MEADVILLE — “That which we call a rose,” as the masterfully articulate William Shakespeare once put it, “By any other name would smell as sweet.”

Although controversy has swirled during recent months about whether the two-story brick structure at the corner of South Main and Linden streets should continue to be known as Second District Elementary School now that its student population also includes students from the former East End attendance area, Pennsylvania Department of Education has resolved the issue — at least for the moment. According to PDE, whether it’s called Second District Elementary School or East End Elementary School all depends on what you mean by “school.” However, one unifying option is available: East End Elementary School at Second District Elementary School.



A building does not a school make

First, a review of recent events.

At the beginning of the 2011-12 school year, a major reshuffling of elementary students in the district’s Meadville attendance area (the district also includes Cochranton, which was not affected) took place in order to trim almost a year from the timetable of renovation and expansion of West End Elementary School. The decision was made to completely empty West End for the entire 2011-12 school year, shifting all West End students in kindergarten through fifth grade to the recently-renovated and expanded Second District and all sixth-graders to First District Elementary School on North Main Street at Randolph.

To make the Second District facility available, most students in the Second District attendance area were shifted to the recently-renovated and expanded East End Elementary School on Walnut Street, where they joined students living in the East End attendance area.

In April, Crawford Central School Board, after following regulations as set forth in Pennsylvania’s School Code for closing a school building — including a public hearing and 90-day “cooling-off period” before taking a formal board vote — authorized Superintendent Charlie Heller to submit an application to PDE to close East End. Complying with the requirement that the application include approved minutes from the meeting authorizing the submission, Heller submitted the application immediately after the May school board meeting, when the April minutes received formal approval.

Plans called for shifting the administration, including Principal Kurt Meader, faculty and the blended student body consisting of students from both East End and Second District.

Two weeks ago, Heller received notification from Pennsylvania Department of Education that because the district was moving the entire student body, faculty and staff that occupied East End during the 2011-12 school year to Second District, — en masse, all together, as a group — PDE was approving closing the East End building — but not the school.

In education circles, a “school” is defined by function, not form. Wisconsin, for example, defines a school as “an administrative unit dedicated to and designed to impart skills and knowledge to students.” In order to be a school, for example, both Wisconsin and California require an educational institution to have: an assigned administrator, one or more teachers to provide instruction and enrolled or prospectively enrolled students. Both states note that a school may be located in one or more buildings, while Wisconsin also allows multiple schools to be in one building.

The bottom line is that it is not unusual for a school to be considered to be separate from its building.

That said, Pennsylvania Department of Education has officially closed the building with the words “East End” carved over its front door.

However, as PDE sees it, when the school district moved all the Second District students out of the building and replaced them with the faculty, administration and students from West End, they both vacated the building and abandoned the Second District name.

However, PDE has not done anything that will change the name of the two-story red brick building at the corner of South Main and Linden streets with the words “Second District” carved over the door. The building is still legally, officially, formally known as “Second District Elementary School.”



A school by any other name....

That leaves the East End “administrative unit,” a school in both name and function but not in bricks and mortar.

That school — the administration, faculty, student body and even the identifying school code issued by PDE — is legally known as “East End Elementary School.” Furthermore, under Pennsylvania law, there’s nothing anybody can do to change that — nothing — before July 1, 2013. That’s because a school’s official name as of July 1 of any year will remain its official name through the remainder of the fiscal/school year, which ends the following June 30. Period. End of discussion.

After extensive discussions with Suzanne Tallman, the PDE school reconfigurations advisor in charge of the closing, however, Crawford Central’s attorney, Carl Moore of the Erie-based law firm Knox McLaughlin Gornall & Sennett PC., said Friday that the school board has two options.

As of right now, if no additional action is taken, the name of the school now headquartered at the corner of South Main and Linden as it will appear everywhere (except on the face of the building) is “East End Elementary School.”

PDE, according to Moore, will allow the board to immediately refer to the school (not the building) as “East End Elementary School at Second District Elementary School.” On PDE records, however, it will still remain “East End” through the current year.

While this fuss over the definition of “school” may seem like senseless quibbling over semantics,  Moore explained that Tallman’s argument is that while the name of the building is not all that important — the integrity of the data collected on a routine basis about schools and the students attending them is extremely important.



Moving on

Crawford Central School Board’s next work session is scheduled for Monday night at 6 p.m. at the district’s instructional support center in Vernon Township. A discussion of a name change for the school now occupying the building still known as Second District is on the agenda.

Moore’s recommendation is that the board sit down, hear from all sides and then give the building a name. As long as the board goes through the formal school naming procedure, by the way, returning the name to “Second District Elementary School” is definitely an option, Moore said.

“This gives the board time to hear from the public and make a reasoned decision,” Moore added. “Next year, we’ll give it the name the board deems most appropriate.”

“It’s still the same building and the same kids and the same teachers and the same parents,” Heller said Friday. “That isn’t going to change. In the end, it’s a Crawford Central School District building — and I’d like to think of it as one school within the Crawford Central school community.”



What to watch for next:

Crawford Central School Board is scheduled to discuss the future name of the former Second District Elementary School during its monthly work session Monday night beginning at 6 p.m. in the district’s Instructional Support Center, 1120 Mercer Pike, in Vernon Township.



Mary Spicer can be reached at 724-6270 or by e-mail at mspicer@meadvilletribune.com.