Some of our models and methods are already being replicated in the regular MVHS program, such as the initiation of credit retrieval English courses derived from the EL curriculum. The most daunting challenge continues to be growth management. Mount Vernon is essentially a bedroom community. There is just a small industrial and commercial tax base, yet a boom in residential construction drives the local economy. This creates a need for additional school capacity, without providing new revenues other than the residential property tax.
Voters are resistant to increased taxation.
The prospects of bond passage for new high school construction are not good. Apart from that, the existing campus of Mount Vernon High School is bounded on all sides by residential and other developments, and the site offers few prospects for expansion. Parking, library and cafeteria services are already showing the strain of our current numbers. Clearly, a coherent strategy for growth management is the first priority for our twenty-first century model. In 1994 initial thinking on these problems resulted in a report to the Mount Vernon School Board on the notion of magnet programs as a possible solution for growth management.