5/29/2007 11:05:00 AM Looking for ways to say goodbye
Open since 1949, Katherine Curren Elementary will be closing its doors on June 8. The district will rent the building to a charter school. From left, fifth-graders Michelle Atwood and Mohamed Yusuf. PHOTOs: Darin Back
What: Guests will be greeted by former students and will be invited to share memories. Keepsakes can be donated to the archives. Refreshments will be served.
When: Monday, June 4 at 5:30 p.m. At 6 p.m., a program will occur that will include music, memorabilia and highlights of school's history.
Questions: Call 952-988-4950 or go to www.kcurren.org.
Most students attending school in the Lake Minnetonka area are eagerly counting down to the last day of class.
Yet for the children, teachers and staff of Hopkins' Katherine Curren Elementary, the last day of class is approaching too quickly.
Once school lets out on June 8, the doors of their school are closing for good.
In recent years, Hopkins School District has struggled with budget concerns. At the same time, the community faced declining enrollment.
As a result, last fall the school board announced its decision to close Katherine Curren, the smallest elementary school in the district.
Now, as the final school day approaches, the community prepares to give Katherine Curren a proper goodbye.
"People have come to terms with what's happened," said Marsha Baisch, principal at Katherine Curren, "but it's still really hard. It's almost like dealing with a death. There are a wide range of emotions that creep up on you - disbelief, anger, resignation, sadness."
The staff has worked to prepare the students for the school closing all year.
"We've really talked with the kids," she said. "We just keep telling them, 'This is a grown-up decision that had to do with not having enough money.'"
The students will be dispersed to other schools in the district.
To help the children weather the transition, Baisch said, students have gone on tours.
"Visiting their new schools helped the kids get excited about the next year," she explained.
"They got to look around and see the faces of the other Katherine Curren kids that will be with them next year, to see who their new friends are going to be. But they also saw whose faces weren't there. It was the reality that they will be losing friends, too," said Baisch.
Teachers will also be dispersed to other buildings next year.
To help the staff calm their concerns, Katherine Curren teachers recently spent time at their new schools meeting future team members and touring their future classrooms.
"Just simply seeing where you are going to be next year," Baisch said, "can alleviate a lot of fears and questions."
As principal, Baisch has been in a position of leadership throughout the closing.
It has been a difficult and complex job, she confessed. "None of my training ever prepared me to close a school," she admitted, comparing the process to that of becoming a parent.
No matter how many parenting books one reads, she said, the best way to conquer the task is to get in the middle of it.
"It's important to retain your humanness through it all and to let others know this matters to you just as much as it matters to them," said Baisch.
She will be moving to Meadowbrook Elementary once Katherine Curren closes.
Baisch said she has worked hard to ensure future positions for each Katherine Curren teacher within the district.
"It is really my hope that with retirement and reassignments, that I will find a spot for everyone," she said.
She has also made it a personal mission to end the year with a bang.
The school, she explained, holds an important place in the district's history.
The building is located in the heart of downtown Hopkins and was first opened in 1949.
The school was named after a long-time teacher in the district. Katherine Curren, the person, taught in the district for 44 years.
Several events will cap off the year. All of the students and staff will parade down Mainstreet, she said, proceeded by a drum corps comprised of high school students who attended Katherine Curren.
They will march to the Hopkins Center for the Arts, where they will participate in an all-school graduation.
An all-school field trip is also planned to the Maple Grove Community Center.
A closing ceremony is planned for June 4 and the public is welcome to attend. Staff will be honored and the school's history will be remembered.
Before the year is out, all students will receive a gift bag, said Baisch, that will hold a t-shirt, yearbook and a special anthology of Katherine Curren memories.
The anthology is over 300 pages and boasts poems, stories, drawings and collages from the student body.
Two parents, Mary Olk and Chris Roles, worked on the anthology.
"We invited anything that could be printed around the theme of My Journey at Katherine Curren," Olk explained. "The teachers really took the idea to heart. Each teacher did something with the kids."
It took about a week to wade through the submitted work, Olk said.
"It was really very touching. There was fabulous artwork and some really delightful poems. Many were very sweet. It was overwhelming to read what all these kids thought and remembered about their school," she said.
The Katherine Curren Parent Teacher Organization paid for the cost of printing and assembling the anthologies, which totaled $2,500, Olk said.
"The PTO," she explained, "happily donated to the cause out of its existing budget. The PTO money can't go with the kids next year. We didn't have an easy formula for dividing the funds."
Instead, she said, the PTO decided to spend down its entire budget.
In addition to funding the anthologies, the PTO will also fund the all-school field trip.
The PTO decided there was no easy way to divvy up its goods, but the district hasn't had that luxury.
Once the decision was made to close Katherine Curren, a committee of roughly 20 district personnel was assembled to inventory the school's possessions and decide how to go about dispersing the materials.
Nik Lightfoot, interim director of administrative services and technology, led the committee, which met on a monthly basis throughout the winter and is now meeting more often as the year comes to a close.
"We're moving an entire school and it's really a transition effort," Lightfoot said.
Some outdated technology will be pitched and some larger items, like desks and cafeteria tables, will be put into storage.
Each student will be allowed to pick one book from the school library and the remaining media materials will be spread throughout the district.
Teachers have been boxing and labeling file cabinets, maps, posters and personal effects. The district will move all of these items and deliver them to each teacher's future classroom.
The largest transition efforts, Lightfoot said, have been coordinating the movement of student records. Ensuring the proper paperwork follows each student takes care and attention.
Secondly, taking stock of curriculum materials has been time consuming, Lightfoot acknowledged.
Deciding how to divide sets of text books, for example, has proved intense.
Yet to find a home is all the Katherine Curren memorabilia amassed over the years.
The building itself, however, will not sit empty next fall.
It will be leased to the Ubah Medical Academy (UBA), a charter high school serving ninth through 12th grade students.
The school provides a supportive environment for East African students. Many of the school's students are interested in future medical careers, but not all.
UBA signed a five-year lease for the building for $300,000 a year. The lease is based on a projected enrollment of 250 students and will be reviewed annually.
The move will allow the charter school to expand, as its student population has grown in recent years.
But for now, Katherine Curren students are preparing to say their final goodbyes.
"As we enter the last weeks of school, reality is hitting. The finality of it all is setting in, and that's really hard," Baisch said. "Students are sad. We've seen tears."
Reader Comments
Posted: Thursday, May 06, 2010
Article comment by:
Kathy
I wiah you well on your new journey. I teach in a Catholic school in Philadelphia, PA and we were told on April 3rd, that we would be closing our doors on June 11th after 56 years of educating the children. Good luck to you.
