Shut down elementary, Benzel says

Spokane Public Schools superintendent Brian Benzel on Wednesday proposed closing Pratt Elementary School to save money.

His announcement at the school board was followed by a few protests from parents and other residents worried they may lose the flagship of a troubled neighborhood.

Benzel recommended that the school, 6903 E. Fourth Ave., be closed starting next school year, which was first reported on www.spokesmanreview.com. The closure would save the district about $500,000 in annual operating costs, he said.

“It’s better to do this than to cut $500,000 more from school programs,” Benzel said.

The proposed closure would be felt at other elementary schools, because the 231 students who attend Pratt would be absorbed by other facilities, causing a shift in some school boundaries, Benzel said.

“It’s going to have a bit of a ripple effect, but we don’t want to prejudge what that will look like yet,” Benzel said.

It’s also likely that staff would be absorbed by other schools, though that is still unclear.

The proposal comes after an announcement last week that the district will likely face a budget shortfall of $10.5 million next year due to a steady decline in enrollment and unfunded state mandates.

Pratt, in Spokane Valley, has the fewest students of all the district’s 35 elementary schools.

Benzel also proposes terminating the lease on an East Trent Avenue building that contains the district’s Special Education Assessment Center, which does not house students. About 100 staff members would be moved into the Pratt building.

The lease costs $150,000 annually.

One of a handful of Pratt parents who came to the board meeting Wednesday night at Wilson Elementary School to speak against the proposal said other areas of the district’s budget should be cut first.

“The district and the community as a whole enjoy the football games and sports and band and so on. But if it’s over the backs of these elementary kids in a low-income area, that’s unacceptable,” said Stephen Latoszek, who also sits on the district’s advisory council representing the school. He has three children who attend or have gone to Pratt.

The school is in the Edgecliff neighborhood, which has been marked by poverty and crime. About 56 percent of the students qualify for free- or reduced-price lunches.

The Edgecliff SCOPE (Sheriff’s Community Oriented Policing Effort) was awarded a federal Weed and Seed grant in 2002 to help clean up the area, and the school is considered a “safe haven” through the grant. Residents routinely gather at the school for mentoring, movie nights and other activities.

“I’ve looked at it as being the central meeting place in the neighborhood; it’s a place that just doesn’t close down after school ends in the afternoons,” said Rick Scott, the grant coordinator for Edgecliff SCOPE. “This will really just affect the community as much as it will the kids.”

District staff will be examining the proposed closure, including attendance boundaries, in the next few weeks and plan to make a further recommendation to the school board Feb. 28, Benzel said. A public hearing is tentatively scheduled for March 21 at Pratt.

“This is the first time in 25 years that we’ve closed a school,” Benzel said.

The last school closures were in 1982, when Loma Vista and Garland elementary schools closed. Loma Vista is now a park, and Garland houses the Spokane Guilds’ School.

The recommendation to close Pratt was based in part on an enrollment decline, a trend mirrored across the entire district. Since 2001 the district has lost nearly 2,000 students, with another 350 expected to leave next year.

But the school was also picked because of its location on the eastern-most boundary of the district, and because of its condition. Built 50 years ago, the school building is in poor shape, and it will likely need renovation soon.

Also on Wednesday, the district adopted a resolution asking lawmakers to address what many school districts consider a flawed funding system for public schools, a key factor in the current budget woes.

Last year Spokane spent more than $14 million in voter-approved levy dollars on programs the state requires but does not fully fund, such as special and bilingual education and transportation.

And despite a budget proposal from the governor that would pump more money into public education, the plan also brings more limits on how that money is spent.

“We feel we need to make the tough decisions we need to make so we can ask legislators to make the tough decisions they need to make,” Benzel said.