School closing marathon

The Journal Sentinel published two articles (here and here) about a school board hearing attempting to close four schools. Two articles were needed because the hearing ran to 1:30 in the morning, way past the paper's deadline.

The meeting ran so long because all four schools recruited administrators, teachers, and some parents to come to the meeting and protest the closings. This is standard operating procedure in the case of school closing. It is almost a total waste of time, particularly for board members. The speakers stress that the closing is traumatic for those at the schools, which everyone probably assumed already. The almost never offer any information that would challenge the analysis that led to those schools being placed on the list (as the result of low enrollment and poor achievement ranks mostly).

I happened to tune into a short section of the hearing on my way home from teaching a class. It all seemed very familiar, very predictable, and very depressing. There were a couple of oddments: according to one speaker, the school board was closing schools and building prisons. Another speaker against a school closing appeared to be married to the administrator in charge of the closings.

So far as I could tell, no one suggested a better way of identifying schools for closing. Yet by keeping all schools open, all schools will have fewer resources.