Scenarios closing 5 PSD schools become final recommendations as board moves forward

The revised scenarios on school closures, consolidations and boundary changes in Poudre School District became the final recommendations late Tuesday night, with the Board of Education discussing the options but declining to vote on any options.

Board members instead asked Superintendent Brian Kingsley and his leadership team to provide the kind of detailed analysis on the options under consideration that community members have been seeking throughout the process.

That includes not only details on the financial impact of closing particular schools but also a closer look at staffing, transportation plans and attendance areas. The boundary maps included with the revised scenarios, steering committee member Rebecca Everette said, are approximations that need to be adjusted with additional information on specific neighborhoods and housing developments.

All four of the revised scenarios called for the closures of Beattie and Johnson elementary schools, Blevins Middle School and one additional elementary school and middle school at an annual savings of more than $4.3 million to nearly $4.8 million, according to a financial analysis provided by the Facilities Planning Steering Committee during an update that was followed by more than two hours of discussion.

The closures are needed, Kingsley and Board of Education members have said, to address declining enrollment and the associated loss in per-pupil funding.

Equity was a concern of the steering committee members, facilitator Josie Plaut said. But the primary objective —creating elementary schools of 400 or more students and middle schools of 700 or more students — put several schools serving the district’s most economically disadvantaged families and students of color on the hit list for closure.

Only schools operating at less than 70% of their capacities were considered for closure in the revised scenarios, Plaut said.

“PSD prides itself on equity, but closing Beattie is an inequitable decision,” parent Makeeba Helms told the school board earlier, during the community comment portion of the meeting. “Roughly 38% of the student population consist of children of color, mine included. Almost half of Beattie’s students and families are economically disadvantaged, mine included. Beattie also has the largest number of families in rental homes, mine included.

“As a working mom and CSU student, being forcibly relocated to a new school does not serve me or other families in similar circumstances. It very clearly feels like working-class and low-income families are not being considered in this process, because every scenario presented results in the closure of Beattie.”

Based on those concerns and others, board member Kevin Havelda clearly wanted to slow the closure and consolidation process down or stop it completely, as more than 450 protestors outside the meeting and many of the 45 people who spoke to the board, for one minute apiece, suggested.

“I’m still looking for solutions, but my charge is to look beyond the limited scope of what we set out to do, of what we’ve asked the steering committee to do, which is just closing schools,” Havelda said. “I want to see more options, and if that takes a month or that takes a year, if that’s what’s needed, then that’s what’s needed, and if it’s emotional then so be it. … I’m not convinced in three weeks’ time I’m going to be OK to vote on any school closure.”

The consensus of the Board of Education’s seven members, though, was to continue moving forward toward a final vote June 11.

“If we do nothing come June, we still need to make that a data-driven decision,” board member Jessica Zamora said. “I want a thoroughly vetted plan, right? I think we’ve heard we have a plan of a plan.”

Board president Kristen Draper told the steering committee there was no need to provide new or additional scenarios to the school board at its next meeting May 28. But Draper and other board members asked Plaut and others on the 37-member committee to compile feedback from an online survey available through Sunday, May 19, on the district’s long-range planning website, to continue preparing a scored rubric based on the priorities the committee was given by the Board of Education for its work and to make themselves available for questions and explanations that will help district staff provide details on each of the options under consideration.

“I think you’ve left the Board of Education in a very good spot to move forward with this,” Draper said.

Board members also encouraged the community to continue providing feedback, through the online survey and during a series of listening sessions June 4 online and at Rocky Mountain High School, 1300 W. Swallow Road. After learning that registration for those sessions had filled up in just a few hours after being announced Monday, board member Conor Duffy offered to run additional sessions online and in Spanish, and board member Carolyn Reed urged people who register and later learn they can’t make it to let the school board know so those slots can be opened back up for others.

“I have not made a decision yet in my mind,” Duffy said. “I need more information for that.”

What options did the PSD school board seem interested in Tuesday?

Although no votes were taken, the conversation suggested board members were generally in agreement to keep Cache La Poudre Elementary School and Cache La Poudre Middle School open. Reed suggested exploring the possibility of combing it into a single school with kindergarten through eighth grade in one building, an idea board member Jessica Zamora also was interested in. Doing so, Reed said, could free up the other for possible use by the Laporte community, Larimer County or others.

The K-8 option was one the steering committee removed from its process because “we heard strong concerns about changing grade configurations” and “it was not readily apparent what the costs and benefits of shifting those types of models would look like,” Everette said.

There also seemed to be widespread support among the board members to keep Linton and Harris elementary schools open. Three of the new scenarios recommended closing Linton, and the fourth had Harris moving into its building to provide an expanded 100% choice dual-language program. Harris’ current instructional model, the steering committee found, would not work in a school with three or more classes at each grade level.

Board members also seemed to be in favor of moving Bamford Elementary School from the Timnath Middle-High School feeder system to Preston Middle School and Fossil Ridge High School. That option, provided in three of the four scenarios, not only alleviates the overcrowding of Timnath Middle-High School, the steering committee noted, but also boosts the enrollment of Preston, which would have been closed under another option.

The scenario that would close Preston would require converting nearby Kinard Middle School, a 100% choice-only school in southeast Fort Collins that uses the Core Knowledge curriculum, to a neighborhood school. Doing so, board members Jim Brokish and Duffy said, would likely push many of those students to charter schools with Core Knowledge or similar programming.

What's next in PSD's school consolidation and closure process?

Those decisions and others will continue to be explored and discussed at the May 28 meeting when the board receives feedback from the new online survey and during those June 4 sessions at Rocky Mountain High School.

A final vote is expected June 11.

As for concerns of equity in closure decisions, Draper said doing nothing is not equitable, either. Money that could be spent on students and programs at other schools is siphoned off each year to subsidize the costs of providing art, music, physical education, interventionists and mental health professionals and other support staff and services at schools with low enrollments.

"I don't want to close schools," Draper said. "(But) if we don't do something, all of our kids are going to suffer."

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. 

This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: Revised PSD school closure scenarios become final recommendations