This petition is over 500 signatures now! We also received 47 paper signatures at the meeting last night. Last night the superintendent still failed to provide details on specifically how much money closing heard itself will save and if they compared that to all the other schools in the district. They didn’t include in their presentation, the details of the bus hub they intend to create at Heard for our students that was in the pamphlet they handed out privately. The transparency and lack of details is unacceptable. Thank you to all that attended the meeting, those that sent in comments and those that bravely stood up and shared your comments to the board for consideration. We must keep pushing back against this possible injustice for our children and our community. Remind them that we have options, including charter schools, private schools, and other districts with schools nearby with openings that will value our children. Heard is OUR school, it is not an investment opportunity for the district to lease out to create a surplus or rainy day fund for the other schools in the district while we get the short end of the stick. They need to factor into their budget we can also petition to redistrict and they could lose the funding from our area. There may even be legal recourse. Let’s remind them of that. The media is starting to push them to be more transparent and provide details, for those that are comfortable this is another way to push for answers. Last night the district said they are still working on putting that together. They should have had that before they even presented these plans in the first place. 

Regardless of the outcome at the end of this process I am proud of our community for standing up for ourselves, others, and what is right. Our children are not numbers you can just consolidate around on a whim to make a budget ideal. We have roots here.