A School Closes Forever,

A Victim of Economy and Demographics

We have gathered again for Banner Day – not just any Banner Day.  The last Banner Day. I stand in the crowd in front of the school, with so many beloved friends I met here as my children grew. 

Banner Day is a school tradition.  The day after 6^th grade graduation, the entire school community gathers outside in the grassy circle around the rugged old tree.  The classes march out one by one, carrying banners that announce their current grade: PreK3, PreK4, Kindergarten and all the way up to 6^th grade.  Older graduates come back every year to carry the banner that says ALUMNI.

In a normal year, what follows is a quiet but moving little ceremony in which the banners are passed down, and the classes move up.  PreK3 kids become PreK4.  Kindergarteners turn into first-graders, and so on.  The tearful moment comes when the new graduates, the 6^th graders walk under the banner to become ALUMNI.

But it is written on every face -- this is not a normal year.

This little elementary school where all three of my sons learned to read and write and make friends, is closing today.  A victim of the economy, of demographics, a secret kept all too well despite our efforts to spread the word, Oak Lane Day School will not survive.

Seventeen years ago I came to this campus.  That day, my oldest son, then a third-grader, wore deer-in-the-headlights eyes.  At his previous school he’d been scolded, his enthusiasm dismissed.  When he leapt out of his seat to show his teacher his drawing, the response was, “Sit down.”  After a long and frustrating search we discovered this school whose motto is “Imagine, Discover, Create.”  And that’s just what my kids did here.  Counting birds at the school’s bird feeder became a sneaky math lesson, growing mold on bread a science lesson.  The children PreK through 6th grade analyzed droplets of pondwater under a microscope, wrote in their inventive-spelling journals, baked bread from scratch, performed Shakespeare, studied geography and played “Burgundian” on the recorder.  In the summer, they attended the day camp and years later, were junior counselors. 

They grew up here.  And I watched, grateful. 

Now I take one last look at the old mansion, slated for demolition in just a few weeks.  The new owner of the property is building a luxurious home, but he has agreed to wait until the school year ends. 

I gaze at the gym built in more hopeful times only a few years back.  I remember that awful meeting in the gym last spring, when the Board Chair broke the news.  The future of our beloved little school hung by a thread.  A three million dollar thread.   Nobody had died, but it felt that way.

Most people probably think that $3 million is small change for a private school, but our school was never rich, and neither were most of its families.  At first we hoped we could save the school, but the numbers just didn’t add up.  In a desperate tearful meeting etched in my memory, we decided to sell our campus to finance one final year.  The Admissions Department worked in reverse, finding placements at other schools for all the students.   The Administration tried to make the year as normal as possible while also planning a beautiful goodbye.

As the kids march in, I hug a friend.  There is nothing left to say.  It wasn’t just our kids who grew up here.  In a way, we did too.  With every conversation in the parking lot, every parent-teacher conference, every book I donated to the library, I wove my life into the fabric of this community.   I met many of my closest friends here.

 The bearded art teacher marches with the children.  I remember the many times I’ve heard him talk with awe of his favorite medium, clay, “that wonderful, primordial, squishy and noble mud that gradually invades every Oak Lane home in its varied and wonderful ways.”

As little boys, my three sons crisscrossed this campus in a wagon on the back of a tractor, driven by the jolly maintenance man (who is really a teacher too).   In Geography class, they drew campus maps.  They explored the pond, the centerpiece of this campus, digging in the mud, delighting in getting their small hands around the slippery middles of the frogs. 

Now, here we are, saying goodbye.

Goodbye to the old Barn where the plays are performed, with the art room tucked under it like a nest under a finch.   Goodbye to the meadow where the students used to sled during recess, goodbye to the Woodland Walk path. 

Instead of passing their banners down, the classes hang their banners up on the rural post fence that surrounds the school.  The alumni stand in the middle of the circle, holding their banner high. 

And then, one by one, every class and every teacher -- the ones who have been here 20 years, the ones who have been here 5 years, and the one who has been here 50 years  -- pass under the banner.

Today we all become ALUMNI.

We all gather under the tree.  We hold hands in a circle like children playing “Ring Around the Rosie.”  And we sing the school song together one more time:

Round the Oak tree,

Round the Oak tree,

Walk with me.

In every acorn,

Every little acorn,

There’s a tree

Something GREAT is inside of ME!

We sing, we hug, we weep and we remember. 

We are all ALUMNI now.  We carry our own maps of this place inside us, the funny stories, the songs, the tractor rides, all of it.  The property has a new owner, but it still belongs to us, because we used it and knew it and it became a part of us.  Looking up, I see the campus from a new angle, as one big tile wall: every spot a different vignette, a square framed by memory, a flash of color, a scene, a face, a name scratched in the clay.  I imagine the frogs in the pond, their toes firmly anchored in the mud -- the clay, primordial, squishy and noble.  I think of all of these children, these tadpoles nourished on clay, sprouting legs and hopping off, taking their exploration, imagination and creativity out into the world.  The fruits of this rich mud, moist, creative and resilient, ripening at the appointed time in these children’s souls, and in my own.  

Hand in hand we circle around and we never want it to stop.