We want to be confident that Pueblo School District 60 has the guts to make tough decisions when tough decisions are required. D60?s recent announcement about keeping open three schools that had been on the target list for possible closure puts that confidence to the test, though. At a recent meeting, district officials said they would keep Roncalli STEM Academy and Bradford and Carlile elementary schools open indefinitely, even though a facilities management study and a stakeholder committee suggested that all three were in serious need of repair.

The stated reasons were a little hard to follow. Enrollment at Roncalli is up this year. Carlile students are grading at the state’s “performance” on standardized testing. And Bradford is being highly utilized – whatever that means.

Also, district officials said the closures wouldn’t be a good idea at the present time due to “staffing limitations” and “strategic challenges.” Which seems like an abrupt reversal for anyone who followed the development of the facilities master plan and the district’s call for a $218 million bond issue to pay for construction of two new high schools and high priority repairs at various schools.

Voters approved the bond issue last fall after getting repeated assurances from D60 officials that the district was going to be taking steps to consolidate the amount of space it was using to operate more efficiently. That was supposed to be an incentive that made it justifiable to invest in repairs at the schools that were staying open.

Don’t get us wrong: We supported the work to be funded by the bond issue then and we haven’t changed our minds about that. Those repairs are needed so students have safe and comfortable places in which to learn.

And yes, we realize district officials didn’t say specifically that they would be closing those three schools if voters approved the bond issue. But the bond issue didn’t include any money to make repairs at those schools, either. And according to the facilities management study, the schools need more than $53 million worth of repairs between them. And that was two years ago. And it didn’t take into account the schools’ ongoing operating costs.

According to the district’s numbers, enrollment at Roncalli is up this year, but it has dropped at the other two schools. Even if the enrollments at all three schools were holding steady, we thought the primary reason they were targeted for closure had to do with the amount of repair work needed on each of their campuses.

Is it wise to keep schools with full or mostly full classrooms open if there’s a chance the buildings could experience serious failures due to the lack of repairs? Rising enrollment at Roncalli actually means more students are attending school in less-than-ideal conditions.

How or even if D60 plans to pay for the repairs identified in the facilities management study remains unclear. At the moment, the official strategy seems to be somewhat like a motorist “fixing” a rattling noise in the car by turning up the radio a little louder.

We understand that closing schools is seldom a politically easy decision. It’s a process that can be upsetting to parents, students and neighborhood residents. Yet D60?s leaders said they would be making those kind of tough calls as part of their efforts to rightsize the district.

Will they actually make them? We’re still waiting.