Caon Elementary Will Shut Next Year

By SHARI CHANEY GRIFFIN

People in the audience used Kleenex and shirt sleeves to wipe their tears after the Cheyenne Mountain School District 12 board voted unanimously Monday to close Caon Elementary after the 2008-09 school year.

“It’s hard to imagine Cheyenne Mountain without Caon,” said fifth- grade teacher David Eick after the meeting.

The proposal to close Caon came from a community committee and was one of seven recommendations made in February as a way of dealing with a budget shortfall and declining enrollment in the district’s traditional schools.

Other recommendations included cutting ties with the district’s charter schools, aggressively marketing the district and replacing Broadmoor Elementary with a bigger school, which would require voters to approve a tax increase.

Monday’s motion did not address Broadmoor Elementary or a possible tax increase.

Board President Steve Mulliken said the board is working to address issues with the charter school, and it is moving forward with marketing its schools to attract more students from other districts.

But increasing out-of-district students too much could come at a price when asking voters to increase taxes, board members learned from the results of a recent survey of D-12 voters.

About 17 percent of the district’s enrollment is made up of students that live outside the district. A telephone survey of likely D-12 voters done this month by Luce Research shows most people think that’s about right, and they would likely vote for a tax increase.

If the percentage of out-of-district students increases to roughly 25 percent, the percentage of voters in support of a tax increase drops but is still more than 50 percent, according to the survey. When out-of-district students reaches 35 percent, support for a tax increase drops to less than 50 percent.

None of the panel’s recommendations had the support of a majority of D-12 voters, said Chrystine Zacherau, a data analyst who presented the findings to the board.

Mulliken said he struggled with why Caon should be the school to close. But he said it came down to its location, directly across the street from Cheyenne Mountain Junior High, creating traffic congestion and safety concerns.

“It has nothing to do with whether it’s a great school,” Mulliken said.

Mulliken also talked about whether the district could keep its small-school feel if one elementary was closed and every neighborhood no longer had a school.

“I know it’s going to be painful for some, but I think you can,” he said.

“You can still have neighborhood schools with one less.”

CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0394 or shari.griffin@gazette.com

(c) 2008 Gazette, The; Colorado Springs, Colo.. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.