Shaping Orange County's Future Final Full Report

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Recommendation 1: Have schools be part of multi-use community centers that can include facilities such as a branch library, senior center, performance and meeting space, and a park with playing fields. Land for schools should be purchased with this larger concept in mind. Thus, school systems and local governments should collaborate on identifying future school sites to ensure that these are adequate and appropriate for such extended uses. Recommendation 2: Encourage the school boards to look at the feasibility of reduced class sizes and smaller schools, while maintaining diversity. Recommendation : Encourage greater cooperation between the Orange County and Chapel Hill /Carrboro school systems and consider appropriateness of school system merger in the future. Action Strategies: A. Foster increased cooperation between the two system administrations. B. Streamline provision of certain functions where appropriate by combining services. C. Develop more interaction among the schools so that school children can build community with each other across schools and school systems. D. Focus on answering the following questions to determine whether and when school merger might be appropriate: • What would be the impact of different size school districts? • How would merger affect efficiency of administration of the two districts? • What would the financial impacts be? • Is there really a serious disparity in opportunity across the two systems? • Is technology so disparate between the two? Recommendation 4: Continue to develop a long -range technology plan, encouraging cooperation between the two school systems and the University. Recommendation 5: Action Strategies: Improve special needs services. A. Enhance opportunities for inclusion of special needs children in the school districts. B. Add additional resources for Exceptional Education Support Services and early education services.