Pine River parents ponder school options

With Pine River Elementary School slated to be closed after this school year, parents are weighing options for their children's future education.

Parents who especially value the small-school atmosphere at Pine River outside of Merrill are considering a variety of alternatives, including home schooling, sending their children to another district or enrolling them in parochial schools.

A split Merrill School Board voted Jan. 5 to close Pine River and use the building to house its Head Start and other early childhood programs. Pine River currently serves 134 students.

District leaders expect most current Pine River students will attend Washington Elementary next school year. The move also would mean a shift of elementary school boundaries that would affect students in other schools, as well.

"We have a lot of options. A lot of people are considering home schooling. We're being heavily recruited by the parochial schools in the area," said Jan Rydeski, 46, the mother of three children now attending Pine River.

Rydeski said she and her husband, John, are thinking about going through the open-enrollment process and trying to send their children to Hewitt-Texas Elementary in the Wausau School District.

"We live way out in the country and close to Hewitt-Texas," she said.

Kathy Yahr, principal of Trinity Lutheran School in Merrill, said she had a message on her Facebook account from a Pine River parent asking more about Trinity the night the Merrill School Board decided to close the school.

"That was before we did anything," Yahr said. Now, Trinity educators are sending letters to Pine River parents to invite them to a community night to be held from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. Thursday.

"We are hoping because we're small, that will draw people to us," Yahr said. "Small schools can really eliminate some of the problems big schools face, such as bullying."

Jennifer Freyer, 36, is the mother of a Pine River second-grader and three younger children she had hoped to send there. She and her husband are part of a group of about 20 parents, including Rydeski, who are working hard to keep Pine River open.

"I guess my biggest frustration is that closing a school is a one-time savings," Freyer said. She argues that renovating the school for new early childhood programs would be expensive, too. "It doesn't make fiscal sense to me," she said.