The district faces an operational shortfall of millions of dollars that must be brought into balance.

The school board’s first steps to address the budget shortfall have been to appoint committees and hire contractors to recommend cuts, propose long-term building plans, and find sources of untapped revenue. The board has not yet acted on any recommendations, but one idea that has emerged is to close the doors on two of Helena’s neighborhood schools: Hawthorne and Broadwater.

As it turns out, closing these schools doesn’t save much money. Most of an elementary school’s budget is in salaries and instructional-related overhead. Those costs simply get shifted to the schools that take in the displaced students.

We’re calling on the school board to address the budget deficit without closing Helena’s neighborhood schools. The costs are far too high, and the savings negligible, to justify the catastrophic disruptions closures would cause. The school board needs to find other, less destructive alternatives to addressing the budget shortfall.

Moreover, we’re calling on the school board to be transparent in this process. Several meetings where school closures were first discussed were closed to the public. This error needs to be corrected with the process being well communicated and open to public involvement.

Friends of Neighborhood Schools, a group formed by Helena parents to educate the public about the negative impacts of school closures.

Helena IR: Friends of Neighborhood Schools: Keep Helena’s neighborhood schools open