SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — The impact school closures would have on local communities and how the options for repurposing were created were among the concerns raised by parents and community members during a Scottsdale Unified School District board meeting on Tuesday, Sept. 8, at Coronado High School.
District Superintendent Scott A. Menzel said since 2010, SUSD enrollment has declined by more than 6,000 students. Due to this and rising costs of operation, SUSD is in the second phase of a three-phase repurposing plan. Two of the three repurposing options under consideration recommend closing Laguna Prep, an elementary school.
Chirag Makwana’s daughter just started at Laguna and he said he is worried about her having to start over at a new school with a new curriculum.
“[Laguna] seems to be a really good, unique school and we’re just wanting to make sure it is all the same if it's gonna be replaced with something else,” Makwana said.
Makwana also said he is concerned about his daughter attending a school farther from their newly purchased home, which is just down the street from Laguna.
But for community members facing the very real possibility of closure, the impact the closures would have on their families is only part of their concern. Shortly after the board’s discussion about the various options for repurposing, Laguna parent Melissa Miles alleged that while the Phase II advisory committee was supposed to create the repurposing options to recommend to the board, they were actually presented with pre-made options.
“All the data was very much skewed to have Laguna close,” she said. “I know about creative accounting and that was what was done. There was creative accounting to close Laguna. It was already decided.”
In an email statement provided by Communications Manager Cymphanie Sherman, SUSD said, “Characterizing the committee’s work as using ‘creative accounting’ or relying on ‘wrong data’ is a misrepresentation of the facts and of the conversations and deliberations that occurred among committee members.”
It also added that a decision to close Laguna had not been predetermined, and the committee was presented with models to use as a starting point before adding additional models.
During public comment, other parents expressed concern that the enrollment numbers used to determine the three final options for repurposing were incorrect.
However, in the same email statement, the district said two forms of enrollment were considered throughout the process — program capacity and physical capacity. Specialized programs require dedicated instructional spaces and, as a result, a school’s programmatic capacity can be “considerably lower” than its physical capacity.
“Neither capacity measure, however, served as a single decision point or threshold for determining which schools were included in a model,” the district said.
It added that the committee was given multiple ways to examine the possible capacity and considered those numbers alongside other factors, including student and family impact, financial sustainability, facility utilization and long-term viability.
However, Miles was also worried about the district's lack of long-term planning.
“Why does it feel so rushed? All of a sudden we’re closing four schools in two years,” Miles said. Earlier this year, SUSD shut the doors of Echo Canyon K-8 and repurposed Pima Elementary into Pima School and Pima District Annex, serving as the district’s special education hub.
Superintendent Menzel said that because of declining enrollment, the district is spending money on underutilized facilities, which is money that can’t go to educators.
“I fundamentally believe that our teachers deserve more,” Menzel said.
However, Laguna parent Sydney Cobb feels that closing schools won’t solve the underlying problem – what she called the "hemorrhage" of students from the district.
She also said she was concerned with the way the district handled the closure of Echo Canyon. Cobb said SUSD planned to continue Echo Canyon’s early childhood program, which is similar to a Laguna program, but two weeks before school started, notified parents and teachers that the program was moving to a campus 20 minutes away.
“I’m really looking tonight to make sure that that’s not going to happen to our incredible early childhood teachers,” Cobb said.
No decision on repurposing was made during the meeting. The board will host a public hearing on Sept. 22 in the Desert Mountain High School auditorium, and a final decision is expected to be made during the next board meeting on Oct. 6.