Jessica Polhill reads a note written by her son, an elementary school student.
“Why are you trying to shut down our schools? You’re taking away my friends. That makes me sad," she recites, holding back tears. "I love my school, my teachers and my friends. I feel safe here. Loves Park is 15 minutes away. What are you doing to our schools?”
It’s at an emotional public forum, a few months back, when the Harlem School District was weighing whether it should shutter two elementary schools — Maple and Olson Park. In January, the board voted to close them.
Illinois public school enrollment is down 10% over the past decade. That’s 200,000 fewer K-12 students.
Schools closing isn’t super common, but it does happen. Data WNIJ obtained from the Illinois State Board of Education shows 72 public schools have closed in the past five years. Not all of them boarded up completely. Some were repurposed, like an elementary school becoming a preschool.
One of the main reasons for closures in Harlem was enrollment. Administrator Jason Blume says it peaked around 2007 and it’s been downhill ever since — around 18% down over the past two decades.
They also monitor the county birthrate, so they know this problem isn’t going away anytime soon.
“We've known for a long time," said Blume, "this is something that we need to do."
But why now? Well, declining enrollment is significant, but also significant is the district’s projected $3 million budget deficit.
But Blume says they’d have to do this regardless of the deficit. They started planning for consolidation back in 2019. The pandemic disrupted that, but money made it urgent. That’s why the schools will close after this school year. They need to cut costs now.
“The projections that we had for this upcoming year," he said, "definitely played into probably expediting this a little bit."
Unfortunately, when they talk about cutting costs, the savings doesn’t come from just closing a building.
“The money that we save when we close schools comes from the staff,” said Blume. “Like, it's not the operations, it's not necessarily utilities.”
Staff will lose their jobs. It’s not clear exactly how many yet. Some Harlem teachers say the process just moved too quickly. Early childhood teacher Katie Fowler says they heard their jobs may be on the chopping block at the same time as the rest of the public.
“I think we were all pretty dismayed,” she said. “Yeah, it was a lot of disappointment and a lot of frustration and just, like, lack of transparency."
It made a tough sell to the community even tougher. Closing any school is painful. Schools give a town or neighborhood a sense of identity. It’s where childhood memories are made.
So, this process is a science and an art. How do you explain why a tough decision like this is necessary in a way that maintains trust?
Margo Empen knows about that balance. She’s the superintendent at the Dixon School District. In the face of enrollment declines, they closed down an elementary school 10 years ago — one she taught at.
“There are still people," said Empen, "who feel it was not the right choice."
She says communicating with families during that time was crucial. Dixon is still dealing with long-term enrollment decline. It's fallen about 14% since 2018, which is twice the state average.
Empen says, for them, it’s not an urgent, five alarm fire. It’s something they monitor over years and try to get out in front of it before it’s an emergency.
“What I would say," she said, "is that we've been experiencing smaller tweaks."
They switched from having neighborhood schools (which means students mostly attend the elementary school closest to their house) to grade level centers (which means there’s one school for second and third grade, one for fourth and fifth and so on).
Neighborhoods don’t grow or shrink evenly across a town. So, when you have neighborhood schools, like Harlem does, enrollment can fall a lot at some schools and not at others.
In Harlem, Jason Blume says they have some schools with class sizes of 16 and others around 25. And some schools that held 450 kids now hold 250.
“Our buildings," he said, "some of them are at 55% of what the enrollment was."
In the end, Harlem voted to keep their neighborhood school model because they heard over and over from families that the long-term connections made at neighborhood schools were too important to let go of. But Maple and Olson Park will still close this spring.
Ami Engel’s an administrator at the East Aurora School District. Their enrollment is falling at about the same rate as Dixon's.
“We're down," she said, "probably 3,000 students less than we were in the 2014-15 school year."
They’re down 600 students just from last year. They’re not planning on closing any schools at this point, but it’s making them think about what the right staffing levels are when they have so many fewer students.
“A lot of people are hitting retirement," said Engel, "so it's an opportunity for us to do some balancing, without having to say goodbye to incredible people."
The state has 200,000 fewer students than a decade ago but employs 10,000 more teachers.
Especially with the pandemic, schools like East Aurora have added more positions, often in mental health support.
“We have definitely brought on more related services positions," she said, "to support that ‘whole student.' And it is an area where you can't do that forever."
Statewide, the enrollment decline problem isn’t going away and neither are high costs. Blume says he thinks Harlem’s just the first district in the area to bite the bullet, and that more and more districts may think about closing schools.
“I think you're going to see," said Blume, "more and more districts, in the years coming, looking at either efficiency within their district or consolidation across districts because, at a certain point, we can't continue to tax our community and try to keep up with those costs."
In a few days, voters in LaMoille will be asked if they should close their high school. The main reason they cite? Enrollment.
