I see that the School Board voted 4-1 to close Larrabee.

They recently renovated Birchwood Elementary and that turned out well.  I think our walkable neighborhood elementary schools are valuable and should be kept open.

The Bellingham Public Schools are in the hands of an ideologue with an agenda against smaller schools!  This agenda began in Portland, Oregon and it was a train wreck there.  A little internet research will help you get the picture.  Think of some school principals dressed in Penguin costumes ...

http://www.wweek.com/portland/article-6599-march_of_the_principals.html

“Two school administrators and a principal dressed like penguins walk into a Sheraton ballroom. This isn’t the beginning of a joke, even if it sounds like one.
This is the regularly scheduled meeting for all 161 Portland Public Schools principals, vice principals and assistant principals on Thursday, Feb. 1.

Cynthia Gilliam and Greg Baker from the school district’s central office are wearing tuxedos. Skyline Elementary School principal Ben Keefer is dressed in a rented penguin costume. The trio is at the Sheraton Portland Airport Hotel to perform a skit with an “urgent” message for the district’s administrators, many of whom—in real life—face parent and teacher opposition to the districtwide adoption of new curricula and lingering doubts about school closures.

The skit’s message is based on a recent business book. Here’s its story line: The iceberg is melting, and it’s up to the leaders of the waddling tribes of penguins to warn their dependents, who are totally in denial. The danger, however, is real. And if the penguin leaders fail to convey their doomsday warnings convincingly, the adorable aquatic characters in this anthropomorphic fable will be swallowed by the cold, rising sea.”

There is much more out there to help you understand this person’s agenda.  The School Board members who hired him need to go.  Any levies attempted by this group need to be shot down.  Bellingham needs to regain control of its public school system.  The people who wore the tuxedos need to work their magic elsewhere.  There must be accountability soon.