Joe Jarosz
Northeast News
Feb. 26, 2015

KANSAS CITY, Missouri — A decision has been made by the Kansas City Public Schools Board of Education to demolish the former Thacher Elementary School.

But Northeast community members aren’t letting it go down without a fight.

At Wednesday night’s school board meeting, the board voted five to four to demolish the 115 year old building by accepting a bid from Gator Industrial, LLC for the work. No demolition date was scheduled at the time of the meeting. The demolition will cost the school district just under $250,000.

After the meeting, members of the grassroots group “Save Thacher, Save Our Schools” said they planned to file an injunction against the school board.

“We are going to see them in court,” Manny Abarca, one of the organizers of the group, said.

Before the final vote, both Abarca and Bryan Stalder made their final pleas with the board to save the building. The school served area students until 1998, when the district decided to close the building. During Stalder’s presentation, he noted the building could be used for youth mentoring opportunities, job skill training and an area for safe activities.

“We we’re hopeful of a compromise but that didn’t work,” Stalder said, adding the injunction will probably be filed within the next week. “We gave it our best shot.”

The school district has repeatedly said it is in favor of demolition of the former elementary school, located at 5008 Independence Ave., because the land would be used for multi-purpose athletic fields and parking for the recently reopened Northeast Middle School. In January 2011, a fire damaged the 1914 addition of the school, but the original building was not affected.

Shannon Jaax, director of the KCPS Repurposing Initiative, reminded the board, though, that if they were to sell the land, they wouldn’t be able to control how it will be used. She noted that history is important, and that the school board would do what it can to preserve building materials, but the future is more important.

“I encourage the board to not just look at the last 100 years, but the next 100 years, too,” Jaax said.

Before the final decision was made, board members went back and forth on possible compromises, with board member Gunnar Hand offering the alternative of just removing the annex and saving the original building. That idea was later shot down because of the district’s need for the entire space.