Friday December 3, 2021
Outside the St. Paul Public Schools headquarters on an unusually warm December night, Yasmin Muridi, a bilingual family liaison at Highwood Hills Elementary, high-fived staffers from Wellstone Elementary.
Families from both of those schools had successfully fought off the district’s plans to close their schools. LEAP High School, which serves new immigrant students, also escaped closure. The revised plan, which keeps Highwood Hills, LEAP, and Wellstone open, passed the board on a 5–2 vote.
Around 50 community members filled the boardroom for a two-hour meeting to watch the vote, some wearing LEAP sweatshirts or holding Wellstone yard signs. The final plan will close six schools.
Outside the school-board meeting, sighs of relief mixed with sadness for the schools that will close and trepidation over next steps.
Abdi Barkat, a software engineer and Highwood Hills father who led the school’s parent response, said the win had not come easily. Every day for weeks, he came to meetings after school to fight for his children’s school.
“I’m feeling good, but also I’m feeling devastated for closing other schools, too,” he said. “I care for all of the kids to get the same education my kids are getting. That’s the fairness.”
Following weeks of outcry from immigrant families, board members revised the original plan to also shutter LEAP High School, Highwood Hills Elementary, and Wellstone Elementary.
At LEAP, new immigrant students explained that the small school has provided a safe place for them to learn English.
At Highwood Hills, where many students are Somali, the school serves as a valuable community hub for the relatively isolated neighborhood. And at Wellstone, home to a dual-immersion program in Spanish and English as well as a BioSmart science track, families pointed out that the student population and course offerings meet the district criteria for a sustainable school.
The final version of the plan, dubbed Envision SPPS, will close six schools in a consolidation effort to provide all students with a “well-rounded education”—a term that includes specialists in subjects like art, science, and world languages. Administration officials proposed the plan as the district faces steeply declining enrollment. By providing better education at all schools, they reasoned, the district would be more likely to retain current students and attract future ones.
But while parents, staff, and school-board members expressed relief that some of the schools would stay open under the revised proposal, even those leading the plan expressed uneasiness about school closures.
“I know that no matter what the data say, closing a school is traumatic for students, families and staff,” Superintendent Joe Gothard wrote in an email to district families.
“Closing schools is the last thing that I, members of my leadership team, or board members want to do. But when our current enrollment reality is negatively impacting our ability to provide every student with the education and services they need and deserve, something has to change.”
Jim Vue, the board’s vice chair, spearheaded the plan revision that spared Wellstone, LEAP, and Highwood Hills—a decision arrived at through a consensus process with other board members, he said.
Yet before the vote, Vue, a father of four students in St. Paul Public Schools, expressed hesitation.
“Earlier today as I was getting ready to come here tonight and vote on this proposal, my son came home from school and said, ‘Dad, don’t close my school,’” Vue said. His seventh-grade son’s school, Parkway Montessori Middle School, did not get a reprieve. “I realized I hadn’t really grappled with the fact that I’m closing his school.”
Vue then asked the rest of the board to consider the possibility of closing no schools next year.