As Osseo schools are closing, other parents feel their pain

The news coverage of the Osseo School Board's decision last week to close and reorganize schools created some painful déjà vu for Mounds View district parent Terri Black.

"It was really hard to read that; I really felt for them," said Black, who saw her son through the closure of Pike Lake Elementary School in 2005 and the transition to his new school, Bel Air Elementary.

"You deal with what you've got, and it worked out just fine. Things always do."

Black served one year as co-president on a merged PTA, and since has stepped back to let others lead. Her son, now a fifth-grader, is fine, she said.

But that doesn't mean the process was easy.

"It was like when you get married and move into your spouse's home that they already owned," she said. "It's nice, but it's not what it used to be for us."

Three years ago, as the Mounds View School Board was deciding to address declining enrollment and a growing operating deficit by closing two elementary schools, parents protested the loss of neighborhood schools, worried about increased class sizes and warned of the toll the disruption would cause in their kids' lives, in ways jarringly similar to what's happening in the Osseo district. As enrollment continues to drop in districts across the metro area, the story may continue to replay elsewhere.

"I have had many, many, many parents come up to me and they still talk about it," said school board member Barb Bollum. "They say, 'It turned out OK. I never thought it would, but it was the right move, and the kids came through with flying colors.'"

Still, she said, "it was the most stressful, hardest decision I have ever had to make."

In the past two years, the district has more than met its projected savings and taxpayer relief, and is on track for its four-year savings of almost $7 million, said Carole Nielsen, the district's director of finance. Although the administration dropped plans to sell the unused school buildings, the alternative -- relocating district programs from leased spaces to the two former elementary schools -- will bring more property tax relief in the long run, she added.

The big move

Nicholas Elscott remembers his first day as a third-grader at Bel Air, which is in New Brighton.

His new teacher, Mrs. Raymond, was very welcoming, he added, and it was nice to see all his old Pike Lake library books in the media center.

Nicholas' mom's feelings are more mixed.

"We hated to see Pike Lake close because we liked that small feel of the school, but everyone has been so accommodating and so welcoming and warm at Bel Air that I think it was a good switch for us, looking at it now three years later," said Chris Elscott. "At the time, I would have said there's no other place for us but Pike Lake."

Margaret Adelsman is president of the PTA at Bel Air this year, and she was active the year the schools merged.

"We were ... trying to be the welcoming parenting group for this new pool of families, understanding that they were coming with a lot of emotion and certainly some reservations about what they were going to find when they came to Bel Air," she said. "I think we have successfully transitioned. There will always be some families that have some regret, as you would expect from the history you had at a given school."

'Growing pains'

Reading and writing teacher Marie Peterson moved with many of her kids to Bel Air, after 31 years at Pike Lake.

"There were growing pains," she said. "You take two schools that are right down the street from each other, but they have different cultures [so] that coming together was at times challenging. I do think, though, that the new whole that was created is certainly greater than the sum of its parts."

Looking back, does she think the school board made the right decision? "My head says yes, it was, there was really no other alternative," she said. "And my heart still says no."

For some, the schism remains too deep. After running Parents for Schools, an anti-closure blog that failed to halt the district's action, Carol Mager open-enrolled her two children in Mahtomedi schools. They've made the commute for two years, and now are looking for housing in that district.