School Merge is Bad for Fruita

By: Brooklyn Potter

Have you heard about Fruita’s schools merging? Fruita’s school placements have always been different from everywhere else, and it wasn’t until pretty recently that the district decided to change it.  

The schools merging isn’t a good idea. The schools are already crowded as it is and merging schools will make them so overcrowded. The hallways will be overwhelming to go through and classrooms will have more students than desks. 

If the district wanted to have the schools merge now they should have thought about it then and made the schools normal like everywhere else. They should have made elementary schools kindergarten through 5th grade, junior high 6th through 8th and high school 9th through 12th then college. Also because they are merging schools, lots of teachers are losing their jobs because they want to merge the schools. 

I get why they would want to merge them but I don’t, I know they are doing it for money and so they have less facilities to maintain, but how are they getting money for making the schools more crowded for the students. 

I talked to a staff of the school who chose to stay anonymous and she states “I am not a fan of the schools merging, I feel like it's all about money rather than classroom size for students. Trying to jam a whole bunch of kids in one building and jamming a whole bunch of upper freshmen into another building [won’t work] when they don't have room for them.” I agree with what they had to say and I think they said it well.

I also went and spoke to the fruita 8/9 schools principal and he gave us more insight on why “I know that the goal is to save money for the district and there's the other side like the people being at different schools and having ownership of those schools.” Even though I didn’t get a full explanation of why, it definitely is helpful.

I felt like it was a good idea to talk to a 9th grader who agrees with the schools merging “Well my personal opinion is that maybe the schools should merge together because I feel like when you're at the 8/9 you don't feel like you're in high school because you're with 8th graders all the time.” This opinion gives a really good light on someone who thinks it’s a good idea and how it benefits 9th graders.

Even though I don’t agree with the schools merging it is great to get insight on people who do and how it will benefit them and what positive comes out of it. Overall, I don’t believe it’s a great change but there are some good aspects of it.