Where do the kids go?

It started when I was a little girl. One day,  I was playing outside when I heard bits and pieces of a conversation between my mother and aunts. They were talking about how some school was going to close. I was horrified. I liked schools and wasn’t school the place where kids went to learn stuff? Where would the kids go if their school was closed. I have since been educated about things like that, but it still saddens me to hear about a school being closed, because it is often in a neighborhood that will have a very difficult time finding a tenant for the building. There is a really great energy around a school. Maybe it’s from the kids growing and their activities, the interaction with the community, to just decide, let’s shut that down, it leaves a hole in a neighborhood that’s very hard to fill.

Portland’s school board  announced that they would be shutting down a school – again. See, they announced they would be shutting down another school, but the neighborhood rallied, and picketed and pleaded, so now, the school in the neighborhood where they expect the least resistance has been tapped for closure. The fact that they decided to close this school really bothers me, especially when the only reason these kids have been chosen to lose their school is that their parents haven’t put up enough of a fuss. I know that the squeaky, more educated, more affluent wheel gets the grease, but this is still wrong.

Kids and parents in Detroit have a lot more to complain about. Their school board will be shutting down 32 schools this year, including Cooley High, which opened one year before the start of the Great Depression. Thirteen more schools will be closed in the city within the next two years.