Public meetings on the potential closing of two Springfield elementary schools will be held Tuesday, January 16.
The first meeting, focused on Robberson Elementary, 1100 E. Kearney, will start at 4 p.m. at the Kraft Administrative Center, 1359 E. Saint Louis St. The second, focused on Pershing Elementary, 2120 S. Ventura, will start at 5:30 p.m. at the same location. The meeting about Robberson was scheduled for January 9 but was postponed due to weather.
Ten public speakers will be allowed per meeting, and they will be limited to three minutes each. They must sign up online at sps.org/boardcomments since school is out Monday, January 15, for Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Sign up starts at 8 a.m. Monday and closes at noon on Tuesday.
The meetings will be livestreamed.
The Springfield Public Schools administration recommended to the SPS Board of Education closing Pershing Elementary and Robberson Community School.
During a board meeting in December, SPS Executive Director of Operations Dr. Travis Shaw recommended closing Robberson at the end of the 2023-2024 school year and re-assigning students to Boyd Elementary in August of 2024. He recommended closing Pershing K-5 at the end of the 2025-2026 school year and re-assigning students to Wilder and Field in August of 2026. Pershing is currently a K-8 school.
The recommendation to close the schools followed a demographic study by Davis Demographics, which found that Robberson and Boyd elementary schools are both underutilized due to low enrollment, and enrollment is expected to continue to decline over the next 10 years.
Pershing, which is scheduled to be renovated, will become a 6-8 school only, if the board decides to close its K-5 classrooms. The elementary school currently has 151 students, which the district said is "a very small elementary school."
SPS said the closures would improve organizational and fiscal efficiency.
But parents have asked the board to keep their schools open.