Flawed regulation

To the editor:

Your April 15 headline, “Centennial falls victim to budget cuts,” should have read, “Centennial neighborhood loses school, gains Lawrence High School playground.”

The Lawrence school board’s stated reason for closing Centennial School for “budget reasons” is disingenuous. Savings are minuscule, at best. They want to close Centennial and use the space for an additional LHS playground. Closing Centennial will destroy the value of Centennial neighborhood for family life because families will not move to neighborhoods where elementary schools have closed.

Four thousand rental houses with no children within single-family zoned neighborhoods have created a nightmare for neighborhoods, city and school system. Families that would prefer to live in Lawrence have moved to nearby towns. Lack of affordable housing is directly related to the flawed, ineffective, unrelated renter ordinance. These neighborhoods’ destruction was not caused by the board, but it is completing the job.

Why bother to remodel any central Lawrence elementary school? Within 10 years, central Lawrence will be mostly student rental housing, and Lawrence will evolve into, alas, another Aggieville.

Unless the city rental ordinance is changed, there will soon be too few families in central Lawrence to support Cordley, New York, and Schwegler schools. If these schools close, Central and South junior high schools will be unnecessary, and money spent on these schools will be wasted.

Is this what Lawrence wants?

Bob Blank,

Lawrence