School board weighing the potential closure of Beitel Elementary
The board has already started looking at cuts it’ll have to make when it passes a new budget next summer. Nothing’s set in stone, but an early list of proposed cuts has teachers and parents worried.
The Albany County School Board discussed closing Beitel Elementary School this week, kicking off what is likely to be a painful year-long conversation about cuts to the district budget.
The district is facing declining state contributions, declining student enrollment and aging school facilities. This crunch resulted in a budget cut this summer of more than $1 million, which included eliminating some sports teams, scaling back field trips, and cutting insurance and raises for educators.
“The budget issues the district faces did not just suddenly happen,” Superintendent John Goldhardt told the board during its meeting Wednesday. “Please keep in mind that the state funding model has not aligned with the actual costs of providing a high quality education for every student. Last year, we were very grateful for the legislature providing what is referred to as an ECA, an estimated cost adjustment, which has funds to help with increased costs. However grateful we are for that, it was not enough to make up for many years of not aligning costs with needs.”
So this month, at the direction of the board, the superintendent prepared a preliminary list of cost saving measures for consideration.
That list included changing class schedules, cutting most middle and high school classes with fewer than 15 students, and instituting districtwide “reductions in force” — meaning teacher or staff layoffs.
But the most controversial recommendations came under the heading of changes to “facilities and programs.”
According to a recent study commissioned by the school board, the district is projected to lose almost 300 elementary students in the next five years. That’s right around the average enrollment for a local elementary school — so the superintendent’s list recommends “trustees close one elementary school effective the end of the current school year and redraw the boundaries of all remaining elementary schools for equity, future enrollments, and building capacities.”
Specifically, Goldhardt recommended closing Beitel.
It’s the oldest elementary school in the district at 71 years old, its projected enrollment decline is particularly steep, and a majority of the school-aged youth living in the Beitel area do not actually go to Beitel. Instead, the elementary school has been losing students to charters and other district schools.
Again drawing from the recently commissioned study, Goldhardt said the Beitel area, at last count, had 436 elementary school-aged children. But just 186 of those children actually attended Beitel.
“So where do the rest go?” Goldhardt asked. According to the superintendent:
34 went to Indian Paintbrush;
11 went to Linford;
52 went to Spring Creek;
31 went to Slade;
Five went to Rock River;
One went to Harmony;
19 went to Laramie Montessori Charter
60 went to Snowy Range Academy Charter
41 went to the UW Lab School.
“That totals 254 students who live in the Beitel boundary that go to a different school,” Goldhardt said.
(Beitel also picks up students from other areas, but far fewer than it loses — its total enrollment is 216; data on homeschooled students, Goldhardt said, is lacking.)
But those are the hard, cold numbers, and the teachers and parents who turned out Wednesday night to oppose the shuttering of Beitel argued the school is more than just its headcount.
“We're a family,” said Crystal Graf, speaking as both a teacher and a parent. “You don't shut a family down.”
Meghan Siebigteroth, a teacher new to Beitel but not to the district, said she had never been involved in a school community “as strong as Beitel.”
“I just urge you to consider what it could do to the entire community of Laramie by breaking up such an incredibly strong school community,” Siebigteroth said. “The last thing that I would like to say is that my students are bound and ready to go to save our school. They're coming up with fundraising ideas. They're talking to their parents. They've written letters … I have students who haven't written anything for me this year that put down a lot of words on these papers.”
Goldhardt reiterated that his recommendations were just that — recommendations — and that any action would have to be discussed and voted on by the board, with opportunities for public comment along the way.
“They are not a done deal,” he said.
Addressing the various public commenters who showed up Wednesday to share their thoughts, Goldhardt said he found “zero enjoyment” in making recommendations like these.
“In fact, I'll be quite honest with you: it is gut-wrenching and painful,” he said. “Schools are more than buildings. That was shared tonight and I agree. They are community. They are development centers. They are reading centers. They are care centers. They are places, especially elementary schools, where we become readers, where we learn math, where we learn how to get along with other people and where we learn how to play and have a fundamental foundation for our lives.”
But Goldhardt said he had to weigh that value against the district’s need to “right-size” its budget. He said closing Beitel and redistributing its students to other elementaries would save more than $261,000 immediately.
Goldhardt and various trustees thanked the teachers and parents for showing up, saying this is the involvement they want to see as budget cut talks continue throughout the year.
“I get emails that have comments like, ‘How was this cut good for children?’” Trustee Nate Martin said. “Budget cuts aren’t good for children. Budget cuts aren't good for education. We're trying to figure out what's the least bad thing.”
Trustee Beth Bear said COVID had an effect on student numbers.
“But these numbers are not rebounding and the students are not returning to our district,” she said. “I can certainly understand the emotion around closing Beitel and I feel it too. I think it's important to look at the facts and information we have at hand when considering this major decision.”
Bear also encouraged parents, teachers and other residents to attack the root of the problem.
“I urge each and every one of you to also contact your legislators,” she said. “The district’s financial realities are a direct result of chronic underfunding by the legislature for the last decade. They've not upheld their constitutional duty to fully fund education in Wyoming.”