ST PAUL, Minn. — For the past two months, school board members have met with emotional community members, parents, teachers and students to hear public input on the districts Envision SPPS proposal.
And Monday night, Vice chair Jim Vue with the St. Paul Board of Education announced a scaled down proposal that would consider sparing three of the five schools slated to close.
"At this time, LEAP, Highwood Hills, Wellstone, along with its subsequent merges including Riverview, Cherokee heights, J.J. Hill and Obama will be removed from the proposal," said Vue, during Monday's meeting.
The district's plan recommends closing five schools and changing the programming at 10 others, starting in the 2022-23 school year. In the plan, the school district determined that having fewer school buildings open in St. Paul would allow them to better allocate resources.
"Where we can create capacity in one space, it makes a lot of sense, so we are going to need to be flexible," said SPPS Superintendent, Joe Gothard.
According to the plan, close to 3,000 students would be affected, representing around 9% of the students in the district.
"This is a community that we as staff chose to be a part of," said Annaka Larson, a first-grade teacher at Wellstone Elementary School.
Larson says the initial proposal to close down her school came as a shock.
"Because the criteria has always been around well-rounded schools," said Larson. "Wellstone wasn't one of those schools."
While she's proud of her students who continue to share their voices at recent school board meetings, she's anxiously awaiting Wednesday's vote.
The school board is holding a public meeting at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday at 360 Colborne Street in St. Paul. The final vote is expected Wednesday, Dec. 1 and will be open to the public. Both meetings will be livestreamed here.