At its April 13 board meeting, the
Puyallup School Board took the next step in the process of deciding
whether to close Hilltop Elementary, the smallest of the district’s 22
elementary schools.
The board unanimously approved a resolution initiating a 90-day time frame to consider closing the North Hill school.
During the next three months, the
board of directors will accept public testimony on the potential school
closure and review a comprehensive analysis on the subject. The board
requested the study during its March 23 meeting.
The full report (pdf, 3.2Mb), which was shared at Monday’s board meeting, is available on this district Web site.
A public hearing on the
potential closure will be held on June 10, with a final decision
scheduled to be made at the July 13, 2009 school board meeting.
Board President Greg Heath
encourages community members to study the analysis of the potential
school closure and share their comments. In addition to making their
voices heard at the public hearing, citizens may e-mail comments on this district Web site.
Heath stressed that the board will review all comments and suggestions and that no decision will be made until July.
Superintendent recommendation
Superintendent Tony Apostle
recommends the board consider closing Hilltop Elementary, citing both
educational and financial reasons.
“I believe the time has
arrived and the data points strongly suggest” that Hilltop Elementary be
closed and consolidated with Northwood and Mt. View elementary schools,
the other two sites on North Hill serving students in kindergarten
through grade six, Apostle said.
“When are small schools too
small?” Apostle said. “I offer that when they offer inequitable
resources to students, they are too small. When they become too
expensive to operate and take away valuable resources from all students,
they are too small. When they offer fewer educational opportunities and
they offer limited diverse social development for students, they are
too small.”
Apostle’s comments followed a
comprehensive report by Rudy Fyles, executive director of facilities,
who outlined enrollment patterns, financial considerations, facility
planning, and projected growth over the next 12 years in the North Hill
region.
Enrollment
Hilltop Elementary has
experienced a continuous decline of students for more than a decade,
Fyles said. In the past 13 years the school has dropped a third of its
enrollment, serving 102 fewer students between October 1995 and October
2008.
The school, located adjacent
to Edgemont Junior High, is the smallest elementary school in the
district with 211 students enrolled last October.
If Hilltop Elementary closes
next year, enrollment at Northwood Elementary would jump from 265
students this year to 381 in the fall. Mt. View Elementary would
increase from 294 this year to 369. Both Northwood and Mt. View
elementary schools have room to serve the additional students, Fyles
said.
Hilltop Elementary staff
members would be realigned throughout the school district, said Lorraine
Wilson, assistant superintendent of human resources.
While it is difficult to project
future growth in the region because of the unstable economy, the
Northwood Elementary master plan calls for adding portable classrooms if
necessary by 2014 and building a new 550-student or 750-student
elementary school to handle long-term enrollment growth.
Consolidating three schools
into two would save the district nearly $350,000 annually and is
included in $15.7 million worth of savings proposed in the 2009-10 draft
budget.
The school district, like others
around the state, is undergoing historically unprecedented budget cuts
due to the severely reduced funding from the state of Washington.
Closure idea spans several decades
The idea of closing Hilltop
Elementary is not new. Some of the earliest discussions of eventual
closure date to the mid-1980s. Fyles also presented documentation of
news articles that address a meeting in 1998 between the school board
and the Edgewood City Council.
The agenda included a presentation
and discussion of the search for a site for a new Edgemont Junior High.
More than 300 people attended the meeting, and discussion included
building the new Edgemont Junior High on the existing site with the
possibility of consolidating Hilltop Elementary with Northwood
Elementary within six to 12 years.
A year later, a committee of
citizens commissioned to review district facility needs recommended to
the school board Hilltop Elementary be consolidated with Northwood
Elementary at the 20-acre Northwood site within seven to 12 years.
“It is historically clear that
the consolidation of Hilltop has been discussed and planned for in
public venues for more than 10 years,” Fyles said.
Benefits of consolidation
By doing so, Edgemont Junior
High could eventually expand its classroom facilities and improve safety
by relocating the track and field to the Hilltop site, Fyles said. The
only way to access the track and field now is for students to cross 24th
Street.
Hilltop Elementary students
and teachers would also benefit from being served in an educational
environment where they are surrounded by more of their peers, Fyles
said. In the analysis presented Monday night, orchestra is mentioned as
one program that would benefit from the consolidation.
This year, for example, there
are two sixth-grade students in the Hilltop Elementary orchestra class.
While this provides students with more individual attention, the report
states that the limited instrumentation “deprives them of the
opportunity to have a full orchestra experience until they reach junior
high, while students in other schools are able to perform in larger
groups.”
Additionally, the resolution
approved by the board states there would be more opportunities for
teachers to team with their colleagues and participate in professional
development opportunities.
Hilltop Elementary School
opened in 1957 as part of a separate Edgemont School District and
consolidated with the Puyallup School District in 1967.
Related links