Parents and staff press Eau Claire board to preserve neighborhood schools as demographic committee outlines closure options

Community members urged the Eau Claire Area School District Board of Education on Wednesday to preserve neighborhood elementary schools and seek alternative solutions after the district's Demographic Trends and Facility Planning Committee presented options that could close or repurpose schools.

The committee outlined several options under consideration to address elementary underutilization, including proposals that would absorb students from Longfellow Elementary and either close or repurpose Flynn or Roosevelt Elementary to house expanded Montessori and dual-immersion programs. Superintendent Johnson and Kim Koehler, the administrative liaison to the committee, described the committee's process, data and next steps.

The committee presented enrollment and capacity data, maps of recent residential construction, birth-rate trends and analyses of ripple effects from boundary changes. Kim Koehler said the group narrowed a large set of possibilities to three leading options, described in the presentation as "option 3B" and "option 4," which would close one elementary school and repurpose another to expand choice programs. Koehler said repurposing Roosevelt to…