Chair candidates are critical of school closure plan
Neither candidate for the chair of Oklahoma City’s school board is supportive of a school closure plan announced by the district Monday in an effort to respond to state budget cuts.
Both Paula Lewis and Stanley Hupfeld, who emerged from a primary election earlier this year and will square off in an April 4 districtwide election, said they are not in favor of closing five elementary schools.
“Right now I don’t support it, but I support moving forward with the conversation and getting all the information,” said Lewis, who is currently a board member representing District 4.
Superintendent Aurora Lora said Oklahoma City Public Schools could save $1.2 million by closing Edgemere, Gatewood, F.D. Moon, Green Pastures and Johnson elementary schools. She has called for a series of community meetings to discuss the proposal, but there has already been strong pushback from parents, community members and city officials.
Hupfeld said closing
schools was the wrong way to address the district’s funding challenges.
“We should stop talking about the closure of schools and focus more on upgrading the buildings and increasing community partnerships,” Hupfeld said.
Hupfeld offered the example of taking F.D. Moon and making it a scienceand technologyfocused school that partners with local companies like General Electric and Boeing. He said that specific idea might not be doable, but he advocated for responding to funding challenges with a push for more private investment in schools that creates new opportunities.
“Something like that can accomplish cost savings but also get people excited about the school,” Hupfeld said.
Lora said the school closures would be part of a larger plan to slash between $4 million and $10 million from the district’s budget in anticipation of a nearly $900 million shortfall the state is projecting for the 2018 fiscal year.
But Lewis said there are details of the proposal that don’t make sense to her as she considers the estimated savings the district says closing five schools would generate.
“(Lora) said she intends to put the saved money back into the new schools, but that just doesn’t work for me if we are trying to save money,” Lewis said. “I feel like it is a rushed decision, but I understand the situation we are in and the Legislature has put us in this spot.
“I wish we would have looked at redistricting first to see if we could have also alleviated the overcrowding on the south side.”
Lora has asked the school board to make a decision by April 6, which would be two days after the chair election and elections for two other school board seats. But the newly elected members would not yet be on the board.
Both Lewis and Hupfeld said the decision to close schools should be delayed until well after the election, when as many as three new members could be a part of the eightmember school board.
“I would prefer to have the new board vote on it because the new board members are going to be saddled with this decision,” Lewis said.
Other board members also questioned the April 6 deadline.
“The idea of trying to make such a large change in our district in a matter of two weeks ... I don’t think it’s a fair amount of time to prepare students, families, communities, schools,” board member Gloria Torres said at Monday’s meeting.
Lewis and Hupfeld have said funding challenges have already been a topic of discussion for many voters and they expect the school closure proposal to dominate future conversations.
But neither chair candidate is a supporter of closing schools in the district.
“This should be the very last alternative,” Hupfeld said, “and we are not there yet.”