Letter to the Editor: Closing Hillside is Not the Answer

Letter to the Editor:

As a homeowner and taxpayer in Brookfield, as well as a parent of children in the Elmbrook School District, I am deeply disgusted with Dr. Matt Gibson's recommendation to close Hillside Elementary School. 

Yes, we are in a budget crunch and some of our schools are at a lower than desired capacity level, but closing Hillside is NOT the answer.

During many of the community sessions, both this year and last, MANY viable suggestions were made to the board on how to save money and how to increase funds coming in. We do not believe the board has taken into consideration any of these suggestions. Their only solution to this problem is to close a school. Which, in the grand scheme of things, only saves a small portion of the budget shortfall. Still, closing a school seems to be the only solution the board has studied.

It is such a blow to us who have children who will be affected by this decision they are about to make. The School Board has also made promises to the Hillside Elementary parents that as a group, all Hillside students will move into Brookfield Elementary.

What they didn't do was think of the ramifications of that promise. Brookfield Elementary cannot accommodate all its current students and Hillside students. Much of the non-classroom spaces will have to be converted into classrooms. Brookfield Road and North Avenue will not be able to handle the increased traffic of students, buses and cars and lunch times will have to span from 10:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., with kids eating on the stage, not the cafeteria!

To try and alleviate this problem (which will still be a far cry from fixing it), the board is proposing to move out 2-3 tracts of students who have attended Brookfield Elementary since K5 and who, we as parents, purchased our homes to attend this particular neighborhood school. To make matters even worse, they are proposing to send us to a school where the majority of its students will go to Pilgrim Park and Brookfield East.

Only a very small portion of this so-called "swing school" will attend Wisconsin Hills Middle School and Brookfield Central (the tracts the board is proposing to move out of Brookfield Elementary, which happen to be very close in proximity to Brookfield Central). The reasoning behind this, is Dixon Elementary has a very low capacity rate compared to the rest of the Elmbrook's elementary schools. It's the only place these students "fit."

If we are to attend a "swing school," shouldn't it comprise of 50 percent of its students moving onto Pilgrim Park/Brookfield East and the other 50 percent moving onto Wisconsin Hills Middle School/Brookfield Central? Yes, we parents of those students made that suggestion, too, yet another one to be ignored! We have voiced our concerns very clearly and quite loudly at times, but no one on the board is taking our concerns or our suggestions to heart.

We are not just parents who are upset because our children have to switch schools or their school is closing. We are home owners and taxpayers, business owners and people with financial backgrounds (ALL walks of life) who have made some very good and credible points on why we shouldn't close a school, but yet those suggestions are all put aside. We have voiced our concerns that if closing a school is the only option, then redistricting has to be done fairly and with the children's futures in mind, but again, those suggestions have not been heard.

We are frustrated as a community by the School Board's solution to this problem. I'm sure we will revisit this same issue a few years down the road. Of course the problem will be over crowded schools and having to reopen the schools that were closed.    

Thank you for your time,  

Karen Hughes
Brookfield, WI