To the editor:

The number crunchers have been talking about how much money could be saved per student if Cordley and New York elementary schools were closed. How about the economic impact to our fair city? We are constantly trying to attract new businesses. Are we going to tell them that the neighborhoods with the most affordable housing no longer have neighborhood schools due to a lack of long-term vision by our school board?

How about the millions of dollars of taxpayer money that we’ll need to spend in four or five years on a new elementary school because we all of sudden find out that we don’t have enough classrooms for our elementary students?

Then there is the No Child Left Behind Act of the early part of this decade. I have never understood this act, but I do worry that the school children of New York and Cordley, bused across town to larger schools, might become the “children left behind” that eventually cost us millions in federal school funding.

It is time for us to wake up to the true costs of closing our vital, thriving neighborhood schools.