Lincoln Park Middle School Could Close Next Year

By Sarah Horner, Duluth News-Tribune, Minn.

Feb. 13–Declining enrollment at Lincoln Park Middle School may lead to its closure next school year, three years earlier than planned.

Duluth Assistant Superintendent Joe Hill said student numbers at the school are expected to be so low that it could jeopardize the quality of education the school is able to provide.

The middle school has fewer than 200 students this year, compared to about 460 at Morgan Park, 735 at Ordean and 660 at Woodland. The school’s numbers are expected to drop even further next year.

“You reach a certain threshold where it becomes very problematic to offer a comprehensive middle school program,” Hill said. “That threshold is questionable now, and we will definitely be there next year.”

Based on enrollment projections, the middle school won’t have the numbers to sustain full-time staff in any subject area next year except one.

“When you get to that point, our full-time educators are placed in a position where they need to travel between schools,” Hill said.

When staff is forced to spend time driving in cars rather than teaching in classes, it costs the district and students, he said. It can make it more difficult for staff to facilitate before- and after-school activities, for example. Low enrollment at the school can make it tough to offer electives because there aren’t always enough kids to offset the costs of bringing in teachers, Hill said.

To mitigate the problems, the district is considering incorporating Lincoln Park Middle School students into Morgan Park. If it does, the district would provide busing to the new school. Families that choose another middle school would be subject to the district’s school choice policy. Staff would be relocated to other district schools.

The district considered closing the middle school last year as a way to help balance the district’s deficit but opted not to after School Board members expressed concern about making that decision before the district decided on a direction with its long-range facilities plan.

Under the now-revealed plan, the middle school was not scheduled to close until the 2011-12 school year.

Hill said the new discussion to close the school is not about money, even though the district is facing a $5.9 million deficit in 2009.

“This is not a budgetary decision, and this is not about the long-range plan. This decision is going to be made on program viability,” he said.

John Rudolph, a science teacher at Lincoln middle school for the past eight years, said there is no denying the school’s programs have taken a hit.

“I used to have 140 kids in my seventh-grade class; now I’m down to about 60. We’ve seen our numbers go down more than 50 percent in the last eight years,” he said. “Now we’re caught not being able to offer many of the classes that the other middle schools can. That’s not in the realm of being fair to students.”

The decision to close the school has been looming above teachers for years, and, for the most part, staff members understand why, but it still doesn’t make it easy, he said.

“We’re talking about taking away the middle school in the center of the city. That area of the city is demographically more disadvantaged,” he said. “It is important that kids around here can walk to this school, and that will go away.”

Bill VanLoh, the principal at Lincoln Park, said the rest of the staff share Rudolph’s concerns. “They just want to do whatever they can to best provide for the students,” he said.

“Hopefully we will get something decided soon so we can inform parents. Registration is already coming up for next year,” he said.

Gary Krause, a Duluth city councilor representing Lincoln Park, said the area has been dealing with uncertainty for years.

“This is far from the first time the district has discussed closing Lincoln, and you have to wonder if those discussions created the enrollment situation going on there,” he said. “Whenever it was rumored to close, parents started pulling kids out and going elsewhere.”

The problem is more widespread than that, said Eric Kaiser, the district’s continuous improvement facilitator and former Lincoln Park principal.

“We’ve been wrestling with a declining student population in this area for years.” Kaiser said. “… We’re seeing it in all of our buildings.”

The issue is more pressing at Lincoln because the school started with a smaller middle school population, he said, so the impact of the decline is being felt faster and harder.

Board members were briefed on the situation at a committee meeting Tuesday.

Tom Grover said he would like to see the district explore solutions that don’t involve closing Lincoln Park.

“If you look at where kids are located on a map I think you could make a compelling argument for closing Morgan [Park] and sending those kids to Lincoln,” he said. “It’s just a thought outside the box.”

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