School Closings In Sacramento Draw Protests

School closings have been a hot topic around the country since the start of the New Year. As communities try and find new ways to stay in the black, more and more areas are looking at closing at least a few schools down.

The announcement that schools are going to be shuttered is often meant with quite a bit of push back. The Sacramento area is expecting to close down 11 schools, and that plan brought out more than 200 parents and students to protest the plan.

All over the country, school closings are being met with vitriol rarely seen in this kind of discussion. Some plans have been called outright acts of racism while others are claiming the plans amount to an impingement on students’ civil rights.

The Sacramento school closings would be one of the largest groupings of school closings in the country this year, which is why there has been such a large outcry in that community.

CBS News is reporting that a final vote on the endeavor is expected on Thursday. The preparation for that vote is what brought out the protesters. Part of the concern by some parents is that, if these 11 schools are shut down, their children will be sent to lower quality schools in the area.

“It’s just sad that they’re not putting our kids first.” one mother told CBS.

While some people appear to be resigned to the closing, the Sacramento Bee says that the school board is actually split on the closings. The newest board member, Jay Hansen, looks likely to be the deciding vote. He says he hasn’t decided what he’ll do yet:

“I haven’t made up my mind on each of the 11 schools. “We do have to make decisions. We can’t kick the can down the road. I’ve talked to past board members who have said we should have done this a long time ago.”

Will the Sacramento school closings come to pass?