Josh Meltzer | The Roanoke Times

Libbie Hubbard, a parent of a first-grader at Forest Park Elementary School, urges parents Tuesday night to spread the word for others to attend a school board hearing tonight over the school's closing.

With the Roanoke School Board slated to decide the fate of Forest Park Elementary School on Thursday, some parents are mobilizing to save the school.

The board is set to vote on a proposal to close Forest Park, disperse its students to other city schools and use the building for a special academy for overage students next year. A public hearing on the matter is set for tonight.

The parents' efforts set the stage for a potentially contentious decision. At the same time, three school board members have floated an alternative location for the academy that would spare Forest Park and its 264 students, an indication that Thursday's vote may split the seven-member board, a relatively rare occurrence.

Parents have met several times over the past few days, most recently on Tuesday, to oppose closing the school. LeVita Washington, the school's PTA president, also has been walking the neighborhood, drumming up support to keep the school open.

"You have to stop and think, is this right? Is what they're getting ready to do right for the children and the community?" Washington asked about a dozen parents who had come with their children to Tuesday's meeting at the school.

Superintendent Rita Bishop has touted the academy for overage middle- and high-school students as a way to boost the city's perennially low graduation rate, which last year stood at 57 percent, one of the lowest in Virginia. Although administrators and school board members have been discussing the academy since the beginning of the year, details of the proposal did not emerge until 10 days ago.

Bishop has said she chose the 89-year-old Forest Park as the site for the academy because of the building's size, its configuration, its relatively low conversion costs and its history of academic struggles.

The board is also considering closing Oakland Intermediate School and moving the Noel C. Taylor Learning Academy into that building. Right now, Taylor, a school for students with discipline problems, is housed in leased space that costs the school system $25,000 a month.

Because the school system has been steadily losing students, administrators say there is capacity in the school system to absorb Forest Park and Oakland students in other schools. Kindergarten, first- and second-grade students from Forest Park would go to Highland Park, third- and fourth-grade students to Hurt Park and fifth-grade students to Roanoke Academy for Mathematics and Science.

Oakland students would go to Preston Park Primary. The receiving schools would get extra help from administrators to ease the students' transition, Bishop said.

Both Hurt Park and Roanoke Academy have also struggled in recent years, which led Washington to ask why Forest Park students weren't being sent to high-achieving schools.

"Sending them to that school is going to be a struggle for them," she said.

Unlike other schools in the city, most of Forest Park's students live close enough to walk to school. That has turned the school into a neighborhood anchor, one that parents are loath to lose.

"I don't think a lot of people understand the effect it's going to have on them if they do close the school," said Washington, who attended Forest Park.

Also, although the school has not met state standards for four straight years, it has shown considerable improvement on state tests, an indication, parents said, that the school's remediation efforts are working.

"This young man right here, he's doing good and I like that," said David Zeigler, proudly pointing to his 5-year-old son, Anthony, a wide-eyed boy in a Virginia Tech jacket.

Forest Park parents have found allies in three school board members, who have suggested keeping Forest Park open and moving the overage academy into Oakland, at least for one year. Under that proposal, spearheaded by board member Courtney Penn, the Noel C. Taylor Learning Academy would remain in leased space for now.

"The impact of the closing it [of Forest Park] on parental involvement and the neighborhood is too great to overlook," he wrote in a letter Friday to his board colleagues.

"Forest Park is a true neighborhood school," he added, noting that funneling resources into the existing school could be more beneficial to students than sending them to other schools across the city.

Penn also is leading an effort looking into the school system's facilities which may result in attendance zone changes next year. He suggested holding off on a final site for the overage academy until the board receives the report.

Board members Mae Huff and Mignon Chubb-Hale, neither of whom could be reached for comment, have signed on to Penn's plan.

In interviews over the past week, however, the other four board members said they were leaning toward the administration's plan, which means that Thursday's vote could be approved by a 4-3 margin.

"You get down to tough decisions," said board member Jason Bingham. "At the end of the day, none of them are perfect but one of them is better than the others and that's Forest Park."

Board Chairman David Carson noted that the city's graduation rate "is unacceptable and either at or near crisis level."

"And, recognizing that urgency, I am willing to vote for the recommendation from the administration," he said. "I don't want to disrupt anybody, but this is a desperate time, and desperate times call for desperate measures."