Requiem for a School: Scenes from the Second Columbia Elementary Hearing
While the community spoke overwhelmingly in favor of keeping Columbia open, parents and staff members feel as if their pleas are falling on deaf ears
The final hearing about the potential closure of Columbia Elementary School at the end of the academic year took place Thursday evening and the atmosphere was funerary – tinged with simmering anger.
After a short presentation by Superintendent Kory Kalahar on the district’s budget crisis and the need to take drastic measures to cut costs, including closing Columbia, school board president Julie Norton laid down some ground rules for public comment time. Chief among them was no applause.
Then for nearly three hours a procession of concerned citizens, Columbia parents and staff members addressed the Wenatchee School Board, Superintendent Kory Kalahar, and the board cabinet members. More than once, the decision-makers were called out for their seeming indifference to the speakers.
“Kory, I see you’re still writing. Do you want me to wait?” Columbia para-educator Shelby Allwood asked at the beginning of her statement. “In our TK class, we show respect by looking at our speaker.”
The Wenatchee School District is legally required to hold at least one public hearing before shuttering a school. District officials scheduled two such hearings, and now that threshold has been met the board will vote on whether or not to close Columbia at its May 14 meeting.
Of the nearly 100 people who attended and 50 who spoke, there were a couple who voiced support for the idea of closing Columbia. One was Washington Elementary teacher Jill Reinfeld, who spoke first and began her address by ticking off a list of the district’s failures in the course of proposing the closure.
She noted that the community trust in the district is dangerously low and the morale among district employees is too. She said it is going to be extremely difficult to get a bond or levy passed to improve schools in the future because of this debacle, but to kick the can down the road and keep Columbia open would only further exacerbate a financial burden that will not go away and only get worse.
“Now is the time for change. As agonizing as it may be – the board must vote to close Columbia for the upcoming school year – to extend another year only perpetuates the financial burden and will ultimately create greater hardships in the future for everyone,” Reinfeld said.
She said she and the community at Washington Elementary are ready to receive new students with open arms and urged people to think of the benefits of a blending of the schools. After she was done speaking one person applauded. The rest of the crowd sat in stony silence.
A sense of nihilistic powerlessness characterized other’s remarks. Columbia teacher Aaron Gahringer was one such speaker.
“Here I am, speaking into the void,” he said. “Tonight I want to point out some of the, I don’t know – deceptions, errors, shenanigans, half-truths, lies, I don’t know – there’s a lot in this written analysis… I’ve poured through it and there’s still a lot that needs to be addressed before anyone thinks it’s a good idea to close Columbia.”
Gahringer and another Columbia educator, Ann Young, said they have “poured over” the district’s publication titled “Columbia Closure Written Analysis” and other documents (available on the district’s website here).
They say closing Columbia will overload all the other elementary schools except Sunnyslope (which is already overloaded with 26 students in some rooms) and the district is not being honest about that.
Elizabeth Kazemba, who teaches fourth grade at Columbia, gave an impassioned address in which she noted the lack of traffic analysis and information about bussing routes.
“Would you want your six or seven-year-old crossing Ferry Street?” she asked. “Or Miller Street? What are the bussing routes that we have available that need no change?”
You can watch her entire address here:
After Norton chided the crowd for clapping for the speaker before her, the crowd adopted a mixture of scattered applause and silent hand waves to show their support for the speakers after that.
Jocelyn Flitton has taught at Columbia for 26 years, and did not mince words when she stood up to speak.
“I’m ashamed of you. I’m ashamed of you. And you don’t even make eye contact. I’m ashamed of the secrecy and strategic manipulation and especially the evasions that you have perpetuated on your constituents,” she said. “If this goes through I hope the repercussions of it haunt you so that in the future you take the care that you should have taken here to do better.”
You can watch the entire hearing here.
After the meeting I got in touch with Emily Bjork, who is a member of an ad hoc parent advocate group that formed to respond to the proposed closure of Columbia at the end of the year. I asked her two questions: Do you feel like you have been listened to by the district? Do you feel like anything the Columbia community has said will make a difference?
She and her husband Kevin took some time to think about those questions and respond. I decided to include that response in its entirety because I have the luxury of doing so and because I felt it impossible to edit their remarks down without diminishing their message.
