‘More than just a school’: Community members concerned about how neighborhoods and kids may be affected by TPS closures

It was hard for Karen Vesper to get up for work Tuesday. It was hard not to cry. 

She’s taught at Dolores Huerta Elementary on the eastside for 13 years. She learned it may be her last at a 3 p.m. staff meeting Monday, hours before the public recommendation to close or consolidate 17 sites at Tulsa Public Schools. 

“It’s just awful, you know. But we put on our brave faces,” Vesper said. “And it’s hard not knowing what’s going to happen.” 

District leaders publicly shared school closures were a real option Sept. 8. Student enrollment has steadily declined at TPS, which currently has 78 school sites of varying sizes and a multimillion-dollar budget deficit. 

On Monday, administrators proposed closing 14 elementary schools, two middle schools and an alternative program, directly affecting nearly 5,000 students. The board is set to vote on the district’s recommendations Oct. 19. 

The announcement took many community members by surprise and left them with lingering questions about the implications for their jobs and neighborhoods. Some weren’t aware school closures were on the table at all, while others were confident their sites wouldn’t be included. 

The district estimates closures will save a total $11.1 million and create greater consistency across a smaller number of sites, particularly in elementary schools. 

“We’re all sad, you know? Just waiting to see what happens,” Vesper said, recalling a conversation with a parent Tuesday. “And I told her, I said, ‘You parents need to start fighting this. You all need to start sending letters to the school board. You need to start calling people and making an effort if you want to keep our school.’”

Parents: Hoover is ‘more than just a school’

Midtown resident Stephanie Pilgrim says she was blindsided by the news of possible closures. She sent all three of her kids to Hoover Elementary and bought her home because of its proximity to the site. 

“Hoover’s more than just a school, we’re a community, we look out for each other,” Pilgrim said, tearing up. “There has never been a day when I dropped my kids off at that school and I didn’t feel like those teachers were taking care of my kids.”  

Superintendent Ebony Johnson has stressed her proposal is based primarily on factors like school enrollment and building size. The elementary schools included on its list — including Dolores Huerta and Hoover — all had fewer than 375 students last year.

Pilgrim is concerned consolidations will crowd remaining schools, causing teachers and students to leave the district. Families across the neighborhood use its playgrounds, and she’s “not ready to think about” what the building might become if it closes. 

“I’d like to see them asking the community and parents for other viable options,” Pilgrim said. “Ultimately, I don’t want to see school closures.”

Nichole Dean is unsure of what her family would do next if TPS closes Hoover. Her son has received special education services at the school since he was 3 years old. Now a first grader, he’s made major progress with “amazing teachers” who Dean says have gone above and beyond including him in their classes. 

“He’s put a lot of his trust (in teachers), which is hard for him, to trust strangers and he’s built these relationships with them,” Dean said. “And so as a parent of his, I am really concerned about ripping him away from what he knows.”

It’s legally mandated that a student’s accommodations follow them between school sites and are consistently met, but Dean is concerned schools receiving Hoover students — Skelly and MacArthur — may not have the same support for students with autism. 

“All of those services he gets right now, are those going to be readily available?” Dean said. “… They have an autism program at Hoover and they have sensory rooms,
and he has utilized those before. And so if he needs that in his day, is that going to be available?”

She’s not sure how her son would handle the transition or the loss of a community resource if the building is shut down.

“There’s just a lot to take in for, and he’s so little and I can’t really explain it to him. You know, why can’t we go up to the school anymore?” Dean said.
”If they shut it down and the playground is overgrown and not taken care of and all that stuff, like, you know, how do you explain that?”

If Dolores Huerta closes, neighbors say blight could be next

Neighbors near east Tulsa’s Dolores Huerta share similar concerns. 

Melissa Lippard, a volunteer with the Columbus Neighborhood Association, was a kid when the site caught fire in February 1980. The building was “scary,” she says, and the street was uncomfortable in the year and a half it sat empty.  

“That school is the center of our small community here,” Lippard said. “It’s where everyone works out, everyone hangs out. It’s where people connect after school hours and one of our bigger concerns is what happens to the kids.” 

Last month, the neighborhood association received a $30,000 grant from Partner Tulsa to bring art to the community and restore blighted areas. With the school, they planned to put that money toward art projects or book fairs and renovate what Lippard says is the “creepiest area” of the neighborhood, a patch of land between the community pool and school grounds. 

With the school’s future in limbo, Lippard says, they’re not sure how those plans may change. 

“As we are trying to repair some blight-y areas, if they are going to close the school, are we going to get another blight-y area in our neighborhood?” Lippard said. “So I’d like a plan. But ideally, I’d like them to keep it open and figure it out somewhere else.”

Teachers are left with questions too, Vesper says, about staffing levels, transportation and what comes next.

“The district has to find a way to save money, I mean, I understand that and I get that,” Vesper said. “I just wish — and I’m sure the parents do too — that they had held forums at our school  before announcing everything (Monday), saying, ‘Hey, this is what’s getting ready to happen, we want you to be prepared,’ instead of it was just like a bomb being dropped on us.”

The district is hosting another set of community sessions in the coming weeks. The first is scheduled at 5:30 p.m. Sept. 29 in the eastside’s Martin Regional Library, 2601 S. Garnett Road. Its community survey will remain open through Oct. 16. 

News decisions at the Tulsa Flyer are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.