Monday night’s rollout of USD 259 superintendent John Allison’s school closings and boundary plan was supposed to be an opportunity for school board members to tee up questions they’d like answered before next week’s formal consideration and the Feb. 27 vote. Yet when board member Lanora Nolan posed a “what if” question about closing Black Elementary rather than Bryant for traffic-safety reasons, board president Betty Arnold urged her to focus on the proposal on the table and defer such questions another week. That left observers to wonder whether board members truly have the room to second-guess the plan, or whether the maps are so complex and the process so far along that Allison’s maps inevitably will prevail. Board members should be able to do more than rubber-stamp a plan so crucial for children and parents.
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