Bellwater Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Yvonne Carrick proposed closing two under-enrolled schools Tuesday night, saying the district can no longer afford to keep half-empty buildings open while facing a $6.8 million budget shortfall.
Bellwater Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Yvonne Carrick proposed Tuesday closing two under-enrolled elementary schools, Elmwood Elementary and Kettridge Middle School, as part of a broader plan she says is necessary to address a $6.8 million budget shortfall and years of shifting enrollment across the district.
Carrick told the seven-member Bellwater School Board that both schools are operating at less than 55 percent capacity, a decline she attributed to families leaving Lowertown and Cedar Hollow for other neighborhoods or districts, while newer, gentrifying areas like Foundry Row have seen no comparable growth in school-age enrollment to offset the loss.
A proposal years in the making
“I have sat on this data for two years hoping enrollment would stabilize on its own,” Carrick told the board. “It has not stabilized. Every year we wait, we’re spending more per student to keep half-empty buildings open, and that money is coming directly out of classrooms across the rest of the district.”
Under the proposal, students from both schools would be reassigned to nearby buildings with available capacity, and the district would sell or lease the two closed properties, generating what Carrick estimated at roughly $1.4 million in annual savings once transition costs are absorbed. The district projects the sale or lease of the buildings themselves could bring in additional one-time revenue.
School Board Chair Melissa Overby, who has clashed publicly with Carrick before, said she was skeptical of the timeline and the choice of schools, both of which serve predominantly Lowertown and Cedar Hollow families. “I don’t doubt the enrollment numbers,” Overby said. “What I doubt is whether closing buildings in the two neighborhoods that have already lost the most feels like the right way to close a budget gap that isn’t those neighborhoods’ fault.”
Parents push back
Dozens of parents attended Tuesday’s meeting, several carrying signs opposing the closures. Angela Fitzgerald, a Cedar Hollow parent with two children at Elmwood, said the proposal would add 25 minutes to her children’s bus commute each way and would break up a school community that has been a stabilizing presence for families dealing with addiction and job loss in the neighborhood. “This building is one of the only things in Cedar Hollow that hasn’t closed in the last twenty years,” Fitzgerald said. “Closing it doesn’t save the district money. It just moves the cost onto us.”
Melinda Osei, president of the Bellwater Federation of Teachers, said the union had not been consulted before the proposal’s public release and worried the plan would increase class sizes at receiving schools without a corresponding increase in staffing. “You can’t simply pour two schools’ worth of students into buildings that are already near capacity and call it a savings plan,” Osei said. “Somebody has to teach those additional students, and right now we don’t have enough teachers for the classrooms we already have open.”
I understand this is painful, and I understand the history of disinvestment in these neighborhoods makes it feel like one more loss. But the alternative is that we keep cutting programs district-wide to subsidize two buildings that are barely half full. I don’t think that’s fair to the other twenty-two schools in this district either.
Dr. Yvonne Carrick, Superintendent, Bellwater Public Schools
Carrick said the district considered several alternatives, including staff layoffs and program cuts, before settling on building closures as the option she believed would do the least long-term damage to instructional quality. She said a formal community-input process would begin next week, including public forums in both affected neighborhoods, before the board takes a final vote.
The proposal lands amid a broader tension between Carrick and the school board, which has previously sparred over budget priorities. Several board members indicated Tuesday they were not prepared to support the plan as presented, setting up what is expected to be a contentious vote in the coming weeks.
District data presented at the meeting showed Elmwood’s enrollment has fallen from 410 students a decade ago to 224 this year, while Kettridge has dropped from 560 to roughly 300 over the same period. Carrick said both buildings would require significant capital repairs within the next five years if they remain open, costs she said were not factored into the district’s current operating budget and would only widen the shortfall if the board rejected the closures without addressing the underlying facilities issue.
Council Member Gary Petrowski, whose Cedar Hollow district includes Elmwood, attended Tuesday’s meeting though he holds no formal vote on school matters. He said he understood the district’s financial pressure but worried that closing the school would remove one of the few remaining public buildings in the neighborhood that residents view as reliably present. “Cedar Hollow has lost a lot over the years that never came back,” Petrowski said. “I’d ask the board to weigh that history before it votes.”
Carrick said the administration would hold two additional public forums, one at each affected school, before the board takes a final vote, and that the district would publish detailed cost projections for both the closures and the leading alternatives under consideration, including staff attrition and a possible request for supplemental city funding.