Downsville School parent meeting on closure

The SDMA School Board and administration met tonight with concerned parents at the Downsville Elementary School tonight. Many concerned parents and community members showed up to express their concern over the possible closure of the school.

Suprerintendent Joe Zydowsky explained that the enrollment at Downsville has dropped severely in the last ten years (see the graph above) and that the incoming Kindergarten class for next year will be five students or lower. This does not bode well for the continuing ability of the district to keep the school open with very few students. Next year the entire student body for K-5 grades will be lower than 75 students total. 

Additionally, most of the staff at Downsville is leaving next year for a number of reasons, meaning that the district will need to hire almost all of the staff, and it has proved difficult to hire teachers, partly because of the general teacher shortage, and because it has been difficult to get teachers in rural schools with few students.

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Many of the parents and community members expressed their concerns that closing the school would be devastating to the students and the community of Downsville. Their concerns ranged from bussing students to a new school who can currently walk to school, to splitting families between different schools, to concerns that if the school is closed for one year to get past the staffing issues, the school will never re-open. 

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Others suggested ways to provide an incentive to teachers to work at Downsville, combining kindergarten and first grade, and other creative ideas to try to keep the school in the community,, including re-drawing the district to go further south into the Durand area. Others suggested that there are several families that are new to the district and have children that are not yet of school age but will be soon. The board and administration reassured the crowd that the decision to close the school has not yet been made, and that a final decision will be made at the April 14 school board meeting. Dr. Zydowsky emphasized that the board and administration want to hear from concerned citizens with ideas about ways to keep the school open. We will live stream the April 14 meeting here.