OUR OPINION: Don't rush to decide on Wilder, other schools

Consider Riverside Pool, the renovation of which won every ward in Grand Forks in a 2008 vote.

Consider the effort to build a new library, which might have succeeded if planners had been able to keep the former Leever's grocery-store site. (73 percent of respondents to a scientific poll had favored that site.)

Consider the Knight Foundation, which has given Grand Forks more than $1 million in recent years to protect and improve the Near North neighborhood.

And consider Grand Forks itself, where -- as the city's website describes -- the Mayor's Urban Neighborhood Initiative focuses "on investing in our existing, traditional neighborhood of Grand Forks to ensure they remain quality places for individuals and families to live, work, learn, and play."

Add it all up, and you've got a consensus in Grand Forks: an agreement that the Near North and Riverside areas should remain neighborhoods of well-maintained, owner-occupied homes that are connected by sidewalks to parks and other amenities. In other words, you have a commitment to avoid blight.

The Grand Forks School District should adopt that commitment, too. And one way of fulfilling it is to slow down the process that could close a north-end school -- especially because the city's revitalization efforts might be starting to pay off.

The district is wrestling with a stark trend: Since 1995, enrollment has dropped 32 percent, falling from 9,898 to 6,749 in 2010. Yet, the district still has the same number of schools. That leaves some schools -- Wilder Elementary in particular -- with far fewer students than at each school's peak.

So: Close Wilder or another school? Build a new school on the south end, which has population growth but comparatively fewer schools? Draw new boundaries?

A Demographic Task Force is asking these questions. It's scheduled to offer recommendations in January.

And given the many months that Grand Forks has talked about this, lots of people might think, "It's about time."

But important new evidence has surfaced-- evidence that the task force hasn't yet been able to study. They'll get some of that Monday.

So, while Grand Forks has been mulling this topic for years, is it right that a key committee that at last gets all the evidence must weigh it and decide within weeks?

It's not right -- especially because the new evidence points to a surprising dynamism in Grand Forks' north end.

Given that this dynamism was exactly the goal of Grand Forks' biggest recent initiatives, the school district should take care before jeopardizing it.

Consider:

- The parents who are organizing to save Wilder -- and who assembled this new evidence, in fact -- are exactly the residents the neighborhoods need. They're young, well-educated people who could have lived anywhere in town but chose the north end for its old-fashioned atmosphere.

In cities where such neighborhoods have deteriorated, those newcomers would have been scared off. Here, they moved in. That suggests whatever the city is doing, it's working, and it's resulting in a healthier north end.

- Riverside Pool attendance has surpassed expectations. Park District program numbers are up. This year's kindergarten class at Wilder counts 25 students. Altru Health System birth records and the 2010 census data reportedly show growth on the north end.

And that growth includes higher numbers of preschoolers than in years past, the Wilder parents suggest.

- "Overwhelmingly, research shows that school closures equate to fewer home sales, lower home values, lower incomes and higher unemployment," writes UND faculty member and Riverside resident Heidi Czerwiec on today's Opinion Page.

The task force and school board should these statements into account.

Here's another quote, this one from a letter by Jason Schaefer that'll appear in Monday's Herald: "Have you ever stopped to think that we don't have any 'bad' neighborhoods in Grand Forks? It's something that we take for granted, but it's incredibly important."

In Grand Forks' older areas -- again, the focus of the city's revitalization efforts -- neighborhood schools are a big part of the appeal. The school district should weigh that fact carefully as a part of its deliberations, even if it means a decision will take more time.