Parents opposed to PSD school closure plans considering recall petitions and legal action

A group of parents and school staff opposed to Poudre School District’s proposed plans to close five schools and change the boundaries of several others for the 2025-26 school year voted to launch a recall effort against at least two members of the Board of Education, raise money for a lawsuit charging Superintendent Brian Kingsley and others with breaching their fiduciary responsibility to serve the public interest and to join together to stop the process.

About 85 people gathered in a meeting room Monday night at Council Tree Library to listen to organizer M.L. Johnson, a longtime educator and former member of the PSD Board of Education, and others express their concerns about the process and rationale being used to close schools. Kingsley and the school board have said they need to consolidate and close schools to address declining enrollment and the associated loss of per-pupil funding from the state.

Several speakers were particularly upset about the equity involved in targeting the schools slated for possible closure.

“One thing I’ve noticed, all the schools they seem to be targeting seem to be lower-income and ethnically diverse,” Linton Elementary School parent Darian Schumacher said. "It seems an awful lot like a racist war on the poor to me."

Linton, which has a large number of native Spanish-speaking families and serves a neighborhood that includes the Harmony Village mobile home park, was slated for closure in four of the revised scenarios shared Friday by the district and its 37-member Facilities Steering Planning Committee. Beattie and Johnson elementaries and Blevins Middle School were slated for closure in all four new scenarios.

Another significant concern brought up by several speakers was the impact closures, consolidations and boundary changes would have on the mental health of students, which has been identified by PSD leadership and the Board of Education as a strategic priority.

Significant concerns were also raised about the job loss associated with the closing of schools. Not just on the individuals who would lose their jobs, but on the local economy overall, said Dani Lawrence, a parent with two children at Rocky Mountain High School.

The release of the new scenarios Friday — each calling for the closure of five schools — has increased awareness of the district’s plans, Johnson said, and energized his previously small opposition group. There were just three people at last week’s meeting, and 12 the week before, organizers said.

“I can’t do very much by myself, but with your help, we can stop this train before it runs off the track,” Johnson said. “And in the worst-case scenario, if we don’t get the train stopped, we’ll probably need to recall at least two board members.”

Meghan Molin, an architect who helped run the meeting, said it was important for everyone in the room to work together for the benefit of all schools and the community at large, not just their individual schools. She also said it was important for the group to have clear, stated objectives to share with the steering committee and Board of Education, which has the final say in the process.

“We need to be really clear with what we’re asking; provide really clear, actionable items, not just stop the vote,” Molin said. “It is going to be a fight, and it’s going to be a multi-layered fight, and we do kind of have to have alignment in what’s our first goal. If we have to accept change, what are we willing to accept and how are we willing to accept it?”

Johnson said he helped stop a similar effort by PSD to close four to five schools in 2011, just a year after Moore Elementary was combined with Bauder Elementary in Bauder’s building. That plan, like the current one, is “based on a false narrative,” he said, questioning the demographic information being used to project continued enrollment declines and raising significant concerns about the district’s targeted goals for classroom sizes and overall school enrollment.

PSD’s chief financial officer, Dave Montoya, said schools with total enrollments of 400 or more students at the elementary level and 700 or more at the secondary level are the most efficient financially. Schools at or above those goals get enough in per-pupil funding that they do not need supplemental money from the district’s general fund to cover the cost of staffing or regular programming.

Those targeted enrollment figures also include increasing class sizes to a maximum of 25 students at the elementary level and 30 at the secondary level.

Johnson has cited extensive research while arguing that those class sizes are too large, and that students are best served by the smaller class sizes PSD schools currently have. The district, he pointed out, is one of the top-performing school districts in Colorado based on college readiness, standardized test scores and other metrics, despite funding that is below that of the other top-performing districts — Cherry Creek and Boulder Valley.

Choices about closing neighborhood schools, Johnson said, shouldn’t consist of “A, B, C but none of the above.”

Sixteen people stood up individually to share their concerns about the closure plans and consolidation process as well as the motivation behind it. Some acknowledged the financial need for the district to do something but felt closing five schools with only a couple of months of discussion and questionable data and projections was far too drastic.

Most felt it was unnecessary, and when asked about launching a recall effort, about two-thirds of those in attendance raised their hands in approval. Many were more interested in removing Kingsley specifically, rather than recalling members of the Board of Education, when a separate show of hands for each was conducted. A few people in the group signed up to get that process started, while others offered to help raise money for possible legal action.

A Change.org petition to oppose consolidation of PSD schools had more than 2,000 signatures as of noon Tuesday.

Bobby Decker III, an integrated services teacher in the district and member of the steering committee, stood up at the end of the meeting to share some information with the group. He said the committee itself has been torn on the process, with about half of the members wanting more time and more information before making their final recommendations to the school board at its May 28 meeting. Others, he said, are determined to work with the information they have and stick to the original timeline.

The Board of Education is scheduled to vote on a plan at its June 11 meeting.

Reporter Kelly Lyell covers education, breaking news, some sports and other topics of interest for the Coloradoan. Contact him at kellylyell@coloradoan.com, x.com/KellyLyell and  facebook.com/KellyLyell.news. 

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This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: Parents opposed to PSD school closures discuss recalls, legal action