Sitting at a small picnic table in Minneapolis' Luxton Park, Halimo Hashi's eyes grew large when she said that Pratt Community School, where two of her children go, means "everything" to nearby Somali families.

Her friend Shamso Ahmed learned to speak English in adult classes at Pratt, a K-5 school that will close next year if the Minneapolis school board approves the district's downsizing plan tonight. Once a month, Somali moms go to the school for a breakfast club. Their children walk the five minutes to school in a caravan, the "walking bus" they call it, so they don't have to go alone.

"It is our light," Hashi said Friday. "We support Pratt, we don't want it to close."

Pratt is one of four schools that would close next year as the district attempts to deal with years of declining enrollment and multimillion-dollar deficits.

But Pratt's story -- the story of parents fighting for a school they believe in against the district's very real and pressing reasons to close it -- is echoed citywide. Anxieties that Pratt parents feel are also felt by parents of the nearly 5,800 students who could be affected by the plan.

"If we lose the school, we lose the community, too," Hashi said.

Fighting the closure

Pratt is the smallest school in the Minneapolis district, with 159 students. Parents laud its diversity: 60 percent of the school's students are black, about a quarter are white, and American Indian, Asian and Hispanic students make up the rest of the student body. Three-quarters of the students qualify for free and reduced-price lunches.

The school has closed before -- the Minneapolis school board voted in 1982 to shutter Pratt, which is in Prospect Park. The school reopened in 2000 after the community rallied for it. The district has considered closing it several times since then.

The prospect of Pratt closing "completely cut down on enrollment," said parent Natasha DeVoe. "We have people who come to visit and that's what they ask about: 'I hear that it's closing.'"

According to the district, the school building is too small to enroll enough students to generate funding for school programs, and it's at only 40 percent of its capacity. Forty-six students living in the school's attendance area go to Pratt, and students are bused to it from 17 other attendance areas in the district.

Principal Annie Wade said that the school's biggest challenge is keeping enrollment at a sustainable level.

But parents adore the school. Its diversity, they say, means students can understand other cultures. Its size means students can get one-on-one attention.

Laquita Williams, whose daughter Jasmine is in first grade, said she was a nervous mom when it came to choosing a school for her eldest child. She did a lot of research, and Pratt appealed to her because of its diversity, not only economically, or racially, but educationally, she said.

Parents cover the spectrum from those with GEDs to a Harvard grad, doctors and lawyers, and the children of professors at the nearby University of Minnesota, she said.

"I thought, 'My baby is going to be well rounded if she gets to spend eight hours with all these folks,'" Williams said. "She's going to be better off than I was when I entered college and had culture shock because I was only exposed to people like me."

'It's Pratt'

Under the downsizing plan, the city will be divided into three attendance zones, which will dictate how students are assigned to schools. It could end up affecting as many as one-fifth of the district's 32,000 students and save as much as $8.2 million a year. That's the equivalent of about 100 teaching positions.

Because of previous plans to close Pratt, parents are used to fighting for their school, and winning.

Parents flocked to a community meeting at Washburn High School last week to be heard. Somali parents packed a van with more than a dozen people for the trip across town.

"I don't think it will close," said Ayan Mohamud, who has two children at Pratt.

Mohamud never went to school, but her children have learned to speak, read and write in English. They've taught her how to speak English, too.

A nonprofit, East Side Neighborhood Services, provides after-school reading programs for struggling students. A full-time East Side staff member works with the school, helping with issues such as truancy and homelessness.

If the school does close, the district says that the students will likely go to Sullivan, a K-8 program that is almost 2 miles away, or Pillsbury, a K-5 program that is more than 4 miles away.

But many Pratt parents would consider taking a badly needed resource away from the Minneapolis public schools if that happens: their children.

Mom Sarah Holtman, who teaches philosophy at the University of Minnesota, is a big supporter of public schools because she thinks it's important to educate children together, as a society.

"It would challenge my principles to send Eliza to a school that wasn't a public school," she said of her daughter, a kindergartner. But Holtman said she would do it if she couldn't find a public school that would serve Eliza well. She and her husband want a school where their daughter can get a good education, but also become a citizen of the world.

Holtman hasn't tried to find that school yet.

"It's because I know where the school is," she said. "It's down the street from my house. It's Pratt."

Emily Johns • 612-673-7460