At the end of this year, an estimated six schools could be closing permanently if the proposal to close them down is accepted by the school board on March 4th. Closing schools, reportedly will save the district approximately $16 million. The district needs to cut $44 million from next year’s budget.

The closures would affect more than 2,000 students, an estimate of 132 teachers, and 190 other staff.

“We’ve been doing a great job of keeping things to a high standard, but we also need to shrink the footprint, so we have more resources to do things better,” said USD Superintendent Kelly Bielefeld in a statement on the districts website.

It was split between either laying teachers and staff off or closing schools, and some teachers found it unfortunate especially with a teacher shortage this time around. However, the district will re-assign teachers and staff. As for students, they would evidently be re-assigned as well.

Numerous factors including enrollment, building age, and projected repair costs are what districts are looking at to decide which schools to close.

The schools that were chosen to close include Clark, Park, Payne, Cleaveland, Hadley, Jardine, and perhaps more magnet schools.