It’s time to reopen Trombly Elementary. Grosse Pointe Park is joining together to make the case and spread the word.
Official Headcount Survey Being Mailed March 10
This survey is important to both the school district and the city of Grosse Pointe Park. The district currently lacks accurate and comprehensive data. A headcount of private, public, and homeschool kids in the Trombly catchment area helps not only with the decision to reopen Trombly but also planning how to increase enrollment throughout the whole school district.
Tell all neighbors South of Jefferson that it’s coming! The count kids aged 0-9 matters. There are questions for public, private, and homeschool parents.
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Do you have children that would attend Trombly? Have you chosen somewhere outside of GPPSS because Trombly closed?
Tell your story or use one of our templates to contact the school board and administration.
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In June 2019, Grosse Pointe Public Schools shocked our community by voting to close the historic Trombly Elementary. In the proceeding years, what was justified as cost-savings has led to school overcrowding risk, losing students to private schools, and dangerous walking conditions for children.
That administration and school board are gone. While a majority of the district’s new leadership agree that closing Trombly was misguided; they have yet to vote on reopening. Instead, over $30K is spent each year to maintain the empty school.
Our Mission
Make the case for what we already know - Trombly Elementary is an essential asset for Grosse Pointe Park and Grosse Pointe Public Schools.
Reopen Trombly as an elementary school as early as the 2025 school year.
Serve as the intersection between the Trombly community, the city of Grosse Pointe Park, and Grosse Pointe Public Schools.
Prove that closing any elementary school within GPPSS is a short-sighted alternative that hurts enrollment and costs more, instead of improving enrollment efforts.
Interested in joining us?
Do you want to be a block captain for your street? Or help make sure every last person south of Jefferson fills out the district’s survey? Or do you want to help in a way we haven’t even thought of yet? We’d love to hear from you.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why did Trombly close?
This is a “depends who you ask” situation. Essentially in 2019, five months after raising 111 million dollars from tax payers, Grosse Pointe Public Schools announced it would be closing two schools. They cited declining enrollment and budget problems. Trombly Elementary and Poupard Elementary were closed shortly after (they had $9.5M budgeted in the recently passed bond).
You can read some contemporary accounts here:
Proposed school closings in Grosse Pointe: 1 in north end, 1 in south, panel reveals
Parents pleading with Grosse Pointe Public Schools to reconsider closing 2 elementary schools
What about declining enrollment?
Our volunteers knocked door-to-door throughout the Trombly catchment area and got 20% of people to respond. Two things are clear: families left the district and/or the area after Trombly closed and there have been a lot of young families moving into the area.
Based on this information, GPPSS will be conducting its own survey between March 10 and March 28. Learn more about the survey here.
We are confident that the survey results will show what our neighbors are already telling us: blocks are “flipping” and there are preschoolers everywhere; the time is now to reopen Trombly while these families make their long term education decisions.
How can I help?
We would love to work with you! The three most actionable things you can do are:
- Sign up for our news and updates
- Sign up to volunteer
- Take 60 seconds to write the school board using our letter-writing app
The upcoming GPPSS survey is very important. We will need to ensure everyone possible south of Jefferson completes this survey.
When would Trombly reopen?
We’re of the opinion it can reopen as early as 2025 and we won’t accept any later than 2026 (at least we don’t see any logical reason it would need to wait).
Won’t this be expensive?
This is what we’re committed to help the district figure out!
There are two budget concerns: renovation and “operating expenses” (our wonderful teachers, the tools our kids use, administrative staff, etc.).
The survey is very important in order to help make accurate forecasts for our operating expenses. We’ve already been enrollment projections over the past four years. We want a more confident projection into the future.
A very rough cost estimate put together by the superintendent for reopening is $5.8M. The Grosse Pointe Park foundation has pledged $1M if the school reopens as an elementary within three years. And there are $2.2M remaining in the 2018 bond passed by residents where Trombly had over $3M earmarked (hint: we think that should be used for Trombly’s reopening).
In Grosse Pointe Park especially, but we believe the data supports (and will continue to support) that fully closing any elementary school within Grosse Pointe Schools is more costly from an operating perspective because it harms district enrollment. It harms the GPPSS value proposition, increases pressure to redraw district lines, and is a short-sighted alternative to GPPSS learning its cities better and improving its enrollment efforts.
If my child goes to Defer, but lives in the Trombly catchment area, would they have to attend Trombly?
In short, no. GPPSS has mentioned at school board meetings that this would be an option presented to parents. We believe the survey includes a question as to whether or not you’d prefer to send your child to Trombly as well.
To be clear, there are no plans yet to reopen Trombly. But we think reopening it would benefit Defer students inside and outside of the Trombly boundaries. The choice is yours to stay at Defer, however we would love to see you return to Trombly.
What does this mean for the rest of the school district?
If (and we are confident it will) the district finds more students than it expected in the Trombly area, that is good news for the entire district. An increase enrollment helps the budget of the entire district.
We hope this survey will serve as a lesson for the school district that:
It needs to know its cities better
In a walkable, built-out district like GPPSS, closing any elementary school is short-sighted and leads to decreased enrollment (which hurts the budget of every school)
It should drastically shift its planning to focus on increasing enrollment (the good news is that “enrollment” and “walkability” are two of its budget parameters for this year)