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Although not many parents or community members attended (as seen in the above photo by Bryan Oller, The Gazette), School District 11 released some alarming news at a public meeting yesterday:

Enrollment projections cited by a school demographer Monday night for Colorado Springs School District 11 showed that the district’s middle schools would be nearly half-empty and elementary and high schools would be at about 70 percent capacity in 10 years if all the buildings remain open.

The presentation to a sparse group was a glimpse of a report that is due to the D-11 school board on Nov. 5. That report will include various scenarios for closing schools, restructuring grade levels in buildings and finding alternative uses for school buildings, said Shannon Bingham of Western Demographics Inc.

Wow. Are people just not breeding in d11? Kind of, but that’s not the whole story.

The district is losing more students who choose to attend school in surrounding districts. The number who lived in the district but attended school elsewhere in 2003 was 1,886. Last year the number was 3,494.

I know all about the d11 stereotype, that it doesn’t live up to other districts, namely the richer Academy d20 schools. (Full disclosure: I live in d11.) But set that aside for a moment and let’s think about this. What district 11 is considering may IMPROVE the quality of education and SAVE MONEY. According to their data, closing smaller schools in favor of larger and newer schools saves $1,800 per student per year. And there is some data to show that students perform better in such situations, too. How to handle the dwidling student population as well as how to improve the quality of a d11 education are complex issues, of course, and deserve study and careful thought.

And just to make things a little more complicated, let’s throw in the fact that d11 has a mill levy on the ballot this year. What to do, what to do? Well, I’ll tell you what NOT to do: Make comments like…

District 11 Still Thinks that it Needs MORE of Your MONEY, so don’t forget to vote for their Tax Increase…

Way to go D-11, you drive away students and their families!

How is this at all helpful? To me, it simply doesn’t make sense to say, “They’re not doing a good job, so let’s not give them more money and just wash out hands of them.” I suppose I shouldn’t expect any more or less from online commenters, who are notoriously partisan and inflammatory, but can’t we discuss this like grown-ups without any finger pointing? It’s our kids’ educations were talking about here. I’d rather listen to rational arguments from both sides than slide into this kind of mudslinging.

Despite the best of my googling efforts, I can’t seem to find a good pro-con argument for the 3E initiative in d11. You know, the kind of arguments the blue book lays out for other ballot issues. Can anyone point me toward a good resource where I can learn more, a resource that doesn’t resort to petty name calling? Comment or email me at parent@gazette.com, subject line: District 11 mill levy.

On Tuesday, stunned parents and their children trickled into the school all day, packing up supplies, artwork and projects. There were many tears as children hugged teachers and parents hugged each other in the nearly empty halls.

“Our daughter came home in tears. It’s tough. Several parents are trying to plan a party for the children, so they can say goodbye and mourn this loss,” parent Christopher Baron said. “It’s difficult to find another school with the same academics and culture, and that is not traditional. It had small classes that were geared to gifted children and was very rigorous and creative. There is nothing quite like it in town. It filled a specific niche.”

Story link here.

One morning you’re a kid headed off to your class, where you’ve just gotten comfortable with your teacher, your cubby, your desk. One morning you’re a teacher with a steady job. But that very afternoon, that illusion of stability is violently ruptured when your school goes as belly up as WaMu.

How can this happen?

No, I suppose I’m trying to ask, “How can this happen with absolutely no warning?”

Obviously, both Renaissance Academy and WaMu must have had some inkling of what was going to happen, what the worst-case scenario would be and when it might occur. But they can’t (or won’t) take the time to let the people who are affected know before their comfortable classrooms (or their stock options, in WaMu’s case) vanish into thin air?

I can take investment banks failing. I can swallow the failure of a big consumer bank like WaMu (which IS my bank, BTW). But when a school fails out of the clear blue sky, I’m finally getting the Chicken Little-like inkling that the sky might really be falling on us. I think we all need to hit some local theater for ideas on how to survive the possibly dark times ahead. If the Joads can do it, so can we!