Board OKs Harrison High School Closure Over Objections

FARMINGTON, MI – After months of public meetings, Farmington school board members voted Tuesday to go ahead with the closing of Harrison High School in the 2019-2020 school year and repurposing other attendance centers to deal with declining enrollment and state aid.

The school board generally approved the recommendations of Superintendent George Heitsch, with some minor adjustments, to help the district of about 10,000 students deal with a 12 percent enrollment drop since 2000, an $11 million funding shortfall and a nearly $15 million revenue drop from 2006 to 2014.

The changes approved by the board, 6-1, close Dunckel Middle School and repurpose the Highmeadow Common Campus as a K-8 Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics (STEAM) Academy in 2017-18; and moving preschool programs from the Farmington Community School and Alameda Early Childhood Center ot Highmeadow in 2017-2018.

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The plan to close Harrison has been called a “soft close.” The final class would graduate in June 2019, completing their senior year at what Heitsch has described as “a school within a school.” Harrison itself would close at the end of the 2017-2018 school year.

“There hasn’t been a question put in front of me that is more personal than the one before me now,” she said.

Among those speaking at the meeting was parent Tammy Levitan, who asked the board to further analyze the plan, The Detroit News reports.

“I see no cost difference in closing one school over another,” she said. “How can you make a decision if you have no facts and figures in front of you?”

She said later the school board could no longer count on her support of bond issues.

“I’m not giving you any more,: she said. I’m done.”