Indian Valley Academy to leave Greenville High campus
What do you do when you have a school full of kids and no place to put it? You pick yourself up and keep on looking.
As it stands now, Plumas Charter School has to be out of its Pioneer Elementary School location by July 2018.
Plumas Unified School District is considering using the facility for a variety of purposes, including special education, professional development, administrative offices and as an early learning educational center.
At the Plumas Charter School board meeting March 20, the board discussed what to do after the county supervisors turned down their proposal to change county zoning to allow schools in all light industrial zones.
The school still has an action before the planning department to permit an exemption for the light industrial property they want to move into on North Mill Creek Road, the “Trilogy” site.
However, Taletha Washburn, executive director of the Plumas Charter School, told the board that process would take six months and require an environmental study costing the school an estimated $50,000 to 60,000.
Washburn said, “We are at a crossroads. I don’t know what to do about the Trilogy site.”
After discussing the situation concerning the Trilogy site, the board decided to think about it for another month before deciding whether to continue pursuing the Trilogy property or not.
In the meantime, the school will focus its attention on the five acres it was given near Quincy High School to see if that might work as a school site. Washburn noted, “This has been our plan B all along.”
The school is also looking at four acres of property near the airport and two acres located behind Sierra Cycle in East Quincy as possible future sites for its Quincy learning center. The school will continue to look for other options as well.
End of collaboration
Both PUSD and the charter school jointly decided that the charter school’s Indian Valley Academy will leave the Greenville site they have shared with Greenville High School sometime this June or July.
After six years, both school systems decided they have not been able to overcome the hurdles that have kept the collaboration from working.
These hurdles included the sharing of site resources, determining how much each party should pay for use of their share of the resources, a school schedule that works for both school systems and, most importantly, the inability “of each school to stay true to their mission and educational philosophy.”
Plumas Charter School has decided to move its middle school program to the Methodist Church it occupies in Greenville and hopes to move its high school program to Taylorsville.
Washburn said at the meeting, “I am incredibly disappointed after being at the table for six years.” She added, “There was not a lot of room to move forward any more. However, we still feel we are making the right decision.”
Washburn said there were about 75 people at the joint PUSD-Plumas Charter School community meeting held in Greenville on March 15 to discuss the end of the collaboration.
Hooray–finally an end to the division!! Good luck to PCS in building their new learning centers. No money better come from PUSD! Debra Moore said it right–“there are barely enough students left in the county to fill one set of classrooms”. Plain & simple.