Roanoke County's Bent Mountain Elementary School likely will close at the end of the school year.

The Roanoke County School Board has not acted formally on the decision, but Superintendent Lorraine Lange told a group who gathered Monday evening at the school that students will be relocated to Back Creek Elementary School for the start of the 2010-11 school year.

"We kind of feel like we have been on the chopping block for some time," said Heather Prokopchak, a Southwest Roanoke County mother of four. "People aren't feeling like there is a lot to fight for this time."

Some 50 people gathered at Monday's community meeting. Prokopchak said it is the smallest group she has seen at such a meeting.

The school board considered closing the small, beloved school in 2003 and then again last year during the severe economic crunch.

"It is not something we want to do, but we feel like we have to," Lange said. "For the good of the entire county, it needs to be done."

Fifty-three students were enrolled at the school as of Jan. 15. School officials said that is not enough for the school to remain open.

When school officials considered closing Bent Mountain last year, they faced intense opposition from the community. The school board used stimulus funds to grant the school a one-year reprieve, hopeful that the economy would rebound. But the economy has not recovered enough and Lange said closing the school will help ease the $8 million shortfall the division faces. She plans to present about $2.4 million in cuts when the school board meets at 7 p.m. Thursday at Northside High School.

The board also will consider a proposal to revamp the southwest county school attendance boundaries to ease overcrowding at Cave Spring Middle, Hidden Valley High, Oak Grove Elementary and Penn Forest Elementary schools.

"We are going to try to even out the ones below [Bent Mountain]," said school board member Drew Barrineau at Monday's meeting.

Redrawing the elementary school lines would shift approximately 200 students from Penn Forest and Oak Grove elementary schools to Cave Spring, Clearbrook and Green Valley elementary schools. Amending the secondary school zones would result in Cave Spring High School gaining about 150 students from Hidden Valley High School. School officials said Hidden Valley High is so crowded this year that some students are sharing lockers or are without them altogether.

Closing Bent Mountain will save the division more than $500,000 next year, Lange said.

Ed Elswick, a Bent Mountain resident recently elected to the county's board of supervisors, vehemently disagrees with the proposal to close the school. He said the small community on the outskirts of the county receives fewer services because it is isolated geographically. He said that he and a group of others will be meeting to discuss opening a charter school.

"Our only luxury is the school, nothing else," Elswick said.

The school has been open 99 years and its pending closure caused emotions to run high.

Robert Womack, a Bent Mountain resident who moved to the area from Northern Virginia, said he bought property in the area because of the school. He called on Elswick to offer residents like him a tax credit because they are losing the school.

"You do not understand," Michelle Lester told Lange and Barrineau. "Unless you had children here or unless you have children here, you don't know how deep this is."

Lester's son and daughter each attended Bent Mountain, she said. Although she has no children at the school now, she said the issue is important to her because she has a grandchild on the way.

Roberta Johnson, a former Bent Mountain teacher, parent and member of the local women's group, shared her experience Monday evening. Her son attended kindergarten at Back Creek in the 1980s because there were not enough students for a class at Bent Mountain. He needed services for a learning disability in the fourth grade, and because Bent Mountain didn't have a special education teacher, he transferred to Back Creek. The next year, when her son was in fifth grade, all Bent Mountain students went to Back Creek because the former was being renovated.

Johnson used her story to mollify fears of long or unsafe bus rides down the mountain on U.S. 221.

"I think you shouldn't worry about that," she said. "It won't hurt your children."

But that does not change her mind about one thing: She thinks a nearly century-old school building is being tossed away in favor of the dollars it will save.