Which Bloomfield Hills schools will close?

 December 4, 2008

Recommendations for closing certain Bloomfield Hills schools will be presented at a public meeting tonight, December 4 at 7 pm at Lahser High School. The Bloomfield Hills School Board will further consider school consolidation at their  December 18th meeting

Documents obtained by the Detroit Free Press show that the facilities committee recommendation is focusing on options that do not close the three middle schools. Conant and Way elementary schools also seem to be safe. There have been various options studied, including closing the above schools as well as four elementary schools: Pine Lake, Lone Pine, Eastover and Hickory Grove.

According to the Bloomfield Hills district website, community members who wish to ask questions of the facilities goal team chairs, the superintendent and the Board president can do so at the meeting, December 4 at 7:00 at Lahser High. The meeting will be broadcast live from the Lahser studio, WBFH 88.1 FM.  Questions can be sent by e-mail during the program or in advance to info@bloomfield.org

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December 3, 2008

Fans of Conant and Way elementary schools and the three middle schools in the Bloomfield Hills district can breathe a little easier.

A committee charged with recommending which two schools the district should close at the end of the academic year is focusing on options that keep those schools open.

The district’s facilities master planning committee met Tuesday night to finalize its recommendations to the school board, which are scheduled to be presented at a public meeting at 7 p.m. Thursday at Lahser High School.

Since administrators appointed the committee in September, the committee has been meeting and deliberating behind closed doors. District officials said privacy was needed so committee members could speak their opinions in confidence.

The Free Press obtained a schedule of the committee’s meetings using a Freedom of Information Act request. Although the district wanted the committee’s final meeting to be closed as well, Free Press attorney Herschel Fink said the meeting should be open. When journalists from the Free Press and its reporting partner, WDIV-TV Local 4, showed up at the meeting at the district’s Gary Doyle Conference Center, they were allowed to stay.

Members of the committee, which is composed of a parent and administrator from each of the district’s six elementary schools and three middle schools plus several other community representatives, spent three hours discussing the pros and cons of closing various combinations of the district’s four remaining elementary schools: Pine Lake, Lone Pine, Eastover and Hickory Grove.

At the end of the meeting, members cast written ballots for the combination they favored. Committee co-chair Richard Elias, who has a child at Conant, declined to count the approximately 20 ballots and announce the results at the meeting while reporters were present. He said he would e-mail the results of the vote to committee members.

The board is expected to vote on which schools to close at its Dec. 18 meeting at Andover High School.

“Parents should be cautious about what they hear and believe until they have heard the entire presentation and understand the committee’s thinking,” Elias said.

Conant is located in Bloomfield Township just west of Telegraph on Quarton. Way is located in Bloomfield Hills just east of Telegraph on Long Lake.

The committee is focusing on a configuration of grades it has dubbed Plan Two. Under Plan Two, two elementary schools would be closed. The remaining elementary schools would serve students in grades kindergarten through 3 or 4. The district’s three middle schools would remain open, serving students in grades 4 or 5 through 8.

The school board has the option to reject the committee’s rankings and choose to close different schools than the ones committee members recommend.

Declining enrollment and increasing insurance costs are among the factors that led the school board to announce that it would close two school buildings in June.