Our Neighborhood Public School May Close To Cover District Admin Building Overruns: How Kids Are Affected And What Parents Can Do
The folding chairs stuck a little to the linoleum in Lincoln Elementary’s cafeteria Tuesday night, leftover cheese pizza grease from the after-school program congealing in the trash cans by the door. My second-grader Lila was curled under my seat, coloring with her best friend Mia, while the district’s chief financial officer clicked through a 17-slide budget presentation on the rickety projector. I’d showed up expecting to vote on new playground equipment, not hear that Lincoln, the 68-year-old neighborhood school three blocks from our house, was the district’s proposed top budget cut to cover $14 million in cost overruns on the new central administration building.
A murmur went through the crowd before he finished the sentence. Ms. Henderson, Lila’s teacher, who’s worked at Lincoln for 18 years, raised her hand first and asked why the cut wasn’t coming from central office, instead of a school that serves 280 kids, 62% of whom qualify for free or reduced lunch. The answer was the same bland script we’d hear all night: central office staffing is already aligned to state requirements, closing a neighborhood school is the only way to close the recurring gap without dipping into classroom funds. A dad who works in construction called out that he’d seen the public bid docs for the admin building, which included heated parking stalls for district leadership and custom solid oak desks for every executive, while Lincoln’s roof has leaked over the library for three years running. The CFO just adjusted his tie and moved to the next slide, about proposed new bus routes.
Lila tugged my sleeve a minute later, holding up a crayon drawing of her and Mia on the monkey bars, and asked if we could get blue raspberry slushies after the meeting like we usually do after PTA nights. She had no idea what everyone was upset about, not yet. I said sure, tucked the drawing in my jacket pocket, and sat through the rest of the meeting while people took turns talking about test scores and property values and bus ride times, none of them naming the thing I was already thinking: all the small, unremarkable things that make this school work for Lila are the things that never show up on a budget spreadsheet.
I walked home with Mia’s mom, our sneakers crunching acorns from the big oak tree at the school’s front entrance, the one every kindergarten class plants a seedling under in the spring. We didn’t yell about corruption or recall petitions, not right then. We just talked about how both our girls walk to school together every morning, how Mr. Torres the crossing guard gives out sparkly stickers every Friday to anyone who remembers to stop and look both ways, how Lila heads straight for the frayed blue bean bag in the corner of Ms. Henderson’s room when the lunchroom gets too loud and overwhelming. A week later, I noticed Lila started wetting the bed again, something she hadn’t done since she was five. She started asking every night at dinner if she’d still get to see Ms. Henderson next year, if Mia would be in her class, if the class goldfish would have somewhere to go. Last Wednesday, she said she didn’t want to go to after-school art club anymore, because “it’s just going to go away anyway.”
I pulled Ms. Henderson aside after drop-off last week to ask if she was seeing the same thing from other kids, and she nodded before I finished talking. She was teaching at Maplewood, the last elementary the district closed 10 years ago, also to cover a central office budget gap. Everyone talks about test scores and bus routes when these proposals come up, she said, but no one warns parents about the quiet, daily impact of uncertainty on kids’ learning. When a kid spends all morning worrying if their best friend will end up at a different school next year, or if they’ll know where the bathroom is in a new building, they don’t have space left in their head to sound out new words or remember subtraction facts. After Maplewood closed, the district tracked the displaced kids for two years, and their reading proficiency rates dropped 12% on average, even though the two receiving schools had identical test score averages to Maplewood. It wasn’t that the new teachers were worse. It was that all the small, predictable pieces of their days got pulled out from under them.
She gave me a handful of small, doable things that worked for Maplewood parents back then, none of which required big therapy appointments or expensive campaigns, and I’ve passed them along to our parent group as we organize against the closure. First, don’t lie to kids and tell them nothing is going to change. They hear you whispering on the phone, they see the flyers taped to your fridge, and vague reassurance makes the uncertainty scarier. She suggested sticking to a short, clear script that matches what you actually know: “Right now, the school board is going to vote in six weeks on whether to close Lincoln. We are going to show up and ask them to keep it open, but if it does close, we will figure out every detail together, and I will answer every question you have as soon as I know the answer.” I’ve used that line with Lila three times now, and each time she just nods and goes back to coloring, instead of spiraling into what-ifs at bedtime.
Second, don’t pull away from the routines you already have right now. A handful of parents in our Facebook group started talking about transferring their kids mid-year to beat the rush, or skipping after-school clubs to avoid the sadness of saying goodbye early. Ms. Henderson said that’s the worst call you can make; the predictable, familiar parts of school are the thing holding kids steady while the future feels up in the air. We still walk the same route every morning, still stop to say hi to Mr. Torres, still get slushies after PTA meetings, still go to art club every Wednesday. Last week, Lila brought home a lumpy clay mug she made, and set it on the kitchen counter next to her toothbrush, like it’s always going to be there.
If the board does vote to close us, Ms. Henderson said, don’t settle for the district’s standard one-hour orientation the week before school starts. Push for multiple low-key, after-school visits to the new building starting in spring, so kids can show up when the halls are quiet, walk their potential classroom route, find the bathroom closest to their homeroom, meet the librarian, eat a popsicle in the cafeteria without the noise of 500 other kids. Those tiny, boring details are the things that cause the most meltdowns and distracted school days in the first semester, not the big idea of changing schools. For teachers, she’s added a 10-minute question time every Friday afternoon in her class, where any kid can ask anything about the possible closure, no question too small. Two weeks ago, a first-grader asked if the class goldfish would get moved to the new school, and Ms. Henderson said she’d drive it over herself in her own car, and half the class’s shoulders relaxed immediately. You don’t need a formal lesson plan to talk about this. You just have to answer the actual questions kids are asking.
The parent group has been doing our work too, not just showing up to meetings with hand-drawn signs. We filed public records requests two weeks ago, and found that the district could cover the entire $2.2 million annual gap without closing Lincoln by leaving three vacant central office executive positions unfilled (they’ve been open for two years already) and delaying a planned $500,000 lobby renovation at the new admin building. We’ve shared the numbers with every board member, and collected 420 signatures from neighborhood residents, most of whom don’t even have kids in the school but walk their dogs past the playground every summer. We don’t have money for lobbyists or billboards, but we have stacks of kid drawings of the oak tree and the monkey bars and the class goldfish, and we’re bringing every one to the vote next month.
Some days it feels like the decision was already made before the CFO ever clicked through his presentation. The admin building is already half built, the heated parking stalls are already poured, and Lincoln’s roof still leaks when it rains hard. Lila still asks about once a week if she’ll be in class with Mia next year, and I still tell her we’re doing everything we can to make that happen. Yesterday, Mr. Torres gave her a unicorn sticker bigger than her palm, and she stuck it right on the cover of her reading workbook. The goldfish is still swimming in its tank on Ms. Henderson’s windowsill, the oak tree is still dropping acorns on the sidewalk, and we’re still walking to school together every morning. Nothing’s decided yet. For now, that’s enough.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » Our Neighborhood Public School May Close To Cover District Admin Building Overruns: How Kids Are Affected And What Parents Can Do