AURORA | Following a string of board meetings where Sable Elementary School families and teachers came out in force to protest the proposed closure of their school, Paris Elementary School community members asked the Aurora Public Schools board to give their school the same consideration.
Speaking at Tuesday night’s board meeting, Paris students and their parents voiced concerns that a new school would be too far away for those who don’t own cars or wouldn’t offer the same quality of services.
“Paris is truly home to its families and essential to the community,” said Laney Warren, the director for the Boys & Girls Club at Paris. She and many of her students spoke during public comment in favor of keeping Paris open.
Brianna Lennon has a second grader who goes to Paris and runs the Girl Scout troop that operates there. For many children in the surrounding community, “the safest place for them is Paris Elementary,” she said.
The other schools in the area “don’t suffice for our community,” Lennon said.
The district proposed in December that both Paris and Sable elementary schools be closed as part of the Blueprint APS process, and their students redistricted to different local schools starting in the 2023-2024 school year.
Following the announcement, many people from the Sable community protested the decision and at last month’s meeting the school board rejected superintendent Rico Munn’s recommendation in a 4-3 vote which left the future of both schools up in the air.
The superintendent will return at the board’s May 17 meeting with several frameworks for how the board could go forward with the Blueprint process. That could potentially include another opportunity for the board to vote on Paris and or Sable.
Paris Principal Mario Giardiello said that the school is an “anchor” of the community and provides essentials for many families such as food, transportation, daycare and extracurricular activities, and it partners with over 40 different community organizations.
“It’s unlike any place I’ve ever been to in that the wraparound services are so complete,” he said.
Giardiello acknowledged that “every school that’s ever closed has said they’re special” but that Paris’ community involvement truly does set it apart. He was disappointed that at the earlier meetings, the sentiment from some people seemed to be “close Paris but not Sable.”
This doesn’t mean that the reverse should happen, he said, but he thinks families from his school deserve to be heard as well.
Many of his students’ parents are essential workers who can’t attend a board meeting at 6 p.m., he said. The school serves a population that is 85% English language learners and over 90% who qualify for free lunch.
Initially he said that most people from Paris weren’t rallying because they felt like it was a lost cause, but following Sable’s successful attempt to get the board to reject its closure, Paris families took note.
“It wasn’t a fair representation of the two communities,” he said.
Its a true shame that the citizens/parents from these two districts have to fight tooth and nail for a outcome that seems so instinctively common sense to not start busing kids everywhere else except what’s close.
What’s been published for Blueprint APS looks like we will pay twice for the same product. But it’s been sold in terms of what’s best for the student’s educational needs. That’s what and why we need to know more, these experts…. no one buys their thinking. This thing is broken what the plan seems to offer.