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RYDER North Shore Elementary School is to be closed after this school year and the elementary students sent to school in Plaza, Lewis and Clark school district board members decided Monday night.

Lorna Hanson, co-business manager for the school district, said the board voted 4-2 to close the school. Board members Lee Brandvold and Kent Janz voted against closing the Ryder school. The other board members voted in favor of it, with board member Jack Hanson absent from the meeting.

"It surprised all of us that the motion happened then," Lorna Hanson said, though it was thought by some that the elementary school in Ryder would eventually be closed due to a combination of declining student enrollment numbers and finances.

Hanson said the impetus for the vote was how the district should make best use of federal stimulus dollars that can be spent on school improvement projects.

"Why improve a school if you're going to close it in the next year or so?" she said.

The Lewis and Clark school district has elementaries in Plaza and Ryder and Berthold and high schools in Makoti and Berthold. The district was reorganized six years ago, making up the old Plaza, North Shore and Berthold school districts.

Board member Brandvold, who lives at Ryder, said Thursday he's still frustrated by the board's decision.

"I really think it was a bad decision for the district," said Brandvold, who said he suggested that the district instead send the kids to one central location in Makoti, which would make bus distances more equal for the children on that end of the district.

Brandvold has two preschoolers and said he is one of the parents who plan to open enroll their children at schools outside the district now that the board has made this decision. His 4-year-old daughter is old enough for preschool but it was not offered this year in Ryder. Instead the preschoolers and kindergarteners from Ryder were sent to Plaza after a kindergarten teacher resigned and the district didn't fill the position. Hanson said there were no parental complaints and the father of one of the kindergarteners works at the Plaza school. Brandvold said they decided not to send their daughter to preschool because preschool wasn't offered in Ryder.

The Brandvolds are looking at sending their children to school in Garrison, Max or South Prairie, depending on which school district offers the most favorable bus route. If the board had voted for a central location at Makoti, Brandvold thinks the district would have retained more of its students. Some parents, like him, are now considering open enrolling their children in neighboring school districts.

In some cases, that decision is prompted by the chance that the high school in Makoti might eventually close within eight years if the district doesn't pick up funding from oil or wind turbines, said Brandvold. If all children in the district would be sent to high school in Berthold, said Brandvold, that would mean some high schoolers could end up traveling as far as 40 miles one way to attend school. That would rule out sports or extracurricular activities for those kids, since it would be too far for them to travel late at night and still get school work done.

Brandvold also said there's lingering anger over the way the Lewis and Clark school district reorganization was conducted six years ago. He said some residents of the old North Shore school district feel that the financial health of the Berthold school district was misrepresented and the state was not told the truth about the amount of debt the Berthold district carried when the reorganization was approved. He also feels that the school board is set up so there are more supporters of the old Berthold school district than of the old North Shore district.

Hanson said no teachers will lose their jobs, but she isn't sure whether custodial staff or school cooks might lose positions under the plan. The administration has been directed to make plans in the next months for the school closure.