May 3, 2004 2 min read

Any time a school board votes to permanently close a school – especially an elementary school – a battalion will form to fight the inevitable. The Laurel Highlands School Board voted to start next fall with just four elementary schools. Kennedy Elementary, a slim majority on the board decided, needed too many costly structural repairs and there are too few students to justify having five schools. The financially-strapped district estimates that it will save $500,000 a year with the closing. This was an extremely tough, and potentially politically suicidal decision.

Only five of the nine board members voted this way. The other four aren’t convinced and are more than willing to entertain a litany of pleas from parents, and even school kids willing to collect box tops and soup labels to save their school. Their passion is moving. Their conviction that their neighborhood school is the best school for their children is touching. There is much to be said about dedicated parents and students who exhibit pride in their school.

But those feelings are transferable. These kids won’t be singled out and set into foreign classrooms. They will move with their peers – friends they’ve made since kindergarten – together to a new building. They won’t be alone in the transition. The decision has been made, even if some board members and parents don’t like it. It shouldn’t be unmade without extremely good cause. The board needs to look at the overall interests of the entire district, all of its students and all of its taxpayers.

What the parents of Kennedy have to say is important, but would they be trying to save this particular school if they didn’t have a child enrolled? Each of these parents should ask themselves if they would carry on this fight if their child was a few years older and already in middle school. If the answer is no, then they owe it to their children to help them make the adjustment with little fuss. Kids, for the most part, are more resilient than parents give them credit for. But they do take their cues from their parents and will believe what they are told about the closing and move to a new school.