Yes!!! We found out at the end of last year that we're on the chopping block as well. I and a few others started a grassroots community committee - elected officers and we met literally every single week over the summer, scouring the notes from the committee that was formed to closed the school. But we, too - are looking to revamp the whole structure of our PTO and do it entirely differently than it's been done in the past. I love your idea of a PTCO - because that brings the two together (as I think it should be).

Just so you know - we've done a lot of research and have found that they're not going to save as much money as they "say" they are. They've created all kinds of charts and lists showing where and how they will save - and we've debunked all of them. The biggest one they didn't consider was that so many parents will be upset to the point that they will either homeschool, move out of district or put their children in private schools. That severely reduces the amount of money the school corporation receives becuase they currently receive $5,400/student. That was NOWHERE in their notes to their committee members. They also didn't take into consideration that we are in a walking school district with only two buses - and even those only drive a couple of miles. Closing our school would mean adding several more busses and a LOT MORE gas! Another significant expense. Then, of course, there's so much lost when students are thrown into an enormous school - there is loss of the family atmosphere. Children that might have stayed on the straight and narrow in a school where everyone knows your name, your parents and where you live - have a tendency to fall in with the wrong crowd when the school is larger. Test scores decline - especially when crammed into schools where there is already over-crowding (which is exactly the same thing that would happen here) and then there's loss of opportunity. At our small school, anyone who wants to be on any of the teams gets to be on the team. There are no try-outs. At larger schools, if they let everyone participate who wants to, they would have too many on the team, so children get turned away because they may not be "as good" starting out as some of the others. How does anyone get "good" if they aren't given the opportunity??

This is happening more and more across the country and I'm at a loss to completely understand the logic. The U.S. is academically far behind many other countries - which hurts us in this time of globalization. If we don't quit looking at the "all mighty dollar" and start paying attention to what works best - academically and for morale - it's going to eventually turn out to be worse than the fall of Rome.

And just for the record - when you have time to spare, take a look at "Walmart, the high cost of low prices" (you can find the video online). It's pretty far into the program - but you find out that when a Walmart moves into a community, it puts a tremendous strain on that city/town's budget (in multiple ways) and has been the root cause of school closures! Not just school closures, but also cuts in police and fire force. (Not to mention running long-time local merchants out of business.) While the movie focuses on Walmart, it stands to reason that any really large corporation going about business in the same manner would cause the same reaction.

Anyway, I encourage you to attend all of your school board meetings and dissect everything you learn. Try to find the notes from the committee that is meeting to "close schools" (ours is called the Resources for Results committee and getting the notes was not easy feat as they're being very secretive - which is bordering on illegal!) Appeal to your school board members. DON'T BACK DOWN! Because the loss of community is what is wrong with the world today - and that's what closing small schools in close-knit communities does - not only that - it destroys property values - proven to drop by 10% when a school is closed.

Another option to look into is becoming a charter school. These are schools that are run with their own school board, budget etc. They are "sponsored" by either the local school district or the state depending on how they are set up. They have to have a mission and a focus.

Hello all

First I'd like to introduce myself. I'm new here, and I have a first grader and I'm currently our PTCO'S secretary Now, little bit of history. I promise to keep it short.

Last yr my son was in KK and I signed up w the PTO. It's pretty much the same four or five parents and teachers. Our PTO was a big mess so we decided to just chunk it and start over from scratch. Our school let out for summer 2 or 3 weeks earlier (first wk of May) than other district schools due to construction. In mid April the district said 2 of their 12 elem. schools would be closing, one of them being ours, at the end of the year (2 and 1/2 weeks after our sch let out). Both schools had parents talking to the board at meetings to keep their schools open and told the board and admen.s that we didn't like how they went about it and they could have done a better job and although we can understand the financial reasoning for "needing" to close schools that they can't just look at the number of students. There's so much more that goes into a school being a good/great school than just the number of kids that attend.

In the end, they promised that both schools would stay open for at least one more year while they look/redo rubrics and "other evaluations" before deciding which schools, if any, would be closing.

Our test scores aren't a factor at all, our school has been improving every year for the past 6 or 7 years. The only factor is the number of students. (The two schools that our kids, at my school, would have gone too are very close to capacity already. just fyi.)

Ok, so now current events.

We don't want to go thru all that again. Who Who would? So, we've "re-booted" our PTO, it's now a PTCO (the C for Community). We're looking into becoming non-profit and also trying to get our whole community, not just parents, involved with the school.

Also our school is checking out about possibly becoming a math/science magnet school to try to help enrollment.

Has anybody else had to go thru this? Any tips or advice for our PTCO and/or keeping our school open is greatly appreciated!

Thanks!!!