Here was their response:
“I think the district has worked to give the appearance that they are listening, but not really ‘hearing’ what we are saying. Their actual interest in meaningful community interaction and legitimately exploring alternative solutions seems limited at best. They have written responses to most of our written communication but do not often clearly answer the questions we have asked. To my knowledge, we have not had any direct responses to our citizen comments from either public hearing or board meetings. We have had a couple board members come to our Parent Advocate Group meetings at Columbia and engage in more reciprocal conversation, which was nice, but also challenging because they cannot share any information discussed with other board members due to specific rules about how the School Board members communicate with each other. Recently, we have requested to be put on the agenda for the remaining School Board meetings to offer examples of alternative solutions that we have compiled, but that request was denied and we were offered a presentation spot at the next Budget Committee meeting instead. This would only be in front of Martin and Norton, leaving Jackson, Skalisky, and Iñiguez out of the communication loop. Additionally, the District has outright denied our request for the formation of a citizen/community advisory group to work with the District and Board on the best way forward—this request was denied early in the process and has kind of set the tone for the limited meaningful engagement and community input they wish to actually consider moving forward.
The general feeling among the Columbia Elementary Community is that we are speaking into a void and that there is a low chance that any of our voices or ideas will make a difference. We have been doing our best work to try to get involved in this process, but to date we have not been invited to participate in any kind of Community Advisory Committee for this process, which would be the best practice in in terms of a District’s ability to most equitably address budget deficits via any kind of school consolidation or school closure. We understand that the WSD is facing a large deficit, but do not feel that closing a school to save a little over 2% of the budget is in the best interest of the WSD’s future and definitely not in the best interest for the children of this valley. In our view, the District’s poorly-handled process and approach to these budgetary decisions has resulted in a disastrous proposal of closing down the highest-performing Elementary School in the District as per OSPI data on academic growth. The decision to close Columbia falls squarely on the backs of some of Wenatchee’s most vulnerable student populations, and is poised to have a devastating impact on many students living in poverty and who are English Language Learners. It is unfortunate that such a monumental decision has been made with apparent disregard of the District’s mission statement, strategic vision, and basic common sense that would lead any reasonably competent leader to think twice before closing their highest-performing Elementary School with a student population that is arguably most vulnerable to the suffering the negative effects of this decision on their future academic trajectories.”
On Allegations of the Lack of Transparency, Honesty from Norton and the Board
In a Feb. 21 article, WSD board president Julie Norton is quoted saying she was caught “off guard” by the announcement to close Columbia. She wrote that it “was not clear the proposal to consolidate schools would be seriously pursued in time (for implementation for the next school year).”
But notes from a Jan. 18 budget meeting show that Norton and fellow board member Martin Barron discussed the issue nearly a month prior. Columbia is mentioned specifically, and Barron notes his concern about closing a school without more of a heads up to the community.
They also discussed the idea of moving Valley Academy to Columbia. You can read those notes in full here.
My Two Cents
I started getting tips about the potential closure of Columbia the afternoon of Jan. 19, after Sup. Kalahar announced the plan to Columbia staff members earlier that day. So I reached out to WSD spokesperson Diana Haglund to get on official response, and she got right back to me confirming the news that evening.
By that evening the closure was all over social media. So I wrote up what I had at that point and continued to follow the story. I attended an emergency PTO meeting at Columbia on Jan. 23 and then the Jan. 24 board meeting that saw an overflowing crowd of pro-Columbia parents and teachers who brought signs and made their voices heard. It’s also worth noting that signage was also banned at the two public hearings.
On Jan. 27, I sat down with Sup. Kalahar and WSD Spokesperson Diana Haglund for a comprehensive interview about the subject, and since then I have attended road-side protests, interviewed upset parents, grandparents and teachers and watched an online debate play out between those who are against Columbia’s closure, those who are for it, those who are ambivalent about it and and those who simply anti-public education.
Throughout the process I have tried to maintain a measure of neutrality and reserve judgement. Not only because it’s important to understand the facts and hear everyone out, but also because serving on a school board or being in administration and responsible large budgets and districts that employ hundreds of people is a hard job and those who step up to the plate deserve a certain amount of grace.
Furthermore, this budget crisis can’t be blamed on Sup. Kalahar or his current administration team. The people who are responsible for that monumental screw up that has left us all in the lurch is former Superintendent Paul Gordon and his finance director and they’re both long gone.
So it’s only fair to judge the Kalahar, his administration and the school board based on how they have handled things since the announcement that they planned to close Columbia at the end of the year.
