Parents are relieved to hear Unit 5's final proposal to school board members is to approve a plan that keeps Carlock School and maintains Glenn Elementary as-is.
A parent who fought to keep Unit 5 from closing Carlock Elementary said the district's recommendation to keep it open feels like victory.
“To be able to tell my children tonight that we did it, we were heard, they listened, might be the most important lesson I ever teach my kids—and that's a pretty powerful thing to be a part of. So, incredibly grateful; incredibly thankful," said Jillian Nelson with the Keep Carlock Open advocacy group.
But the proposal that Unit 5 Superintendent Kristen Weikle presented during a virtual meeting on Thursday does not provide the long-term security Carlock parents were hoping for when it comes to enrollment.
Carlock was initially proposed to close due to enrollment, which hovers around 100 students.
The consulting firm Cropper GIS characterized that as “unsustainable.”
The previous proposal to save Carlock would have netted the grade school about 50 students with a new open enrollment neighborhood. But because of public concerns that it would have a heavy impact on disadvantaged groups, all open enrollment additions were cut from the proposal presented Thursday.
So, this gives Carlock only one way to remain sustainable in the future: grow.
“We have lots of buildings going up, but it takes time for residential buildings to get built and a few families to move in,” said Nelson. “But when your school is on the chopping block, I mean, I have a first grader and a sixth grader, and this is my second time going through this in no less than four years.”
And that uncertainty has made it harder to gain students using attendance exceptions.
Attendance exceptions are different from open enrollment. Open enrollment allows specific neighborhoods to have two possible schools to attend, rather than being in only one school’s district. Attendance exceptions allow a student to apply to attend a school in Unit 5 that is different from the one they are zoned for.
A number of students use this rule to attend Carlock, but it requires Unit 5 to approve an application each year.
“It's not very well advertised or leveraged by the district,” said Nelson. “And if you are an attendance exception family considering your schools, you're less likely to consider a school that potentially is threatened for closure frequently.”
Nelson added Carlock families will continue to seek communication with the Unit 5 administration while the school builds enrollment.
“We want to make sure that we partner together and we don't just do this, and then we all go about our business and, you know, back to our lives, and then in two years, we're having this exact same conversation,” she said.
“That's why we want to work with them and partner with them to avoid it, so that it's good for the district and it's good for the Carlock kids and the Carlock community as well.”
Glenn parent 'ecstatic'
The proposal coming to a school board vote next Wednesday also does not displace the current students of Glenn Elementary School to make room for the Unit 5 transitional services program.
“We're ecstatic. I’m personally ecstatic,” said Kevin Bersett, a Glenn parent who became involved in school board meetings to argue against the school’s closure before a potential plan was officially laid out in February. “I'm really happy that the district appears to have taken in our feedback.”
The proposal adds students from Parkside Elementary School to alleviate enrollment pressures there. Students in the Golfcrest Road area, just south of Raab Road, would be reassigned to Glenn. Students would join the bus route that already takes students from the nearby Orlando Avenue area to Glenn.
Superintendent Kristen Weikle said during the presentation Thursday night that Glenn was chosen to take in these students for a number of reasons: It provides an easier way to transport kids than a rural school would, has the capacity to take in more kids and has a low number of free and reduced lunch students.
“I think it's great, I mean, the more viable they can keep the school, the better,” said Bersett. “And we'd welcome those families in.”
Bersett also said the experience of campaigning across the Glenn Elementary area has led to a positive impact on the neighborhood.
“I think one of the lasting effects is that we have a really dynamic — and I think you’d say that we saw the same thing in Carlock — some really dynamic people that love the public schools, right? That love their school, and that now are brought together, and now it formed like a mini-community,” he said.
“It was just really uplifting, inspiring, to be around them and kind of try to sort through this and kind of pushback in an organized way,” Bersett said.
The Unit 5 school board will make a final decision on its school realignment plans on Wednesday night.
