Revisiting Fielding Nair One Month and Ten Days Later.

The immediate result of The Fielding Nair presentation for a unified high school may be one few anticipated ….that of a unified community.  

Some Bloomfield 20/20 members intent on recalling the entire school board openly hoped the presentation which came with a $65 million dollar price would spark outrage to further the recall campaign.

The Fielding Nair  presentation which lasted less than a half hour piqued interest  enough to prompt a hour a half question and answer discussion. One lady wanted to know about Lunch. " I know it sounds silly but we are from Ohio and there everything at the school seemed to revolve around lunch," she explained before asking if the plan had the capacity of feeding 1600 to 1800 students in one or more seating.  It did and less than a minute  Fielding Nair showed  her via the overhead a number of options for high volume or low volume meals.  Options were the key to the plan's acceptance. Options precluded outrage. No one in attendance  said we spent $800,000 for this ?

The Fielding Nair proposal quickly became known as Plan A. That Plan involved a hybrid high school of 36% renovation and 64% new construction. The post that details plan can be found at the bottom right hand corner of this blog under "Top Ten Most Popular Posts." Titled, Bloomfield Hills High School. First look, it is the fourth most popular  of 90 posts.

Many in the audience however gravitated to an uninvited guest, Plan B. That was the backup plan, should the funding vote fail. It was proposed in earlier meetings by superintendent Robert Glass.  The plan would maintain one high school, Bloomfield Hills High School, on two or more existing campuses. 

Bloomfield Township resident John Roach said,  “Yes Plan A  looks very charming. So have previous plans. But what are you going to do if you don’t have the money? We need to know what we get will if we don’t opt for what you want us to get.”

Even the School Board’s toughest and sometimes harshest critics Bloomfield 20/20 found Plan B as something less than outrageous.

Chris Fellin of Bloomfield 20/20  said, “This Plan  B appears to be either moving all the 9^th and 10^th graders to Lahser and all the 11^th and 12^th graders to Andover or moving 10^th -12^th graders to Andover and 9^th graders to some other sight. …To me new is not necessary.”

Jenny Greenwell, the leader of B20/20 trashed the Fielding Nair proposal as an unreasonable expense, but curiously made no mention of Plan B.

 A week earlier when told of the Plan B she said, “I could almost live with that.”

Of the School Board she said, “Our Public school system should not be hi-jacked by Trustees who are not acting in the best interest of students and tax payers. “

Does that sound different than “re-call the entire school
board now?”

And now for a tongue in cheek (look closely and see the slight traces of a smile on School Board Trustee Mark Bank) Plan B2. It's been on You Tube as the Trailer Park Plan.