Education: More Losers Than Winners

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"More Losers Than Winners" Facing up to closing down some schools

This year the number of children attending school in the U.S. has dropped to 47.8 million, down 3.3 million from a decade ago. All over America in towns and cities and suburbs, agonizing choices about closing schools and dismissing teachers are now being made. TIME Midwest Correspondent Barry Hillenbrand took a firsthand look at one troubled elementary school district in Evanston, Ill., on Chicago's North Shore, where four school buildings are to be closed. His report:

Evanston was at first surprised by declining enrollment. Experts had been predicting a steady growth in the town for years. Besides, Joseph E. Hill, superintendent for District 65, points out: "It was something we did not like, so we were reluctant to meet it head on." But last fall, after making a rough forecast of pupil population by counting birth records at local hospitals, the district faced up to a grim conclusion: the present total of 8,000 students, already down 3,000 from the 1968 record of 11,000, would drop to 6,000 in five years. At the same time, townspeople voted down a $2 million increase in the property tax. Says Gail Curry, president of the Willard School P.T.A.: "The people were saying they didn't want to pay government any more taxes, and the school tax was the only one they had any direct vote on."

After the vote, Superintendent Hill took a deep breath and wrote a five-year plan for the district calling for the closing of four school buildings (out of 18) and the trimming of $2.4 million in staff and program costs. Hill was prepared for a bitter debate on his plan. In 1975 he presided over the closing of three elementary schools. "You don't make friends closing schools," he says. Parents and teachers quickly organized to fight for the schools on Hill's new list. Throughout January and February, during the coldest and snowiest winter in Evanston's history, while most restaurants were empty and movie theaters closed for lack of audiences, the evening school-board meetings were crowded with 400 or 500 people, all eager to be heard.

It was bitter and theatrical. One night some parents carried in a child's coffin: while placard-bearing children blew out candles, a parent read a statement foretelling the death of a school because the board had marked the principal for dismissal. Other nights featured debates pitting blacks against whites, those who valued music instruction against those who wanted foreign languages. It was neighborhood against neighborhood, teachers against administration, north Evanston vs. south Evanston. "We may have generated more hostility and more unfulfilled expectations by opening debate than if we had never asked for opinions," says Board Member Mary Anne Wexler, who like many others on the board began to feel worn out and put upon as the months of combat dragged on.