'This is not the end': Wiley Elementary parents, staff speak out after closure decision

Feb. 23—URBANA — Wiley Elementary third-grade teacher Valerie Willetts said she spent much of her Wednesday consoling her students, their parents and her staff about the school's impending closure.

"It was like walking around at a wake," Willetts said. "We have to grieve, and we have to help our families and our students through this at the same time."

Late Tuesday night, the Urbana school board narrowly voted to close Wiley, one of the district's six elementary buildings, after this school year to begin abating asbestos in the 73-year-old structure and prepare it for an overdue renovation.

But many of Wiley's parents and staff say their school community is welling in uncertainty over where students will be placed, where teachers will be working and whether Wiley will return as a neighborhood elementary school at all.

The district has left the door open on the building's future. Depending on feedback from its redistricting and facilities committee, the centrally-located Wiley could re-emerge as an upgraded elementary school, as the site for a whole-school dual-language building or as a "destination location" — with an alternative curriculum or magnet school makeup to attract new families to the district.

Even after the district's 4-3 vote Tuesday, Wiley parents say they're not putting the issue to bed.

"We are going to continue planning and continue strategizing. This is not the end — this is just the first battle," said Ruqayyah Perkins-Williams, parent of a Wiley fifth-grader.

For two hours Tuesday night, Wiley families and teachers made impassioned, repeated pleas with the board to hold off on its decision.

Families and parents were given two weeks' notice that a Wiley closure was on the table. Dispersing students to other schools would add disruption to their lives too soon after the pandemic shutdown, one after another told board members.

"They're moving our children without a solid plan, or a transparent plan," said Mabruka Yazidi, parent of a Wiley kindergartner. "We were all under a lot of stress the last few years — children definitely felt that stress. Now they're finally stabilized in a good school, and we have to leave again for an undisclosed amount of time."

The school is highly diverse — 78 percent of its students are ethnic minorities — and about 80 percent of its families are low-income.

Guaranteeing that Wiley would return as a neighborhood school, which didn't happen, would have changed the conversation, and possibly won over the community, parents said.

Crystal Hall has a third-grader at Wiley who lives with cystic fibrosis. Staff at Wiley have helped Hall and her child feel safe as he learns in the building, she said.

Having a long-range plan heading into the closure, and a chance for more input, "would've changed the whole narrative for us," Hall said. "What we don't get is the opacity."

Board members who approved the closure — Brenda Carter, Tori Exum, Anne Hall and President Paul Poulosky — appeared to be swayed by health and safety concerns for the building and the district's facility needs.

Poulosky, calling it a "horrific decision," said Wiley's renovation needs to happen in order to find a home for a possible whole-school dual-language building and remap the district's elementary school attendance pattern.

"This is another year of sending these kids all over town, and I'm having a hard time swallowing that," he said on Tuesday.

"If we don't do this now, we're going to be having this exact same conversation in a year and still not have a space to move everyone together," Superintendent Jennifer Ivory-Tatum said. "Some of these things are going to have to happen, whether they happen this spring, next spring or the spring after that."

The board members who voted against Wiley's closure — Ravi Hasanadka, Lara Orr and Brian Ogolsky — pointed to the lack of community buy-in and shared parents' concerns over sudden disruption.

"We can't ask people to make huge life decisions about where they've worked, where they've lived and pull the rug out from them in such a short period of time," Ogolsky said. "I think we have to have the bigger plan in place before we make this decision. It does not feel responsible for me, it does not feel like the right choice to say we're going to start the abatement now and we'll plan later."

At the Feb. 7 school board meeting, Assistant Superintendent Angi Franklin said the district is "confident" Wiley staff will have a job ready for them among the district's existing vacancies.

According to the suggested timeline, district administrators will determine staff placements in March and notify Wiley families of their students' new schools in April.

Willetts, in her fifth year teaching at Wiley, said she's "exploring all options" for her next place of work as she tries to create "awesome memories" with students in her remaining time at the school.

"I'm going to take my future in my hands and make a choice of where I want to work next year, not because they want me to fill a vacancy that I didn't create," she said.