Board votes unanimously to shut Cascade, Eastgate

STEVE MANHEIM / CHRONICLE

Members of the public attend the Elyria Board of Education meeting on Thursday.

ELYRIA — No amount of pleading Wednesday night could keep two beloved neighborhood schools open and save the jobs of 24 teachers and guidance counselors.

“It’s out of our hands,” Elyria Schools Superintendent Paul Rigda said before the school board voted unanimously to shutter Cascade and Eastgate elementaries.

The decision came after a three-hour question-and-answer session about plans to solve ongoing money problems.

“Do not lay off any of our teachers,” said resident Diane McCullough, one of about 100 people who gathered in the Elyria High School auditorium. “Our teachers are great. They are what make our schools, not the buildings.”

McCullough said her 6-year-old daughter, who is in first grade at Cascade, lost both her teachers in the board’s vote.

Those 24 teachers received notice last week that their jobs were on the line, and when the news spread to the students, McCullough’s daughter ran home in tears.

“She was devastated, crying the whole day when she found out,” McCullough said.

Others begged the board to reconsider, including resident Tracy Caden, who has five children in the Elyria Schools. She said two of them attend Cascade, and she asked for more time to find an alternative solution to the closures.

“Give Cascade parents and myself the chance to raise more money for our schools,” she said, breaking into tears. “How would you feel if it were your children being displaced, and you lost your jobs because of dollars and cents?”

Diana Gregory, a crossing guard for the Elyria police, said the school board’s decision means six Eastgate-area guards and three more at Cascade might lose their jobs, too.

But Rigda said there’s not much else the district can do.

Enrollment in Elyria has dropped from about 9,250 in 1995 to 7,100 today, he said, and each student that leaves takes about $2,700 in state funding with them.

And that trend isn’t slowing: Rigda predicts by 2012, the schools will have only 6,600 students.

“The decline in enrollment scares me,” he said. “What we’re buying right now is time.”

Closing Cascade and Eastgate will save about $1.1 million a year and slashing staff will reduce costs by another $1.3 million a year, Rigda said.

That should be enough to stave off predicted shortfalls of about $7 million in 2011 and $14 million by 2012, he said, but in reality it only prolongs the inevitable.

Even with all the cuts, the Elyria Schools could still be $3 million in the red by 2012, even if three renewal levies on the ballot pass this fall and next spring, Ridga said.

The three levies combined bring in $14 million, and the amount that homeowners now pay won’t grow if they are renewed, he said.

This is not the first time the district has reduced its workforce. The district has cut 53 other positions in the past couple of years — and it’s certainly not the first time it’s closed a school.

Rigda said there were 17 elementary schools and five junior high schools when he started working for the district in the 1970s. Two junior highs and five elementary schools were closed in 1979 amidst the same enrollment problems, and continued drops forced two more elementary buildings and a high school to close in 1996.

At least for the teachers, there is some hope.

Rigda said he hopes retirements and other teachers who opt to leave will allow all 24 teachers cut Wednesday to return to work this fall. If there aren’t enough open positions for all, they’ll be called back based on seniority, he said.

Contact Jason Hawk at 329-7148 or jhawk@chroniclet.com.

 

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