Sometimes it has to be done.

Former NFL MVP and Patriots quarterback Tom Brady had to do it. And may have to do it gain. According to reports, Colts QB Peyton Manning also had to do it....several times. Neither one of them really wanted to do it. But it had to be done. What did they do? Why did they do it? And what in tarnation does this have to do with the Sun Prairie School Board?

What both QBs had to do was undergo surgery to clean out an infection that developed following recent surgical procedures on their knees. Their doctors were the highest paid and most qualified in their field. Yet, infection developed nonetheless. Failure to go back in and clear the infection could have led to permanent damage to their knees.

As Hawkeye Pierce would say, the Sun Prairie school board performed the equivalent of meatball surgery using a rusty machete when they implemented boundary changes this past spring. Infection is running rampant, and the whole goal of performing the surgery has not and will not be achieved. It's time that our school board of boundary surgeons gets back into the OR and perform corrective surgery to address the situation. We're afraid that the patient's "finger" needs to be amputated.

1. Only about 19 Students of the District Office’s projected 53 students transferred from CH Bird to Westside.

2. There was no significant space created at CHB to get below the schools capacity and create a long term solution to the schools attendance numbers and projected growth. Bird remains OVERcapacity. To compound this issue there are currently at least 4 elementary shuttles that transfer students from school to school because their home school did not have room for them.

3. The total number of "instructional classrooms" at CHB currently being used this school year has not been reduced. The DO staff indicated in a presentation to the board and the community that CHB was only designed and built for 24 "instructional classrooms". The DO asserted negatively that "rooms originally designed for Science (Room #21) and Special Ed (Room #38) have been converted to instructional classrooms". Despite this stated concern Room #21 is still being used as an instructional classroom housing a 2nd grade class and Room #38 is also still being used as an instructional classroom housing a 3rd grade class. Meanwhile instructional classroom #15, one of the largest and newest classrooms in the building, is only being used intermittently for specialized classes and instruction. Eastside elementary ALSO continues to use non-instructional space for classrooms.

Meanwhile....

• at least 8 classrooms at the lovely new Creekside elementary sit gathering dust. There is only a single 5th grade class!
• Creekside is barely half full and somehow is being allowed to operate as if it were a 3rd SAGE school with less than 15 students per class on average in grades K-2.
• Northside, Eastside and Bird schools are either over capacity or within a handful of students of being at capacity.
• Westside sits at 70% capacity.
• the socio-economic balance between schools has not changed.
• a neighborhood had been torn apart...despite rallying cries of the school board that all their boundary decisions are made to retain "neighborhood" schools
• the approval rating of the school board is lower that President Bush's

With the economic slow-down, projected to last through 2009, it's clear that the build-out of Smith's Crossing is not going to populate Creekside significantly for years.

School Board members, take a memo: It's long past time to prep the patient for another surgery on the boundaries. Don't let this infection fester any further. Prep "the finger" for amputation.