April 2003
Contents

Message From the Executive Director:
* The Upstate as the next regional city

Conservation:
* Couple preserves land along highway 11
* Northern Greenville county tract preserved
* UF members donate land adjoining
Jocassee Gorges to State
* Conservation Bank Act signed into law!

Articles:
* The Upstate is being developed at the rate of a new Haywood Mall every three days!!
* Downtown Schools: a key step toward sensible growth
* Downtown schools in the Upstate
good news and bad news
* Can Stories Save a River?
Bringing Lawson's Fork back to life
* Main Street: Heart and soul of the Upstate
* Victory for streams in the Upstate!

Upstate Forever News:
* Events
* Awards
* Volunteers
* Staff

DOWNTOWN SCHOOLS:
A KEY STEP TOWARD SENSIBLE GROWTH

by Diane Eldridge
Ask any grandmother to describe the school she attended as a child. Most likely she will tell you it was a wonderful buildingin the center of town, that walking to school was the norm, and that the principal knew all the students by name. She will probably say her school was in a neighborhood with tree-lined streets, sidewalks, and parks. Now think of the school that your child attends. Are the images the same?
     Probably not. The beautiful, old brick school buildings that have centered our communities and proudly served thousands of children for generations have fallen out of favor with school officials. In countless South Carolina counties, school districts are closing historic, community-centered schools and replacing them with large, remote, nondescript structures surrounded by huge parking lots and little else. Our children are forced onto long bus rides, or their parents are fighting rush hour traffic, only to sit in long, interminable carpool lines.
     What has caused this shift from small neighborhood schools to big-boxes in the suburbs where children are separated from their neighborhoods by miles of roads? What justification is there to close a community school and start a stampede to the suburbs by parents rushing to buy homes near the new school?
     A large portion of the responsibility lies with state regulations that demand excessive acreage for new schools. For example, for a new elementary school, South Carolina standards require 10 initial acres plus 1 more acre for every 100 students; thus, for a school built to serve 600 students, the district must purchase a site with at least 16 acres.Compare this to Florida where the same school would require only eight acres. Although state standards allow variances for smaller sites when other, more important standards can still be met, few school districts regularly request them. Instead, new schools are built at or beyond the edges of town where land is less expensive. While this might make sense solely from the standpoint of the school district’s budget, the impact on the community and its quality of life can be profoundly detrimental.

The beautiful, old brick buildings that have centered our communities and proudly served thousands of children for generations have fallen out of favor with school officials.

     Schools, however, are finally becoming recognized as “centers of community.” Architects, planners, and school officials around the nation are designing and building schools that are the cornerstones of communities.
     Any realtor will tell you that the local school system is a crucial component in the demand for housing. That is why developers like to build subdivisions near schools and why land around them is more valuable than farther away. Property values in neighborhoods with schools are generally stable and usually much higher than in neighborhoods without a school.
     

There is mounting evidence that students in smaller schools perform better on standardized tests and have lower dropout rates than their counterparts in larger schools.

     A well-respected study by William Bogart and Brian Cromwell found that in neighborhoods where community schools were disrupted, housing prices dropped by 9.9 per cent. A drop in value of this magnitude could seriously undermine a family’s financial stability, and the cumulative effect would severely strain municipal budgets.
     Students do better in small schools. Educators throughout the country are touting the benefits of small neighborhood schools where every child is important, where classes are small, and where teachers know their students by name. There is mounting evidence that students in smaller schools perform better on standardized tests and have lower dropout rates than their counterparts in larger schools. It is particularly noteworthy that children in poverty stand to benefit the most from small schools. A recent study concluded that small schools reduce poverty’s effect on test scores by as much as
70 per cent.
     Rebuilding and remodeling neighborhood schools is one of the most important principles of smart growth. By keeping quality schools where they are, less land will be consumed for new ones at the edges of town. Urban schools will remain stable and fewer families will flee to the suburbs to follow new schools.
     The considerable expense of building a new school at or beyond the city’s edge is compounded by the cost of new infrastructure (i.e., water, sewer, roads) and the increased costs of transportation. Hidden costs include higher traffic volumes, lost time spent carpooling, reduced volunteerism, and decreased physical fitness among children who can no longer walk or bike to school. Counties and municipalities can help control “school sprawl” by collaborating with school district officials and insisting on the renovation of existing schools whenever possible and the building of new ones as a last resort.
     The lesson here is an easy one. Don’t close our downtown schools

Diane Eldridge is the Associate Director of Upstate Forever