PORT ANGELES — A large turnout for a Port Angeles School District board meeting waited past 10 p.m. Monday to see which school the board might close.
The five-member School Board continued to discuss whether Fairview or Monroe elementary school will be shuttered after June as more than 100 constituents strained to hear the deliberations in cavernous Vern Burton Community Center.
The meeting was moved to the Burton center from the board’s smaller meeting room at district headquarters about a block away.
Emotions ran high as representatives from each school’s parent-teacher group faced board members.
Speaking on behalf of each school were the respective parent-teacher organization presidents, Patti Happe for Monroe and Terri Kelley for Fairview.
Each delivered reasons to keep her school open, and both encouraged the board not to close any school but find other ways to cover a projected $300,000 budget deficit in 2004-05.
Mothballing either of the district’s two easternmost schools reflects the fact that the district can no longer financially support six elementary schools because of declining enrollments and reduced state funding, district officials have said.
School Board President Charlie McClain called closing either school an “agonizing decision.”