This school may close. What does that feel like for a third-grader?

DALLAS -- Every morning before school, 8-year-old Coraline sleepily walks to her parents’ bedroom for snuggles. She’ll burrow beneath the covers until her mom hurries her along to get dressed.

On a recent Friday morning, Coraline noticed something felt off.

“Daddy, what’s the matter?” she asked.

“I think that they might be closing your school,” Jacob Gallegos told her.

The third grader’s eyes welled before she peppered her parents with questions: What’s going to happen to my friends? Where will my teachers go? Where will I go?

The answers to her questions, and so many others, are up in the air.

The adults in charge of the Gallegos family’s district — Richardson ISD — proposed closing four schools next year because of a budget shortfall. The list includes Coraline’s Greenwood Hills Elementary. The school board is expected to vote later this month on the plan, along with new attendance boundaries that will dictate where Coraline goes for fourth grade.

Decisions about school closures are steeped in nuances about stagnant state funding formulas, slowed birth-rate projections and low building utilization.

For kids like Coraline, those complicated numbers aren’t what matters. She’s nervous about the idea of going to a new school, without all of her friends and favorite teachers.

Hours after sharing the news, her mom, Amanda Gallegos, went into Coraline’s room to put some clothes away. Beneath her daughter’s purple bedside table, she spotted a homemade cardboard sign attached to a small box.

In black marker, her daughter had carefully written a plea: Please put some money in here so we don’t have to shut down our school.

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