is inviting the community to an engagement meeting regarding possible changes to Pine and Traner Middle Schools.
The district is proposing to combine these middle schools with several elementary schools turning them into pre-k through 8th grade schools.
This is a part of the 2023 facility modernization plan. One man helping design these plans says they're using Mount Rose k-8 school as inspiration.
"Very highly successful, small language immersion program that does very well," said Paul Mills, PK12 Education Strategy Leader for CannonDesign. "And it's a great model to build on that success for more students."
Over the next two days the planning committee will be talking to four different districts that operate K-8 schools to learn about their process, reasoning, successes, and what they wish they did differently.
Mills says they would rebuild Pine and Traner to bigger and newer buildings, allowing an opportunity to replace and repurpose over fifty-year-old buildings, create new learning methods, more classrooms, and more staff on one campus.
"A larger faculty means you have a lot more diversity of educational programs that can be offered as well as having the skill to have more administration, more counselors, more support, gifted and talented, more electives," he said.
However, many residents have concerns regarding this proposal. One woman is against this plan because she doesn't like how some of the buildings are being repurposed, and removing schools in neighborhoods could devalue residents' homes.
"What better way to do what they want to do than to move the schools for the sake of progress and for the good of the community, which is wrong," said Gloria Johnnie-Robles, Reno resident. "What they're trying to do is depreciate the value of the homes in this area."
One of the biggest issues community members have expressed was safety. A mother of a 4th grader says she doesn't feel comfortable with her child going to the same school as an 8th grader because of how differently they behave due to their age.
Another resident says the district has not shared a safety plan if they were to go the pre-k through 8th route.
"There are issues in Pine now and now we're asking to enroll our very young children into that same group and actually increase our student population," said Katherine Gurney, Reno resident.
"We're not addressing is safety of the community, an outreach to intervention programs, regardless if that's gang intervention, drug intervention, or you know, more excellence as far as you know just having community involvement for education," added Antonio Angulo Jr., Reno resident.
No changes or decisions are yet being made.
This meeting is purely for discussion and input. There will be another meeting regarding the same changes to Traner Middle School on Thursday evening from 5:30-7 p.m. at Traner.
