Lava Elementary parents voice dissent against busing kindergarteners to Mountain View Elementary

POCATELLO — Parents are voicing their dissent with a school district’s plan to bus kindergarteners from their community to another school.

At the Marsh Valley School District’s Board of Trustees meeting on May 22, the board heard public comment from parents of Lava Hot Springs Elementary School and others against the proposed plan by District Superintendent Gary Tucker that would close the school’s Kindergarten and bus its seven students to Mountain View Elementary School, about 11 miles away.

This comes after a controversy in March when the school board discussed a cost-saving measure of closing Lava Elementary School. Many community members attended a meeting on March 13 when they discussed closing the school, among other cost-saving measures.

Before the March meeting, rumors began to spread that the school district had already decided the fate of the school, which wasn’t true. The school district has said that it does not want to close Lava Elementary.

“I don’t think that there’s anybody up here who would want to close Lava. Why would we? It’s a great school,” Tucker said.

But officials have also pointed out that it’s the school with the smallest student body, with declining enrollment. Costs for the school are disproportionate compared to other schools in the district.

The community of Lava Hot Springs doesn’t want to see the school closed. Many of them attended that school, have children attending it and don’t want to see any future growth the community could see stifled by not having a school.

Megan Reno, a Lava Hot Springs real estate agent, said she received notification from the school board on May 10 that they had voted to close Lava Kindergarten and bus the children to McCammon at their May 8 meeting. Tucker said the board voted on staff changes — reducing the number of teachers at the school by one. Busing the students was only an option that was discussed, but had not been voted on, he said.

Reno started her speech on Monday by introducing her daughter, and said that she, “was devastated to find out she would not be going to school with her two older brothers.”

When he addressed the meeting attendees, Tucker said, “I’m trying to come up with a rational argument so that we can keep Lava open, and I know most of the people in this room don’t believe that. … The fact is, reducing the amount of staff at Lava is in an effort to keep that school open.”

The reason Tucker proposed the solution of sending the kindergarten class to McCammon was because doing so would mean they wouldn’t have to replace a teacher who’s quitting, according to Paige Armstrong, Board Chairwoman.

“Like homes, education is built from the ground up. Combining kindergarteners to have class sizes with 20-plus students will be harder for the kindergartners to learn with a much higher teacher-to-student ratio,” Reno said.

When Armstrong addressed the meeting attendees, she asked why it was fair for the kindergarten teacher at Lava to be teaching a smaller class when other schools in the district have classes of over 20 students.

At the end of the Monday meeting, the board voted to table the proposal until a meeting on June 5 so Tucker and his staff could put together estimates on how much other solutions to the problem would cost the district.

Oliver Ries, a parent with a third and a fourth grader at Lava Elementary, said he thought a part of the problem with the discussion was that both sides have their own realities. He said something positive that came out of the meeting was the decision to meet again and put all of the options out on the table.

“We just need to arrive at a point where we share the same truth,” Ries said.

Kevin Andrus, a representative in the Idaho House who lives in Arimo, was also in attendance at the meeting and said that when he did Steps For School he donated his $1000 check to Lava Elementary.

“A minuscule part, but I felt like they deserved it more than anybody,” he said.

Andrus said there was more discussion at this meeting about the school boards actions and less about solutions, so he supported the decision to hold another meeting.

Both the school board and the parents of Lava Elementary have stated they want to work together and find a solution.

Tucker said if anybody has ideas or solutions, “please email or come in and talk to me.”

“At the end of the day we want to work with the school district,” Megan Reno told EastIdahoNews.com.