Close calls

Deciding whether to close a school or keep it open is among the most difficult a school board must make.

Cedar Rapids Superintendent Dave Benson has stressed the challenges of the process several times in the past two years. He's addressed it at the superintendent-appointed Enrollment Study Stakeholder Committee and in conversations with the local media.

The committee has named four elementary schools for possible closure: Harrison, Madison, Monroe and Polk. The committee meets today to finalize its recommendations on which, if any, schools should close.

“We went into this with our eyes wide open,” Benson said. “We understand parents have an affinity with their schools and that families have purchased homes in neighborhoods with the expectation that their children would attend schools in that neighborhood.”

If it were simply a numbers decision, then perhaps such decisions would be easy. Emotions, however, are at the core.

“(Emotion) will always be a big part of the process, especially if the school has been there a long time, because there's been such an investment in that culture,” said Lane Plugge, former superintendent of the Iowa City school district.

Iowa City's Roosevelt Elementary School will close at the end of this school year, but the decision to close the 80-year-old facility was made two years earlier. Plugge said the district's increasing enrollment was the cause for the unique time frame.

“We needed capacity, but we had to build another school,” said Plugge, who is now chief administrator for Green Hills Area Education Agency in southwest Iowa.

School board members voted to add on to nearby Horn Elementary School and build a new facility - Norman Borlaug Elementary - a few miles to the west. Roosevelt, though, had to remain open until both facilities could accommodate students and staff.

“What's unique about our situation is that we're able to go through the process of understanding, the process of acceptance and the process of excitement,” Roosevelt Principal Celeste Shoppa said. “It's makes it easier, if you can make it easier.”

Still, there are some who feel remorse with each school tradition that's performed for the last time.

“For the kids, we try not to dwell on that,” Shoppa said. “We're trying to prepare them the best we can for the transition.”

District folds

Focusing on the future was the theme of Deep River-Millersburg Elementary School's last day of school in 2009. The final day was also the last for the district, which reorganized with nearby English Valleys.

“We had declining enrollment and we had declining finances,” said Ronald Grimm, who was the Deep River-Millersburg's school board president during the reorganization process. Most of the former Deep River-Millersburg students now attend English Valleys schools, but some transferred to the Montezuma and Williamsburg school districts.

“It's a decision that takes a little time to make,” Grimm said. “You have to listen to the people, but then you have to present the facts. Change is hard, but people have to realize there's just so much money.”

Declining student enrollment is the key factor for Cedar Rapids' school closure discussion. The district has 15,975 students, the lowest level since 1960. At the same time, neighboring districts like Linn-Mar and College Community have seen their numbers jump.

The 2008 flood didn't help, as fewer than expected families returned to the neighborhoods after the 2008-09 school year. Harrison, one of the schools on the possible closure list, is in a neighborhoods that was flooded.

The Cedar Rapids schools district hasn't discussed school closures for more than 20 years. District records show that two elementary schools that closed in 1986 because of declining enrollment - Truman and Jackson - but reopened in 1990 and 1993, respectively,

Besides possible school closures, the Cedar Rapids enrollment committee also will make recommendations on high school boundary lines and feeder schools. Benson will review the enrollment committee's recommendations before presenting his own to the school board Jan. 9.

‘No change easy'

In the end, though, it is the board members who will decide the district's future.

“No change is ever easy,” said Dana Bostian, who serves on the Oelwein school board. Bostian was the lone “no” vote for the closure of Harlan Elementary School in 2010. The decision sent the district's second grade students to Wings Park Elementary School.

The district still owns Harlan's building, which is being rented by a local church and Keystone Area Education Agency for office space.

“It actually turned out to be an OK thing,” Bostian said.