Lakeville may close school; board wants more information

Lakeville could probably close an elementary school and still have enough space for students, but the school board wants to know more before heading down that path.

The school district, which just sliced $6 million from its budget for next year, faces another $5 million in cuts for 2010-11. Closing one of its nine elementary schools in 2010 could be a reasonable way to save some of that money, Superintendent Gary Amoroso has told the board.

But board members, who talked about the idea on Wednesday, said they want to learn more about the district's facility needs and elementary school services before taking any big steps.

The district hasn't decided which school it might consider closing, Amoroso said, but parents at several schools are already worried it could be theirs. A lot of the buzz is about Orchard Lake, the district's oldest and smallest elementary, said School Board Member Jim Skelly.

"Nobody comes up and says, 'Are you going to close Oak Hills?'" which is the district's newest elementary, Skelly said. "They say, 'Oh, Orchard Lake must be the one you're thinking of.'"

The prospect upsets parents like Diane Skoog, 35, who went to Orchard Lake as a child and now sends three daughters to the school. "I think it would be devastating, actually, for our kids," she said, adding that the school, partly because it's small, is close-knit. "I don't understand where the positives would be" of closing a school, she said. "I think there are other places they could cut."

But there's anxious talk at other schools, too, and enrollment and square footage aren't the only things that matter, Amoroso said. Here's one factor that came up at Wednesday's meeting: Many of the district's elementary schools are clustered in northern Lakeville. Enrollment projections suggest that the town won't need a new elementary school for many years, but some district leaders think that, when the time comes, it will make more sense to build one further south.

Lakeville's nine elementary schools are designed to hold just under 5,300 students, with the smallest school built for 475. Right now, the district has about 4,860 elementary students, but a recent report predicts that number will drop by 35 to 200 in the next five years.

"We would probably be able to house the number of children projected, but we would probably have to use rooms in ways that they weren't intended for," Amoroso said.

An early estimate shows that closing a school could save the district $850,000, mostly in staff costs, he said. The district would still need teachers for the students, but it could save on salaries for a principal, janitors and others who work in the building.

If a school closed, it wouldn't be mothballed, he said. The district could put the building to a variety of uses, such as leasing the property, transforming it into administrative offices or turning it over to an existing school program that now leases space.

It's unclear when the district will be ready to make a decision, but the board hopes to tackle cuts for 2010-11 this summer.

"I think the board should lock arms and say we need to pursue this issue for the financial savings that it could provide," Skelly said at Wednesday's board meeting.

Other board members sounded less certain, including Michelle Volk. "I would prefer that we get into the model of raising revenues by bringing in other children [from outside the district], and I think Lakeville could do that very well," she said.