A public hearing on the Grand Rapids Public School’s (GRPS) “facilities development plan” that would close some Grand Rapids schools and relocate others will be held tonight at 6:30pm at the Grand Rapids Public Schools’ Franklin Campus (1331 Franklin SE). The plan, touted as a way to save some $2.2 million dollars a year and possibly generate as much as $12 million in revenue, has been criticized for not being proposed with little community input. The first public hearing on the plan comes amid an increasing public sparing between school board members who charge that the plan was proposed without their input and that Superintendent Bert Bleke has already made the decision. Yesterday the Grand Rapids Press reported that school board members had been asked not to conduct “one-on-one” meetings with interest groups and have instead been asked to encourage people to attend either tonight’s or Saturday’s hearing on the plan. Moreover, with Bleke’s comments late last year that the plan must be adopted in its entirety or not at all and the scheduling of key hearings near the holidays have prompted some board members to speculate that the public will believe the decision has already been made. Board member James Rinck recently described Bleke’s conduct towards the board as “at best degrading and at worst unethical.”

Read the “Facilities Development Plan”