To the editor:

As a Centennial parent, I am struggling with how to respond to the school board’s decision to close Centennial School.

On the one hand, our family has many friends in the Cordley community, and we would enjoy the closer association that the proposed expansion of Cordley would create (should the proposed bond issue be written and passed).

On the other hand, I have a sobbing fourth-grader who wants answers to a few bitter questions.

(1) Do rich kids matter more than poor? Centennial, East Heights and Riverside all being among the most economically disadvantaged and multicultural communities in Lawrence, curiously located outside of the home districts of any school board member who voted to close them, I have trouble answering her question.

(2) Does a promise mean anything? Since several of the school board members who voted to close her school ran and were elected as vigorous opponents of precisely this school closing issue in campaigns she is old enough to remember, I again have difficulty in answering her.

(3) Does voting matter? See No. 2.

(4) Is my school underutilized and inefficient? Well, I cannot say much to that when her fourth grade has 21 students, the fifth grade class has 33 people in it, and the school building is bursting at the seams.

I suspect that we will have a hard time answering these questions as a city, but I won’t sit idly by while they are not asked or publicly accounted for by our elected board.

Garth Myers,

Lawrence