'This is not an easy decision': 50-year old Clear Lake Elementary to close its doors

Clear Lake Elementary School will be closing after nearly 50 years of service due to declining enrollment and budget deficits.

The Bethel School District board unanimously decided to shut down Clear Lake Elementary School, at 4646 Barger Drive, effective for the 2025-26 school year. The school will remain operating for the remainder of the 2023-24 year and all of 2024-25.

Bethel Superintendent Kraig Sproles led the board through the consolidation and budgeting discussion during a work session on March 18. He said that while there are short-term budgetary needs, this consolidation is a long-term, programmatic decision. In the past decade, Bethel has lost 700 students. There are small class sizes, particularly at the lower grade levels.

"I realize that this is an incredibly difficult decision that will have many impacts," Sproles said in a community post. "We are committed to making the process as transparent and supportive as possible."

The decision to close Clear Lake

The school consolidation was one of two decisions made by the district and board during March 18's work session. The board first discussed budget shortfalls, addressing a $2.6 million deficit for the upcoming 2024-25 school year. For the last several years, the district has made a strategic decision to operate with deficit spending by relying on district savings to maintain services, according to a Bethel news release.

After deliberating among three options, the board decided to spend part of the district reserves, approximately $1.4 million, slightly increasing the student-to-teacher ratio and reducing spending in all departments by about 5%.

The second decision came down to the school consolidation, a topic the district and the board have been considering for months due to a 10-year declining enrollment of about 700 students districtwide. The majority of this enrollment decline has been since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. The board decided to move forward with consolidation, and then had to select a school.

Clear Lake is one of five elementary schools as well as two K-8 schools in Bethel, a district of about 5,000 students. Sproles noted that Bethel has a particularly high ratio of elementary schools compared to other districts because of its longtime focus on small programs and its origins, which brought together several independent schools into one district.

Comparatively, Springfield Public Schools, which has almost double the enrollment of Bethel, has 12 elementary schools. Eugene School District 4J, which more than triples Bethel's enrollment, has 18 elementary schools.

In his presentation, Sproles presented the enrollments and capacities of all Bethel elementary and K-8 schools. Each school is currently under capacity by 50 to 300 students.

Once the board confirmed it wanted to move forward with the consolidation, Sproles suggested three elementary schools to choose from, based on a mixture of enrollment, capacity and building age/condition: Irving Elementary, Danebo Elementary and Clear Lake. The board quickly wrote off Irving, narrowing it down to Danebo or Clear Lake.

Ultimately, after weighing the pros and cons, Clear Lake was selected for closure.

"None of our board members came to this decision lightly," said board member Robin Zygaitis, during the meeting. "We realize that this is impactful for our students and staff and emotional for students and staff. This is not an easy decision."

Clear Lake currently has 300 students with a 400-student capacity. It is one of the district's oldest elementary schools, built in 1976, and would require continued maintenance in the coming years if it were to remain open.

The consolidation is anticipated to save Bethel millions each year — $2 million in 2025-26 and nearly $4 million by 2028-29.

Another driving factor in consolidation was a desire to offer strong programming at all schools moving forward. With some elementary schools having as few as 30 students per grade, it was becoming difficult to provide electives.

What comes next?

Sproles acknowledged that while this will be an especially big change for Clear Lake families and staff, it would have implications for the entire Bethel community.

"This is going to impact most of our families one way or another," Sproles said during the meeting. "Either they're going to be receiving a bunch of students from a neighborhood that they haven't had before, so their enrollment is going to greatly increase at their neighborhood school, or they're going to be changing schools themselves."

Over the coming months, the board will need to redraw district lines. During the work session, two board members were designated to work on an ad hoc committee to draw out new district boundaries — Zygaitis and Caleb Clark.

Sproles suggested the ad hoc committee have a new boundary map ready to present at the April 22 board meeting.

Details about the future of the Clear Lake building have not yet been determined.

Miranda Cyr reports on education for The Register-Guard. You can contact her at mcyr@registerguard.com or find her on Twitter @mirandabcyr.

This article originally appeared on Register-Guard: Clear Lake Elementary in Eugene to close after 50 years