City High doesn’t need Hoover School to close

As I wrote last week, the district’s fiscal justifications for closing an elementary school don’t stand up to scrutiny, and its reasons for singling out Hoover for closure make even less sense. But the Hoover closure has always been about something else, too: the long-standing desire of some City High advocates to take the Hoover property for City.

Ultimately, the question of whether Hoover should close so City can have more land hinges on how much you value the presence of the neighborhood’s elementary school. Some people might support closing Hoover no matter how small the benefit to City, because they just don’t think closing an elementary school is a big deal. But suppose you think (as I do) that our existing elementary schools are important and shouldn’t be closed cavalierly or without a compelling reason. Is City High’s “need” for the property nonetheless so great that it would justify closing Hoover?

Here’s why I think it isn’t:

• No one has identified how the Hoover property would be used to benefit City. Under the current plan, City won’t use the building itself; there’s money designated in the plan to tear the Hoover building down, and no money designated to build anything in its place. How can taking Hoover be a compelling “need” if no one can tell us what it is needed for? What’s the big secret?

• One argument is that City won’t have room for its planned 300-student addition unless it can take the Hoover property. But everyone agrees that the addition won’t go on the Hoover land, and no one has identified how the Hoover property will be used to accommodate the addition. Moreover, the district has twice released scenarios in which the City High addition would be completed while Hoover is still in use, which directly contradicts the idea that the addition can’t happen without the closure.

• We don’t even know whether the second half of the City High addition will be built, because its completion hinges on 60% voter approval of a very large bond. The district may face an uphill battle passing that bond, especially if it needlessly alienates a big chunk of the central east side.
  

• City High’s enrollment is about to get significantly smaller. The district will soon have three large-enrollment high schools instead of two. If enrollment is divided evenly among the three, City could have somewhere in the neighborhood of 1200 or 1300 students. That’s a funny moment to be arguing that City suddenly “needs” five more acres of property for unspecified uses.

• The most likely possible uses of the Hoover land are as a parking lot or a site for athletic fields. Depending on where the City addition is built, it might displace some tennis courts, or a softball field, or existing parking. Also, City High currently uses the baseball field at Mercer Park, and some would like to move baseball back to the City premises. If you think these are compelling needs that justify closing a neighborhood elementary school—and spending millions of dollars to do it—we’ll just have to agree to disagree. Let’s just say that that will be one incredibly expensive baseball field or parking lot.

• By the way, if moving a couple of tennis courts onto Hoover’s field is all it would take to keep the school open, I’d happily support the idea. Hoover’s field is big enough to hold three tennis courts and still have room for nine more, without even encroaching on the blacktop. Closing the school and taking all five acres because of a few tennis courts makes no sense at all.

• Unless City High plans to annex all the private homes between First and Seventh Avenues, West High will always have the bigger front lawn. Liberty High will always have the bigger parking lot (and it’ll need one, too, since it won’t be located in the middle of a densely populated walkable neighborhood, as City is). These aren’t badges of inferiority. Neither is having City’s baseball field over at Mercer, where its swim team also practices. City shouldn’t aspire to be exactly like West High or Liberty High. It has its own unique character, and its location in a thriving, close-in neighborhood is one of its strengths.

So sure, there will always be people who want the Hoover land for City High. (One of the members of the facilities planning committee told me that Hoover had to close because City High might need the land “fifty or seventy-five years from now”!) But you need a much more compelling case to justify closing an elementary school.
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