School board converges on closing Hoover Elementary

At tonight’s work session, the school board members converged on a plan to close Hoover Elementary, probably within five or six years.  The board appeared unlikely to close Hills or Lincoln elementaries, or to displace the programs currently using the former Roosevelt School.  Three rationales were offered to justify the closure:

One was operational efficiencies.  If the district opens three 500-student new elementary schools as planned, without closing any old schools, there will likely be upward pressure on class sizes (though apparently in the range of a fraction of one student added to the average class size).  This concern, however, is not particular to Hoover.  There are other ways to achieve efficiencies, including not building one of those 500-student elementaries while simultaneously tearing down a school that could easily house well over 300 students.  (See this post.)

Second, there was a consensus that building a 300-student addition to City High necessitates the closure of Hoover.  Although no one could say where the addition would go, or what would be done with the Hoover property, the board members seemed to agree that there was no way to build the addition without closing Hoover and taking the entire Hoover property for City High.  There was a brief discussion of moving an athletic field off-site (which the principal conceded was possible, though not his preference), but no one followed up on the idea.

Finally, and apparently most importantly, there was a consensus that City needs to have that 300-student addition.  Even though the district will be building a third comprehensive high school, there was a consensus that it was important that City’s attendance area not become smaller, even if that meant that there would be unused capacity at the other two high schools.  This desire to retain a relatively large share of the high school enrollment was driven, according to the principal, by economic diversity concerns.  The principal fears that if City’s attendance area were to become smaller, it would likely lose the students who come from the Lincoln or Shimek elementary attendance areas.  Because Lincoln and Shimek are relatively wealthy attendance areas, their removal from the City attendance area would cause City to have (in this view) too many students from poorer families, relative to the other schools.  (He didn’t use those words, but I don’t know a better way of stating it.)  This argument assumes that Lincoln and Shimek will continue to have very low free-and-reduced lunch rates (a rough measure of economic status), despite the district’s diversity policy.

There are counterarguments to all three points, but the second in particular seems questionable.  I can’t help but think that if City didn’t happen to live right next door to some district-owned property, it would still find a way to build an addition.

In sum: The board appears to have concluded that it is most important to put an addition onto City High than to preserve Hoover.  Board members Sarah Swisher and Tuyet Dorau seemed to be the most reluctant to close Hoover and the most interested in looking for alternatives.

The board didn’t vote on anything tonight, but seemed determined to adopt a plan at its meeting next Tuesday, July 23.  It is still possible that some board members could change their minds, but it did not look likely.  Board members emphasized that nothing is ever set in stone, and that any plan can change as circumstances change (though presumably once a school is closed, it’s gone forever).  That seems to throw the ball into the court of the candidates in the upcoming September 10 school board election.  Anyone interested in the fate of Hoover should ask those candidates whether they would vote to change the plan if elected.  You can find their contact information here.

Chris Liebig blogs about local and national education issues at A Blog About School.  You can also follow him on Twitter.