Sadly, the fate of Abby and Zach's school has been decided. It will close at the end of next year. State budget cuts, decreasing property values and a failed levy all contributed the closing of several elementary schools in our city.
We currently have 26 kids in each classroom, and that number is expected to rise to 30 when the schools are consolidated. The school Zach is most likely going to attend (here in our neighborhood) already teaches its overflow classes in trailers.
In addition, all arts programs (both curricular and extra-curricular) are slated to be cut completely. Katie will no longer have the strings program, none of them will have art classes, and even gym class may disappear.
Abby will get to finish elementary school at Hanby, but we don't know yet where Zach will be.
It's so sad to see such a wonderful school forced to close its doors. Such a pathetic state of affairs in our country when we can spend 3/4 of a billion dollars ($150 million over budget) building the U.S. Embassy in Iraq (larger than 94 football fields), but can't find the pocket change to sustain a high quality elementary school (with some of the highest test scores in the district). Talk about warped priorities.
(First floor murals completed by students as a math lesson. The mural, which runs the length of the building, is a scale replica of uptown. The 5th graders who painted the mural had to calculate all the measurements before painting.)
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