Scholarly Resources

 Reflecting on School Closure

I have included two peer-reviewed articles on the topic of school closure: “A political analysis of community influence over school closure,” an article from the urban education journal The Urban Review, and “Documenting disappearing spaces: Erasure and remembrance in two high school closures,” an article from the psychology journal Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology. While these articles focus on particular instances of school closure in three different pseudonymous cities and schools, they fill a significant gap more generally in discussions concerning school closure; namely, they provide analyses of the effects of school closure on student populations and demonstrate how community members’ participation and voice are limited and silenced throughout the process.

  • School closure is a traumatic experience for a community to endure.
    Finnigan and Lavner (2012) write that “no issue is more politically or emotionally charged than the decision to close schools”.”2 (p. 134) In the case of school closure, this trauma is twofold: first, the realization that a proposal has been put forth to close a school and second, the ultimate closure of the school, often occurring months or years after the proposal. Ayala and Galletta (2012) frame school closure as closely associated to the concept of “root shock, the physiological shock encountered by an individual who has been seriously injured, and the stress experienced by a community in the aftermath of dramatic and unwelcomed neighborhood change.”3 (p. 150) I appreciated Ayala and Galletta’s inclusion of psychology- and trauma-related theories: how do community members cope? How can teachers support students coping with this reality? This seems particularly difficult when the public institution (school) that held the capacity for transformation and the space for critical discourses no longer exists.
  • As deliberation over the school closure decision occurs, existing power structures limit community participation and voice.
    The school closure decision included in Finnigan and Lavner’s study lays bare the community’s power structure and exposes the ways in which the school board and district hand-picked community members to serve on ad hoc committees to create the appearance of community voice. One Board member interviewed said that ” ‘I appreciate and I listen to community input but… I know… it’s a matter of getting bodies before the Board as opposed to the substance. After a certain number of speakers there is a tendency for the listening ability to go down unless you’re hearing something different’ ”2 (p. 144) This reveals that authentic hearing of and listening to the community’s perspectives was not occurring.Ayala and Galletta point out the ” ‘masking of the continuous and pervasive nature of conflict’ that ‘is itself one of the power mechanisms’ used to preserve inequalities.”3 (p. 153) In other words, when situations, such as school closure, are messy and complicated, people often shy away from analysis and critical thought. When critical conversations do not occur because of fear of conflict, disagreement, or psychological trauma (reopening the wound), people do not analyze or process the effects of power structures, disenfranchisement, and silencing on lived experience.
  • After a school is closed, how is institutional memory preserved? Who determines what the memories consist of?
    In the school closure decision in Finnigan and Lavner’s study, the school board ultimately decided to close the school that did not have parents, students, and community members vocally advocating for it to remain open. The school board gauged “a sense of how much life is there” in the school and found “it was easiest to close a school that lacked community support.”2 (p. 145) The researchers pointed out numerous ways in which the school board was not appropriately listening for community support but the school board raises an interesting question: what does the “life” of a school look like? How does the “life” of a school still exist even if the physical structure no longer stands? Who remembers what the “life” of a school is and who chooses to share those memories with others? Whose memories are heard and appreciated in a meaningful sense?Ayala and Galletta write that “what gets erased is often not inequality but the history of resistance and struggles for change.”3 (p. 154) The schooling conditions typically do not dramatically improve and inequalities are not made “equal.” But how does the institutional memory of the school simultaneously preserve a sense of loss and the voices of invested struggle? These authors offer that films, interviews, and reenactments can recover a critical and comprehensive view of the experience of school closure. I would imagine that, for many teachers, this represents new ground to cover.

2. Finnigan, K. S. and Lavner, M. (2012).  “A political analysis of community influence over school closure.” The Urban Review, 44, 133-151. Retrieved from http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11256-011-0179-9
3. Ayala, J. and Galletta, A. (2012). “Documenting disappearing spaces: Erasure and remembrance in two high school closures.” Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, 18 (2), 149-155. Retrieved from http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/pac/18/2/149.pdf&productCode=pa