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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It was a no-brainer to buy the site.  That's been part of a long-term strategy GDS has been pursuing for years -- e.g. some adjacent single-family homes were purchased earlier and GDS has repeatedly expressed interest in purchasing the Safeway site.  The coup here was finding (and seizing) the moment at which both Safeway and Martens were willing to sell.

What GDS should do with the property, now that it's been acquired, is a separate question.   It's not clear (nor was it previously agreed) that GDS should have a unified campus.  There may have been an implicit consensus that room for future expansion was necessary or desirable.  But whether that expansion should take the form of adding athletic/educational facilities at the HS vs. a merger of HS and MS at Tenleytown with the LS remaining at MacArthur vs. putting all three schools on one campus hasn't been the subject of a robust public debate within the school community as a whole.

Nor has the advisability of leasing all or part of the Wisconsin Avenue site for commercial development (or the appropriate scale of such development or length of the lease or how significant a revenue stream would be necessary to make this a worthwhile investment) been the subject of public discussion within GDS.

So three very separate decisions -- do we buy the land, do we combine all three campuses, and under what circumstances would using the land to create a revenue stream make sense -- are being bundled and treated largely as a fait accompli.

[/quote]

Very thoughtful post above.  The reality is that GDS is not the only major independent school to operate on two different campuses.  Sidwell Friends and WIS operate their elementary schools in separate locations from their other divisions and seem quite happy with that structiure.  Through shuttle buses and so forth it works out for families whose kids may be at separate sites.  These schools do have their upper school and middle school divisions co-located, which probably would make sense for GDS to do.  It's harder to understand the imperative to squeeze the elementary school onto the Safeway space also, particularly when athletic and recreational space seems tight.[/quote]

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