If you experienced an instance of deja vu when you read Tuesday's front page, it was certainly understandable.
About a year and a half ago, the Warren County School Board approved a master facilities plan that included four high schools. Monday night the board approved an amendment to that plan that maintains four high school programs, but adds a K-12 feature for Eisenhower.
About a year ago, the school board put together the foundation to apply for Qualified Zone Academy Bond financing to virtually reconstruct Eisenhower High School. Last September, the board dropped the idea because, at the time, the effort to convert the middle/high school to a charter institution was chugging away. QZAB funding cannot be used for conversion charter schools. However, the charter only covers the middle/high school; it doesn't include the elementaries that feed it.
In the meantime, a new school superintendent with some creative thinking changed the playing field by proposing a K-12 campus at Eisenhower, thus allowing the elimination of Sugar Grove and Russell elementary schools.
The votes on Monday to approve both the change in the MFP and the request that the $18.5 million QZAB loan were just one shy of unanimous.
To some people's thinking, the votes seem incompatible with the possible approval of the charter application sometime next month. After all, why would the school board undertake these significant changes and expense in that attendance area at the same time a charter school begins to siphon students from the school district?
Is the charter application dead or seriously injured? Were Monday's votes a litmus test for charter support?
No one has said either of those things, and we're not sure we're going to voice them as anything other than questions.
Still, the actions by the Warren County School Board and the Eisenhower Charter Middle/High School Board guarantee that there will be some sort of collision over the next several weeks as these two apparently contradictory actions ultimately cross paths.
Whatever the outcome, we're convinced it will be expensive, but we hope it will be in the best interest of Warren County students, all Warren County students.