I think a majority of the community agrees that they did that poorly.
But what is particularly disappointing to me is how there seems to be a lack of empathy, accountability and compassion from the board in general and a lack of honesty from President Norton in particular.
No one debates there’s a budget crisis, or even that the district needs to close a school to help fix it. What is concerning is that we have elected and made president of the board an individual who has been less than truthful. Yet Norton’s lack of forthrightness should not come as a surprise to anyone who watched her play political games and break rules to get elected to what is supposed to be a non-partisan school board seat.
What’s egregious is that that the rest of the board has agreed to allow her to act as the lone spokesperson for them. According to the Wenatchee World, the rest of the board has declined to comment on the issue, which leaves the district staff and Norton as the only people communicating to the public about this issue.
To make such a huge decision in such a short amount of time while also walling yourself off from the community is unacceptable. The entire board should be taking interviews and putting themselves out there to help the community understand the need to make such a drastic decision in such a short amount of time, and most of all to apologize.
In public education the buck stops with the school board. The superintendent and everyone who he hires works for them, and they are the ones who are ultimately responsible for the health of the district.
But kudos to them because it seems that the stonewalling has been pretty successful. While the community has directed quite a bit of heat and attention at Kalahar and his staff (some of which was well-earned) Norton and the board have been spared a majority of the public’s attention – and ire.
But Mrs. Flitton might get her wish and the decision to close Columbia will come back to “haunt” them in the form of lost re-election bids. Even then what a hollow victory that would be because in the end its still you and me and our kids who will suffer. They will suffer because like Mrs. Reinfeld said, this entire situation and how it was communicated was bungled to epic proportions and it’s going to make passing bonds and levies so much harder in the future.
Because while there’s debate about whether or not Columbia must be closed there is absolutely zero debating the need to fix Wenatchee High School, and we’ve already failed to pass the ballot measures needed to do that in the past. This debacle just makes that daunting task (bonds and levies need supermajorities to pass) even more difficult in the future.
My wife and I have three kids in the district, and believe in the importance of quality public schools. They are the cornerstone of a healthy democracy. They are also an important embodiment of democracy in every community, and serving on a school board is an incredible responsibility. If you’re doing it in good faith and for the right reasons, I consider you an honorable person regardless of your personal political beliefs.
But that doesn’t insulate you from criticism, or accountability.
I sincerely hope the Wenatchee School District can right the ship when it comes to the budget crisis, regain public confidence and be in a position to pass a funding measure that allows us to update our critically-antiquated and over-populated high school. And I hope that process starts with more transparency, honesty and maybe a “mea culpa” or two from elected officials themselves and not just the people who work for them.
The Wenatchee School Board will make its decision about whether to close Columbia Elementary or not at its next board meeting on May 14.
Thank you Dominick for your time and perserverance in covering this important topic . Your more complete reporting, especially on school board issues , is invaluable in understanding what all is going on here and covers issues that are not dicussed in other media. Appreciate your important, well done work!
I can’t begin to express my disappointment in this school board and administrator’s behavior. The politics being played out at the expense of what is our biggest and most important investment— our children and their future skills in almost every job, work, career or in the ability to use critical thinking , debate, respect .
Columbia has succeeded more than any other school. Why break it up? Perhaps to make it look like public schools don’t work. Or to keep people down who have different languages and customs, economics, not to mention color of their skin. It’s been made clear it has no real economic advantage. Schools will be overcrowded putting pressure on staff and students in order to meet their educational needs.
Any person, regardless of whatever path they take, requires a well rounded education. Immigrants risk their lives to come here for our abundance and blessings. And our own neighbors have been willing to tear it down so they can claim their victimized by “those people” when the reality is the opposite.
We have failed in the past to teach why an education is necessary, regardless if you will farm, do other physical work, or go on to college. We stopped teaching social studies, Civics and our own language’s spelling and grammar which shows up in the angry posts regarding our government on all levels. This is a strategy, not a a difference of opinion, to put obstacles in the path of those who most need this education.
Educators hold our children’s opportunities and most want them to be curious, to explore, to be successful at whatever their life choices. Fascists, so-called Christian Nationalists (Christian Taliban) want to dictate what you should believe and hide information that could allow people to question and think for themselves.
I’m aware that I’m preaching to the choir, still wanting to believe we have reasonable citizens who are able to comprehend beyond their own limited thoughts and experiences.