Posted: Sep 27, 2011 11:48 PM
Updated: Sep 28, 2011 2:00 PM
TUCSON - One school down, eight more to go.
The Tucson Unified School District is making progress on those empty school buildings that were forced to close because of low enrollments and budget constraints.
The schools include Duffy, Fort Lowell, Jefferson Park, Reynolds, Richey, Roberts, Rogers, Van Horne and Wrightstown. The board has gotten dozens of proposals and now they're narrowing things down.
For Jefferson Park Elementary the board voted unanimously to pursue a lease with the International School of Tucson.
The two sides will now work on a lease, and then the board will make a final approval when the details are all ironed out.
Board member Mark Stegeman said the International School of Tucson just had everything they were looking for. He said, "There was a very strong neighborhood support for the international school, they have a big preschool program which doesn't compete with us, they have a language immersion program that doesn't duplicate what anyone else was doing. It was a good option and they're paying us quite a bit."
Some of the other schools aren't far behind but the board said they weren't quite ready to announce who they're leaning toward.
However, there were three schools that got sent back to the drawing board because of a lack of options. The board said it is a setback but they're confident they can get things moving along in the near future. As for when, they said the sooner the better because they don't want to just let the buildings sit empty.
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