Plan to close Pratt gets angry reponse

A public hearing Wednesday on the proposed closure of Pratt Elementary School started with singing from the chorus.

“We love our school, we love our school,” about 40 students bellowed.

And during several hours’ worth of testimony from community leaders, residents and parents, the message for Spokane Public Schools officials changed little from that of the young singers: Don’t close the school.

“There isn’t a single person out here who isn’t mad,” community member Sandra Lampe-Martin said, referring to a standing-room-only crowd inside the school’s gym.

In January, Superintendent Brian Benzel, who has since announced his retirement, proposed closing the school in order to help fill a projected budget gap of $10.5 million. The closure would save about $450,000.

In accordance with state law, Wednesday’s hearing provided an opportunity for the community to weigh in.

Three of the five board members – President Christie Querna and member Sue Chapin were out of town – heard dozens of passionate pleas to save the school. During testimony, the building, in the city of Spokane Valley in an impoverished area known as Edgecliff, was several times referred to as the “shining beacon” of a once crime-ridden community.

Closing the school, speakers said, will destroy the neighborhood and bring back the crime.

Spokane Valley City Councilman Bill Gothmann pleaded to keep the school off the chopping block, as did Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich.

“If you take this away, you are taking the heart of the community away,” Knezovich said. The school is considered a “safe haven” for the community children under a federal grant that helps weed out crime in neighborhoods. It is facilitated through the Edgecliff SCOPE (Sheriff Community Oriented Policing Effort).

“I respect your dilemma … (but) just want you to consider the totality of your decision,” Knezovich said.

That dilemma for Spokane officials is finding ways to fill a budget hole created by state underfunding and a steady decline in enrollment. Since 1998, the district has lost nearly 2,000 students.

Pratt was initially selected for closure because it currently has the smallest enrollment – about 233 students – of all the district’s 35 elementary schools. Benzel also asked district staff to look at the impact Pratt’s closure would have on surrounding schools and programs.

A study examined 38 of the district’s buildings, excluding middle and high schools, and found that in addition to Pratt, others could be candidates for closure including Madison, Franklin and Adams elementary schools.

Because of the low enrollment, it costs the district $600 more per student at Pratt than at other schools, the study showed.

Pratt would also have the fewest number of boundary changes compared with the other three schools. According to the study, the majority of students would be sent to just two schools: Lincoln Heights and Sheridan.

The community may also still be able to use parts of the school.

But that provided little comfort to parents, who say they feel as though their concerns have fallen on deaf ears.

“I don’t know why they are putting us through all this,” said parent Angela Smilari. She said a lot of parents felt a decision had already been made, and the board is just “going through the motions.”

If history is any indication, they could be right.

The last time a school was closed – Loma Vista Elementary School in 1982 – the desperate pleas of the community had little influence.

Parents from the school resisted and voiced the same concerns: Closing the school would harm their children and destroy the neighborhood.

“It just created hardship for some families,” said Janet Munro, a former Loma Vista parent, who still lives in the northwest Spokane neighborhood. “The Loma population was split up, and sent off into three different groups.”

Exactly what the Pratt community fears.

Once the decision was made to close the school, parents threatened to sabotage the district’s levy and to not vote for school board members. They even tried to reverse the decision by claiming that the building the children were transferred to was infested with termites.

Pratt’s Lampe-Martin threatened only “sleepless nights” for the current board if they close Pratt.

“You can probably look back in history and every cut has affected someone in some way or another,” said school board Vice President Garret Daggett. “We have to weigh all the options and make the best decision out of the information that we have.”

Daggett said the community’s input will play a role in the board’s final decision April 25.

“They are the folks in the trenches,” Daggett said. “But the bottom line is … we need to go into our next school year with a balanced budget. Unfortunately something is going to have to give.”