Parents of students at Glenn Elementary School have taken their pleas to keep the school as it is to the Normal Town Council. Ideally, they would like to see the council release a statement of support for their cause.
One of two proposed fixes for enrollment imbalance in the Unit 5 school district would move the students there to Sugar Creek Elementary, so Glenn could house the district’s transitional services program for 18 to 22-year-olds.
Molly Derby has two daughters currently attending Glenn.
“A walkable elementary school in the heart of a downtown district is something that many communities work intentionally to create, not eliminate,” she said to the council at Monday’s regular meeting.
Derby is among a group of parents who believe the location of the school, between the Illinois State and Illinois Wesleyan University campuses, is too ideal to give up.
Karen and Mitch Brinker send their fifth grader, Rune, and third grader, Soren, to Glenn and live in the neighborhood, plus Mitch attended the school himself.
“We fully support the 18 to 22-year-old program. We know they desperately need a new facility; we just don’t want that to come at the expense of closing a neighborhood elementary school,” Mitch said.
The Brinkers said they love sending their kids to Glenn Elementary. The staff is like family, and their kids receive a quality education.
“They perform higher than the district and even, well, the state and the district averages on literacy,” Karen said. “They spend less per student than the district, there’s a lot of staff that are on district task forces, they pilot curriculum, there are several teachers that have been given awards.”
The Brinkers said they would like to see future families share in the culture of Glenn and develop ties like their own to the history of the school in Normal.
Since finding out about the proposed closure last month, the Brinker family has been working to advocate for keeping the school. They were surprised by the possibility, since prior negotiation had not made any mention of Glenn as a potential closure. Carlock Elementary's future garnered the most attention early on.
"So it was very much like a gut punch or a slap in the face,” said Karen. “We weren’t expecting it, and we were very quickly starting to mobilize.”
Karen is a teacher outside the district, so she understood the internal discussion which was now becoming public. However, she said plenty of families, including those of non-native English speakers, would be confused.
The Normal Town Council has no formal oversight or control over Unit 5. The Glenn parents sought their help anyway at the council's meeting Monday evening.
“There has not been a school board meeting since the proposals were announced, and I think that there’s also a local impact on closing a neighborhood school within a town, especially a historic neighborhood that Glenn is situated in,” said Mitch Brinker.
“We realize that the town council doesn’t have any say in what the district does or doesn’t do but at least getting our message out there and potentially getting some support from the town in our cause," he added.
Council member Andy Byars told the room he was surprised to see talks of the relocation, as items like the passage of the 1% countywide school sales tax have allocated additional resources to Unit 5.
“Just logically, I am a bit surprised to see that there’s talk of school closures after the community has supported the district with those extra resources,” he said. “I understand that there are different tough decisions that have to be made by school districts, but I recall the conversations being during those referendums about keeping our resources open.”
Byars told parents he would try to be of further assistance on the issue.
Council members Kathleen Lorenz and Scott Preston also echoed the sentiments of the parents.
