Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - With a large crowd of students, teachers, parents and other advocates calling on the Buffalo School Board to not cast a vote on a resolution to close or merge 10 schools at the end of the school year, interim schools superintendent Dr. Ebony Prophet-Bullock pulled the vote from the table Wednesday night in favor of another meeting scheduled for Monday at PS 94, West Hertel Academy.
According to Dr. Prophet-Bullock, she, along with the Board of Education, wanted to hear more from the Buffalo community on the future of the schools slated for closure or merger.
"I'm going to stand with my Board, and my Board and I together, we decided we wanted to hear more. So the opportunity will be on Monday, and we will take it from Monday and see what and when, how the rest of this plays out," said Dr. Prophet-Bullock following Wednesday's Board meeting at McKinley High School.
The interim superintendent has already held three separate meetings with concerned members of the district community, but Monday's meeting will be centrally focused on listening to anyone who wants to provide more context to the argument.
"Whatever our community has to say. Whatever feedback, whatever hopes, whatever dreams, whatever requests, additional data. These guys are constantly hearing from their constituents, and they're giving them more data. So we want to hear it all," Dr. Prophet-Bullock added.
"Me, personally, I've seen a lot of constituents come out today and speak. Most of them were screaming, 'Don't close my school! Don't close my school!' Some constituents I've seen and heard from didn't even review the plan, so I'm encouraging those who come out Monday to review the plan," said Board member Stephon Wright. "I know you're going to tell us, 'Don't close your school,' but give us some thoughts and suggestions and ideas so that we can be together in this decision making. Like the superintendent said today, when you close one school, another school will be affected. So me being a sitting Board member, supporting her, supporting our community, give us some suggestions."
There were certainly some takeaways for Dr. Prophet-Bullock from Wednesday's Board meeting, as several speakers took up nearly two hours if that particular session.
"My biggest takeaway is that Buffalo is such a very unique community, and when you think you have talked to everyone, there is another group that you still need to work with," she said. "What I am learning through this whole process is every voice matters, and it's our job to listen to every voice, and then to make a decision. So I'm comfortable with what we did today as a 10-man team. We did the right thing. We're listening, and we'll continue to listen."
While Dr. Prophet-Bullock admits there is some room for potential tweaks with the proposed school closure and merger plan, she says don't expect any massive tweaks to what's already been discussed.
"We're gonna continue to listen, and so there are places where we can tweak here or there. However, I do want to say - given a lot of respect to the weight on the shoulders of my Board members - the more we tweak, the more we change, the more confusion comes," Dr. Prophet-Bullock noted. "But again, we're trying to be very measured and we're trying to say we're listening. That's going to help us build a more clearer plan, specifically around the logistics and the implementation part of it."
Monday's meeting at West Hertel Academy is scheduled to take place from 5:30 p.m.-to-7:30 p.m.
