By Superintendent Dr. Jeffrey Schatz
This school year, the Fargo Public Schools Board of Education has been working on reviewing the District’s Long Range Facility Plan (LRFP). Since October 2012, the Board has hired consultants to provide enrollment, demographic and facility data, updated the District’s LRFP Guiding Principles, and created a community task force to review all the information and provide the Board with recommendations on what should be included in the District’s next long-term plan.
The community task force has begun meeting. In a series of meetings this spring facilitated by the District’s consultant, RSP & Associates, the task force will work through the data available on Fargo’s growth and our student enrollment to come to consensus on recommendations. Those recommendations will then be presented to the public for feedback through forums held in May. Once feedback is received, the task force will continue to work on its final recommendation to present to the School Board. The goal is to have a plan presented to the Board by July.
The process of developing a new long range plan for Fargo Public Schools is an important one. The last plan the District had in place was fulfilled with the opening of Davies and movement of Woodrow Wilson High School to the Agassiz building. Our District continues to change and grow. Because of this, we must take a critical look at our schools, facilities and attendance boundaries to ensure we plan appropriately for the current status and projected change that could occur in the city in order to provide the very best education possible for Fargo students.
A website has been developed that contains a wealth of information on the Long Range Facility Plan process, www.fargo.k12.nd.us/lrfp. I encourage you to take time to review the information available. The website contains information on our facilities, enrollment projections, Fargo neighborhood demographics, process timeline, and task force meeting information. Information will continue to be added to this site as the process continues.
