Balmoral School Parents Oppose Possible Closing

By Ruma Banerji Kumar banerji@commercialappealcom

This is the last of five stories on town hall meetings hosted by the Memphis school board.

Lorraine Rohleder practiced her speech over and over again in her head, writing drafts on the back of the speaker card the school folks had handed out.

At Balmoral, the children get more than reading, writing, ‘rithmetic, they learn how to behave .

She scratched out a word or two to make her argument crisp, then kept writing.

What’s to happen to the teaching staff? There are bills to pay.

“I feel sick to my stomach; I hope I don’t freeze up,” Rohleder said, nervous about pleading her case before the Memphis school board.

Rohleder was one of roughly 60 supporters of Balmoral Elementary at a town hall meeting at Wooddale High School Thursday evening. The meeting was the last of five the Memphis school board has held to hear the community’s questions and concerns about a sweeping master plan that would close schools, build new ones, redraw attendance zones and eliminate bus routes that haven’t been touched in a quarter century.

Included in the mix of Balmoral supporters was a handful of parents from Oak Forest Elementary, where crowded conditions force children to go to the bathroom in shifts. The parents pressed the board for details on the renovations planned at the cramped school.

But the proposal to close Balmoral spurred the most reaction. The school is one of five open-space schools in Memphis that were part of an architectural and social experiment in the late 1960s to encourage creative learning among children.

The southeast Memphis school uses colorful bulletin boards and bookshelves to divide classroom spaces. In some cases, with only a set of computers separating one class from another, teachers and students speak in hushed tones so they don’t disturb one another.

School officials told Balmoral supporters the school is being considered for closure not just because the open classroom space can be distracting, but because a move to eliminate outdated bus routes would leave Balmoral nearly empty.

About three-quarters of Balmoral’s 394 students are bused in through routes created under a 1970s court order to desegregate schools. That order lifted years ago. Without children bused from Orange Mound and Fox Meadows, Balmoral would be left with fewer than 100 children.

Balmoral parent Christina Fanning Haynes couldn’t accept that explanation. Her three daughters attend the school. She’s been so happy with the education they’ve receive that she’s planning to move into one of the 700 homes surrounding Balmoral, she told the school board.

“I’ve learned that Balmoral is more than a building and furniture – it’s a community,” Haynes told the board. “I’m moving into that neighborhood because of that school.”

– Ruma Banerji Kumar: 529-2596

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ON THE WEB

Find out what your new city school attendance zone looks like according to the five-year master plan being considered by the Memphis Board of Education. Go to commercialappeal.com/ schoolzonemap/

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