The mayor of Carlock says the potential closure of her town’s elementary school could be devastating to her community.
Unit 5 leaders have said Carlock Elementary School will need to close starting with the 2024-25 school year, as part of budget cuts aimed at a $12 million deficit. Unit 5 leaders said those cuts will be avoided only if voters approve the tax referendum in Tuesday’s election.
Rhonda Baer is mayor of Carlock, a village of about 550 people located just northwest of Bloomington-Normal. She attended Carlock school. So did her parents and her own kids. Her grandson is there now. She said business growth and new-home construction is happening in Carlock, and that the school is a big reason why people move there.
“It is kind of the center of the community,” Baer said. “What happens to the (Carlock library) if that school disappears and people decide not to come to Carlock anymore? What happens to the local businesses? What happens to the property values? It’s a huge impact. It would be devastating to this community.”
The tax referendum failed once before, in November. In that election, 67% of voters in the two precincts that primarily feed Carlock’s school voted against the referendum. That was before the Unit 5 school board targeted the school for closure, although Baer said the idea has been floated previously.
Baer declined to say how she’ll vote on the referendum.
“I know the Unit 5 board doesn’t like us to use the word ‘threat,’ but it is. It’s threatening to us. So, when you use those tactics, it could scare people into saying, ‘Well, we have to vote (yes) on it because this will happen.’ But it could also turn people the other way. I don’t know how people are going to vote. I don’t have a good feel for it.”
Baer said she wished Unit 5’s school board had done more to engage with Carlock’s leadership about the future of the elementary school, which has around 114 students.
“I wished they would have come out and spoken with the Village Board,” Baer said. “I wished they would have engaged, to have a conversation with us, to see if there was something we could do also to work with them, to find ways to make things more sustainable. I think the board that I have in place is really good at solving problems and reaching out and trying to find solutions.”
More broadly, Baer said she’s worried that people don’t recognize the value of McLean County’s smaller towns.
“We provide some good things for McLean County and Bloomington-Normal residents. In most cases, there’s cheaper housing in communities for those who maybe don’t want to live in a big metro area. We provide rural recreational areas. Rural settings where people can get out of the city. Lots of small towns have different restaurants and little boutiques where people can get away. Without the housing we have here in the smaller towns – which actually is in a shortage now – Bloomington-Normal would be maybe in a crunch if they didn’t have some of these small towns for people to migrate to. I just wish there was a real recognition that we’re a vital part of the county,” she said.
Unit 5 Superintendent Kristen Weikle spoke about the planned Carlock closure at the school board’s Jan. 31 meeting.
“One of the considerations in looking at Carlock vs. maybe another school, the size of the enrollment in the school is one thing,” Weikle said. “We’re also looking at, do we have room to add let’s say a second section of each grade level? And we don’t. We’re really limited with space at Carlock. Our other schools – in almost in every situation – we have two or more sections. That is relevant because when we talk about being efficient with our dollars for staff, if there are more students who can be at a school, and you can spread out between two, three or four sections, you can spread those students out, versus where you have those anomalies where man, we have 32 students but do we add a second teacher? Well, at Carlock right now, we’re limited even with spacing. That’s certainly a challenge we face there.”
Bear said this is not the first time Carlock has faced the potential of losing its school.
“People understand the numbers, and we’re small. We don’t have the tax base. We don’t have the voters. We understand why we’d be the first targeted,” Baer said. “I obviously don’t want to see the school close. I’d like Unit 5 to be a little bit more engaged with their rural community schools. I like to tell people, it’s McLean County Unit 5. Not Bloomington-Normal Unit 5. It’s frustrating.”
