Our View: All in education must accept waves of change

East Valley school districts face some serious challenges in the next two years as they must deal with sudden and uneven declining student enrollment that affects overall funding resources as well as individual neighborhood schools.

Tribune writer Christina Vanoverbeke documented this trend in a three-part series last week, noting that some districts had been expecting it despite Arizona’s general population growth as they closely tracked the aging of established neighborhoods, the competition for students from private and charter schools and the abrupt disruption caused by the collapse of housing markets.

But the public has barely noticed the deeper implications, as illustrated by the intense backlash to just about any suggestion to reduce expenses or to shift tax dollars — such as the elimination of librarians, rethinking of daytime hours and curriculum, or the closure of entire campuses. Many of us are wedded to the idea of a public school as a permanent fixture, an ever-lasting anchor of stability and service to the community at large.

But American society is a dynamic, constantly changing force, and unyielding assumptions about our public schools are serving neither the students nor taxpayers well.

“It’s not that the East Valley planned its schools poorly; it’s just a demographic reality that neighborhoods mature and families move over time,” Valley land-use expert Grady Gammage Jr. told Vanoverbeke for the series. “Most of those schools were full and busy at some point. But that changes. Maybe we should build schools with clearer expectations that they’re not permanent land uses.”

However much parents don’t want to hear it, education leaders are simply spreading the truth when they say school districts can’t afford to freeze schools in time with half-empty classrooms or evolving family demographics.

“In the next two to three years, we will see school closings. Here, in Scottsdale, in Tempe,” said Rich Crandall, governing board president of the Mesa Unified School District and a state lawmaker. “No one wants to be in the position Tucson is in today. They never, ever closed a school. Now they have 20 too many.”

However, preparing for the future isn’t just about raising buildings in the right locations at the right time. It’s also about adjusting our expectations for the entire education process. For example, John Baracy instilled the idea — first with Tempe Elementary and then in Scottsdale — that districts can’t just wait for children to arrive at the schoolhouse steps. Instead, districts should actively compete to win the loyalty of potential students and their families through emphasis on quality and innovation with an eye toward a world market after graduation.

The political and structural barriers to such progress are formidable. The real test of local leadership will be to separate temporary, cyclical downtowns from more lasting trends, and then convince the public to endure the former while embracing the changes necessary to properly adapt to the latter.