For what its worth, I am deeply concerned about APS/county lack of transparency on this whole process. There is faux-transparency, but no real transparency. So I sent the following letter to APS Supt. Murphy. (I sent a similar letter to County Manager Barbara Donnellan): Superintendent Murphy: The purpose of this registered letter is to ask you, as chief executive of Arlington Public Schools, to restore to the APS website all 2005-to-2009 documents related to charets, building level planning committee (BLPC) meetings, public facility review committee (PRFC) meetings, architectural renderings and School Board/County Board joint community meetings concerning the Westover Library/Reed School public planning process. These documents were on the website for years but since have been removed. The purpose of this letter is to ask that you restore those documents to a prominent, easy-to-navigate link on the APS “More Seats for More Students” webpage no later than Nov. 5. That date will give the public – and current School Board members, County Board members and APS staff – proper time to review the documents before any decisions are made on APS proposals that involve Westover/Reed. I strongly believe it will be better for Arlington County citizens, APS and the county government if these documents are made publicly accessible before your Nov. 18 More Seats for More Students secondary seats recommendation to the School Board and before the School Board’s Dec. 18 secondary seats vote. It is important that you publicly restore the 2005-2009 Westover/Reed documents now in the interest of good-governance transparency and because the public and some board members seem largely unaware of what is in those documents. I also fear waiting to publicly restore the Westover/Reed documents until after the School Board’s decision is made will result in a lengthy delay in the Secondary Seats CIP process. As I have said publicly, I am quite certain my Westover neighbors and I will support a small-scale, neighborhood elementary school, but we will not accept a huge middle/high school. The 2005-2009 public documents show that APS envisioned a possible two-story elementary school but never even hinted at a behemoth middle/high school. At minimum, restore the page referred to in the final sentence of this Oct. 30, 2009 news release, news.arlingtonva.us/releases/new-reed-school-westover-library-199182: “For more information, please visit the Reed School/Westover Project website.” Please do it no later than Nov. 5 and alert the public when you have done so. Thanks. cc: Arlington School Board Chair James Lander; Arlington County Board Chair Jay Fisette
Posted on: Sat, 25 Oct 2014 18:30:51 +0000
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