Governing Board to Consider Names for STEM School Tonight

School district trustees will consider names for the new science, technology, engineering and math school at Tuesday night’s board meeting. The campus is slated to open this fall at the Lemon Grove Middle School site.

With the $, the district’s administration has been eager to settle on a name. A decision is needed so that the district can get the funding in place to open the school’s doors, according to Superintendent Ernie Anastos. Officials also want to begin marketing the school under its new image.

When complete, the campus at School Lane and Lincoln Street will be home to the district’s STEM school and a new, 13,500-square-foot county library built in the Mission style. The library is scheduled to open in early 2013.

An advisory committee appointed by board members will deliver its recommendations for naming the facility tonight. According to its report, the four-member citizen’s panel looked at what voters were promised in the approval of a $28 million dollar school bond measure in 2008, and and local history.

The only name offered to the governing board prior to the committee’s recommendations—the Lemon Grove Leadership Academy—was made at the Dec. 13 board meeting. Principal Rick Oser, who has been named to head the STEM school, and a parent leadership group from Golden Avenue Elementary School made the suggestion.

The committee will give board members three options from which to choose:

• Lemon Grove S.T.E.M. Academy, which the committee calls “concise and encompassing;”

• Lemon Grove Central S.T.E.M. Academy, which draws on the prospect that another STEM school could be developed in the future should Palm Middle School be re-opened;

• Lemon Grove Academy for the Sciences and Humanities. The panel’s report notes that the group was “mindful that the humanities are a large, vital part of the K-8 curriculum.”

Committee members decided not to take up the name Lemon Grove Leadership Academy, saying, “leadership may be overworked given the number of organizations and institutions that use the word.”

The panel, comprised of Mark Gracyk, Thomas Horn, Helen Ofield and Patricia Tanaka, emphasized branding and marketing as crucial in the face of current economic and enrollment concerns.

Budget cuts and shrinking enrollment have cost the K-8 district about $10 million over the last four years, and school officials anticipate a $2.4 million to $4.25 million budget shortfall in 2012-2013.

The school board meets the second and fourth Tuesday of the month, starting at 6 p.m. at the , 3146 School Lane.