed the physical plant shortcomings at Dickey, a fixture in Lock Haven’s hill district since replacing the former Lincoln School decades ago. If Dickey goes, Robb Elementary would be the lone remaining public elementary school in the city. Previous schools, now gone, included Penn School, McGhee and Roosevelt; the latter had been housed in the old Lock Haven Junior High School. Lock Haven University also, for many years, had maintained its Akeley Elementary School.
