Closing Bouquet Canyon Elementary and Other “False” Choices

Late this afternoon, after reading the well written yet not quite micro-economically correct guest column signed by 59 Bouquet  Canyon Elementary Parents http://www.the-signal.com/news/article/23358/, I went to check on the web page/discussion forum the Saugus Union School District (“SUSD”) set up for the issue of school closures and boundary changes  and found it closed down.  If the parents wanted an answer to their question this said it in spades.  Without doubt the SUSD board will vote on January 26 to permanently “close” the fifteen year temporary campus built entirely of “relocatable” buildings.

This brings to a close the periodic kabuki dance of local institutions where they attempt to couch a choice already made in terms they think will be more palatable to their consituencies, and perhaps even to themselves.

As school demographic data shows, the  SUSD during the last ten years went on an elementary school building spree when enrollment was effectively flat, so now they find themselves “long” about three elementary schools and will close one permanently and one “temporarily.”

Now the SUSD leadership thought to account for this with the issue of the day:  State budget problems trickling down to the elementary schools.  While this is true, the 600K (probably inflated) cost of operating a school saved by closing Bouquet Canyon would cover only about 8% of  the budget shortfall forecast.  The SUSD will need significant concessions  from its teachers’ union to balance the books for the coming year.  When pressed on the issue of cost savings Superintendent Fish said they would close the school anyway because of old portables that need to be replaced.  (Now if you want to keep the school open you are putting the lives of children in jeopardy!)

I don’t know why the school officials could not be honest with the poor parents who took a school with absolutely “crummy” facilities and made lemon out of lemonade, placing in the top API ranks regularly.  But then they were told year after year that they would have a “permanent” school someday, but each year without construction should have notified the parents that this would not happen.  Helping the officials is the fact that families eventually age out of the elementary school so one can tell the same untruth to the new families.

The truth:  Developers pay school construction fees but negotiate that the schools will be built in their NEW tracts to make homes more saleable.  This robs the SUSD of flexibility in managing their infrastructure and leads to the bad luck of this current group  of Bouquet Canyon families with the chairs suddenly pulled away when the demographic music stopped.

And a hint to Emblem families where their school is being  closed “temporarily” to facilitate the building of a new classroom facility.  When fall comes and there is no excavation or grading, get used to the idea of losing your neighborhood school.