Teenage alumni of McKinley Elementary School told the Tacoma School Board on Thursday how the school helped launch them on the path to academic success.
Members of Tacoma’s Hispanic community explained that the school – whose student body is more than 40 percent Hispanic – occupies a special place in their Spanish-speaking world.
And parents of McKinley students said they value the school’s small size because it allows teachers to give their special-needs students extra help.
Ironically, it is the school’s small size that could put its future in jeopardy as the school board seeks ways to cut spending. The school district faces a projected budget shortfall of $23 million in the coming school year. District officials estimate they will need to cut an additional $17.5 million the following year, and $16 million the next year, due to drastic budget reductions coming from state and federal sources. They estimate they can save about $500,000 by closing an elementary school.
Several speakers told the board at a public hearing Thursday that the small amount that will be saved by closing McKinley isn’t worth it.
“This is not the right way to solve this problem,” said Antonio Flores, who represents a reform group called El Comite.
The district also plans to cut administrative expenses, increase elementary school class size by an average of one student per class, and eliminate 56 positions.
The board has been looking at low-enrollment schools for possible closure in the fall. An initial list of six Tacoma elementary schools with fewer than 300 students has been whittled to two that could be closed: McKinley, on the city’s East Side, and Wainwright, in Fircrest.
The board held public hearings about Wainwright on Wednesday.
Board members are scheduled to vote on the proposal to close the schools at their meeting May 12.
At McKinley on Thursday, community members spoke out about their frustration over language barriers that they say have muffled their voices during the school closure debate. Liesl Santkuyl of the Latino Action Group said there has been a lack of interpreters at several previous meetings.
An interpreter was late arriving to Thursday’s meeting, which board President Kurt Miller said was due to a mix-up in communications. But several in the crowd said they felt left out, and one woman held a sign that read “institutional racism.”
“Let us participate in the education of our kids,” said Martha Mendoza, the mother of three McKinley students. “Because we are Latinos, we don’t count? Because we don’t speak English, we don’t count? Please don’t close this school.”
Several speakers held back tears as they spoke.
McKinley kindergarten teacher Marian Barker was one of them.
“It’s not the building,” said Barker, who has taught at McKinley for more than 24 years. “It’s the staff and the principal and the leadership.”
She described an educational team that works collaboratively. She said she visited one of the schools that would take McKinley students, should it close.
“You don’t get the feeling you get here,” she said.
If McKinley closes, students will would be bused to either Blix or Lyon Elementary School. And some Blix students would move to Roosevelt Elementary to make room for incoming McKinley kids.
The district is looking not only at enrollment numbers, but at the age and condition of schools. McKinley is one of the oldest schools in Tacoma; it opened as a two-room schoolhouse in a different location in 1906. The current building on McKinley Avenue opened in 1908 and has undergone several updates, most recently in 1967. But it does not meet handicap-accessibility requirements.
Despite its physical shortcomings, parents and students said Thursday that there’s no place like McKinley.
They said they value the special services the school offers Spanish speakers. The school operates a volunteer-staffed hotline that answers questions from Spanish-speaking parents. Last year, McKinley recruited Spanish-speaking students from Lincoln High School to help teach McKinley parents who wanted to learn about computers. McKinley offers parenting classes in both English and Spanish.
“When I came to school, I knew barely any English,” said 14-year-old Erik Zuniga, a Lincoln student who attended McKinley from kindergarten through fifth grade. “With the attention the teachers gave us, I was able to understand and speak English. Sometimes I wonder, what would I do without McKinley and its staff?”
Debbie Cafazzo: 253-597-8635 debbie.cafazzo@thenewstribune.com
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