Give Neighborhood Schools a Chance

Thank you for publishing Lanny Ebenstein’s letter “Bring Back Lincoln Elementary School.” What do the Indy‘s readers think about re-establishing an elementary school downtown? We’d like to take a Straw Poll. Please send your reply to cns4schools@aol.com.

(1) Yes! Re-open Lincoln School at current classrooms at 710 Santa Barbara Street (a property owned by the S.B. Unified School District). Let kids walk to school. Santa Barbara needs a downtown elementary school.

(2) No! What a stupid idea! The status quo of bussing kids is working so well in Santa Barbara. Let’s keep things the way they are with no schools in the downtown neighborhoods, so we can bus kids to school elsewhere.

(3) Maybe. Show me the numbers. I need to see the numbers on how opening a new elementary school downtown would work with declining enrollment and budget cuts on the horizon, and how this would affect other elementary schools in the district.

How does this make sense? The best estimate by the Coalition for Neighborhood Schools is that more than 1,200 students currently live in the downtown bussed area previously served by three neighborhood schools. And, more than 600 K-6 students currently live and could walk to school less than 10 blocks to the existing SBUSD school campus at 710 Santa Barbara Street, rather than being bussed to the Mesa and other elementary schools far away (Roosevelt, Adams, Peabody, Monroe, Washington).

Bussing is a multi-million budget item for the elementary district. The savings from reducing bussing would greatly offset — if not completely or possibly more than offset — administrative and staffing costs of opening a downtown elementary school. Furthermore, building a neighborhood school will attract more families in the Santa Barbara elementary district to attend their public elementary schools.

A campus is already there, no new construction is needed in the near short-term. No amount of declining enrollment will overcome the need for an elementary campus in the downtown area. Lincoln would function as it did nearby for more than 100 years (1871-1979), a downtown neighborhood school — like Franklin on the Eastside, and Harding on the Westside — an elementary school to which children could walk.

Alice Post is a member of the Coalition for Neighborhood Schools.