Audio By Carbonatix
The Dallas Independent School District board has yet to get down to business; at the moment it’s behind closed doors in executive session. But moments ago it heard from a parade of public speakers, all of whom were awfully well behaved and used their three minutes wisely as they spoke about the ineffectiveness of the district’s anti-bullying policy and the success of Teach for America. Two of the speakers brought up what’s become an increasingly sore subject: that ad hoc committee’s proposal to close James Bonham Elementary, among 11 campuses on the chopping block, in order to save $11.5 million during the coming school year.
Arlene Colbert, a longtime volunteer at the school, pointed to the exemplary campus’s myriad statewide and national honors: “It should inspire all.” As far as she’s concerned, “It defies logic that a school as uniformly successful” as Bonham “would move students to schools with less success, but here we are.” And, yes, hard choices will need to be made in coming months as the district grapples with $38.5 million in budget cuts to come, she said, but “in the midst of storms, don’t sink your flagship.”
Colbert was greeted with a hearty round of applause.
Then pediatrician Velouette Zavadil stepped to the mic. She said she was hoping to send her two kids there, but the proposal worries her and her neighbors — so much so the Vickery Place neighborhood has just launched SaveBonham.org, intended to rally support for the Blue Ribbon award-winner. (Matter of fact, says the site, there’s a meeting at the school this Saturday at 1 p.m. “to discuss developments, rally supporters and become more organized, so that we may be more effective at communicating our disapproval to the DISD board.”)
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Said Zavadil, the school is “more than the awards it has received”; it’s a school beloved by its neighborhood, by its graduates, by its students and teachers, and to shutter it would be inexcusable. “This decision should not be a hard one,” she said, before proposing a simple solution for the underutilized K-3 campus: “Extend it to fifth grade, and it will be full.”
Then, more applause.
