For months Oak Harbor school leaders have been considering whether to close Clover Valley Elementary School.

School district enrollment has declined for years and officials are trying to fill a $3.5 million budget hole in next year’s budget.

The Oak Harbor School Board on Monday directed Superintendent Rick Schulte to start making plans to close the elementary school at the end of the school year. The board won’t make a formal decision to close the school until the March 12 board meeting.

That gives board members a bit more time to look at the information and numbers surrounding the closure.

“I have to know the numbers and information are the best we can forecast,” school board member Corey Johnson said.

With that direction from the school board, officials can continue work to prepare for the upcoming school year. School officials had considered three options concerning the future of Clover Valley Elementary — keeping the school open, close it at the end of the current school year or close it at the end of the next school year.

The school board dismissed delaying the closure for a year.

Board member Kathy Jones said the delay, and operating a small school with a skeleton staff, would have too great an impact on students.

She added students and staff will be better off at the five remaining elementary schools.

Fewer students have been attending Oak Harbor schools in recent years. Enrollment was at a high of 6,000 students in the 1999-2000 school year while officials expect around 5,200 students attending in the 2007-2008 school year. Projections show that enrollment will fall below 5,000 in 2012, according to information from the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction.

“Watching a new squadron come on board and we still see an enrollment decline shows that trend is real,” board member David McCool said of VQ-2, which came to the base last year.

Despite the enrollment trend, some people think it will eventually reverse and the school district should hold off on closing Clover Valley.

Bill Burnett, a failed school board candidate who has a son attending middle school in Oak Harbor, said during a Feb. 20 public hearing that despite the ongoing enrollment decline, that trend will change.

“I believe it’s going to go back up,” Burnett said. He handed out a report, pulled from the state Office of Financial Management, to the 60 or so parents, staff, and students from Western Washington University who attended the Tuesday evening hearing.

That report indicated the population of school-age children will start increasing statewide beginning in 2010.

Schulte strongly disagreed, saying that projection looks at the state as a whole and is irrelevant for a single school district.

“A statewide projection has no relevance at all to an individual school district,” Schulte said.

He argued that Burnett’s information actually reinforces the school district’s position. In recent years when statewide the school population stayed relatively level, the Oak Harbor School District’s population declined by 12 percent.

Should Clover Valley Elementary School close, as now appears highly likely, Burnett didn’t agree with the idea of potentially using the building as a temporary home for the freshman class when the high school is renovated. Freshmen would spend half the day at the high school and the other half at Clover Valley.

“I don’t like the idea. Nobody has told me this is better for my son’s education,” Burnett said.

Scott Hornung, a former school board member, disagreed with the school district’s budget information during the public hearing. He said the fund balance hasn’t been depleted and the school district should receive more federal Impact Aid than projected. That, coupled with cutting the “ministry of misinformation,” should be enough money to keep the school open, he argued.

Board members took exception to the assertion the district was spreading misinformation about the community.

“I really believe it’s disingenuous for someone to come here and say we’re putting out misinformation,” McCool said Feb. 20. “The entire community is going to be affected by budget cuts.”

Johnson echoed McCool’s comments.

“Maybe we make mistakes, but they aren’t intentional mistakes,” Johnson said.

Depleted fund reserves, revenue losses through declining enrollment and lower Impact Aid revenue contributed to the revenue shortfall, according to information provided by the Oak Harbor School District.

Peter Szalai, president of the Oak Harbor Education Association, supported the closing of Clover Valley Elementary.

If the school remains open, then the costs would force cuts to other buildings, Szalai said.

He urged the board to make a decision to close the school soon. That would help the budget committee resolve the funding problems.

“We are agonizing on how to cut $3.5 million,” Szalai said, adding that keeping the school open would make the committee’s work more difficult. Closing the school would save more than $500,000 next year.

While the teacher’s union supports the school closure, at least one teacher doesn’t.

“I do not support the position Peter Szalai has stated,” said Heather Falk, life skills teacher at Clover Valley Elementary.

She said special needs students have a hard time with transition and closing the school would result in a loss of familiarity and support for those students.

If Clover Valley closes, she asked that the special needs classes be moved in its entirety.

“Please be sensitive to the needs of the students, parents and other staff at Clover Valley,” Falk said.

Other people choosing to speak questioned board members about why the school needs to close, what would happen if the school reopens and what would happen to the land where the school sits.

Another audience member questioned if the school district would sell off other property to balance its budget.

In addition to concerned parents and staff, a class of students attending Western Washington University’s elementary education credential programs attended the meeting. The teacher of the class, Ric Packard, is a former principal at Clover Valley. Several school board members met with the class after the hearing to answer further questions.