Uses for Closed PPS Buildings

Short Version

Rather than selling off unused buildings, we re-purpose them to serve educational and community needs.  This enables our PPS buildings to be pillars of our communities as well as education centers.  By retaining control of the buildings, we remain flexible to reopen schools as our enrollment grows again.  

Philosophy

The community proposal is fully invested in the philosophy that our schools should serve a much greater function than just educating our kids in math, reading, science, etc. These are great things and the core of public education, but we believe our schools should also be central pillars in our communities. We are also firmly committed to operating under a Growth Mindset, rather than one of Managing Decline.

These two concepts lead us to the belief that we should retain control of at least most, if not all, of our buildings, to allow PPS to take a greater role in our communities all across the district, even though we unfortunately must reduce our schooling footprint a bit right now. By retaining buildings, we ensure we meet our communal goals, as well as leave ourselves room to expand and potentially take over buildings again in the future if needed.

Building Uses

  • The primary use we propose for our buildings that become available for repurpose, is to create a Regional Community Hub in each of the 5 regions in our plan. This becomes a place for teacher development, specialized programming, partnerships with local businesses and nonprofits to offer needed services, extracurricular space, meeting space for community engagement, etc.

  • An Expanded CTE center, to allow our fantastic CTE programming to expand even further.

  • We advocate utilizing the small number of additional spaces for community services that can lease space from the buildings. This allows for the district to end a lease and take over space again in the future if needed, while continuing to offer communal services and in a cost effective manner (leases pay for costs of running the facility).

Selling Property

There may be some instances where the district would sell property, but that would be the exception rather than the rule. This also reduces the chances of these buildings eventually ending up in the hands of charter schools - they can’t be sold directly to charters, but it happens where it gets sold to a developer and they sell to a charter school.