Bulging at the seams but coming up dry at the statistics well
Superintendent Larry Lewis said the demographer the district hired as part of the run-up to the 2004 bond election had projected the average new household in Lancaster would have 0.8 students.
Well, that’s not quite the case. Everybody in north Lancaster knows that new developments are child-heavy. Lewis briefly provided detailed numbers of just how off the mark his demographers were. He said Meadowview has 3.0 students per house and Boardwalk has 2.57.
How do you get that far off??
I, a non-professional demographer, could have made a better guesstimate than that, I believe. I might well still have been on the low side, but I think I would have, at bare minimum, pegged household child growth at least at 1.0, if not 1.2, 1.3 or so.
And, WHY are you still using that during the December board meeting?
The “key” to the situation?
Lewis: “I don’t think the people of this district know how blessed it is to have someone like Philip Pape.” So, was that a blessing for high school classrooms to be unlockable for three months?
That’s not to say Phil is incompetent. (That’s not to say he doesn’t have problems, either.) I have no doubt, though, that at least a fair chunk of the problem is that he is spread too thin. (That’s assuming the fault is his, not Elvin Lotten’s.)
It’s not a question of planning…
Lewis defended the district against not planning adequately for construction inflation. I myself don’t blame him or the district; I never have.
But, that’s not the issue, for people who know better. It’s a question of design and construction quality on what was built.
Vision as faith
Both Russ Johnson and Ed Kirkland spoke about operating by faith in some way. Well, if you have a demographer who screwed up empirical statistics that badly, I guess you may think faith is the only thing left.
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