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The last class of fifth-graders will graduate from Glenwood Elementary School in June 2027 following the Chapel Hill-Carrboro school board’s unanimous vote Thursday to close the school.
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The decision ended an emotional roller-coaster for staff and families that started in January, when the recommendation to close a school was first introduced.
It all came down to Thursday night, when the board heard roughly an hour of public comment as parents and students from Glenwood, Ephesus and Seawell elementary schools made their last pleas for saving their school communities. Several board members spoke about the decision and read from prepared statements before voting to close Glenwood.
“We can choose to take the easy road tonight, the one that doesn’t make anyone upset, or results in even more angry emails, but that’s not what we are elected to do,” board member Melinda Manning said.
She and other board members noted that decision would result in less hardship to the most students and fewer transportation changes, because Glenwood’s magnet world and Mandarin language programs attract students from across the district.
Seawell and Ephesus are more traditional neighborhood schools.
Glenwood is also the district’s oldest school, built in 1952. A staff study showed the closure could save about $1.7 million a year in operating costs, plus an estimated $23.3 million in repair and maintenance costs over the next decade.
Board Vice Chair Barbara Fedders, who made the motion to close Glenwood, said she was “motivated heavily by the fact that I trust our district leadership’s repeated commitment to maintain a dual language and world language Mandarin track … that will have the capacity to replicate the successes achieved in your school today.”
The board asked staff to bring options for preserving the language programs by Aug. 20, including which schools might have student capacity to keep the programs together.
The next step as the district prepares to close Glenwood in the fall of 2027 is drafting a plan for redistricting students at the 10 remaining elementary schools.
A redistricting plan could be ready by winter, and account for how students could be affected, especially those in at-risk groups, as well as school demographics, transportation needs, and programs, officials said.
District officials encouraged parents in a news release to check for updates and community meetings at chccstogether.org.
The Glenwood school community got a hint in early May that their campus might be on the chopping block, when board member Rani Dasi suggested it was the least-disruptive choice.
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Glenwood parents and students who spoke Thursday cited the current national environment and said they fear Asian students in particular will lose a diverse and safe learning environment.
Putting the language programs in another school is not a solution, because it could displace students at that school, they said. That could generate even more tension and hostility against minority students, they said. Others worried that parents will leave the district if the programs move, rather than send their children to a new school, exacerbating the district’s enrollment problem.
The concerns about discrimination are real, and the district has experienced them before, Superintendent Rodney Trice said.
“It’s important for the adults … to be intentional about establishing a community,” he said. “If a decision is made to close a school, certainly the culture, the history of that school, we will need to remember. We want to certainly identify parts of that school that we want to transition to the new school, but that’s not easy if you don’t talk about it.”
The decision will affect “real people,” Dasi said, noting, “this was never going to be easy,” but she shares the board’s commitment to Glenwood students and parents, and to the Mandarin language program.
“As we move to a new chapter, it will be important that we approach one another with empathy and we recognize the shared responsibility we have to create a welcoming community,” Dasi said. “Building that kind of community will ask us to stretch yet again. It won’t be easy all the time, it will ask us to learn, and it will ask us to come together in new ways.”
The school board has eyed school closure for more than a year as one solution to falling enrollment and growing budget gaps.
The district reported 11,114 students this year — a drop of over 1,500 students since 2020, mostly in elementary school enrollment. More than 1,500 additional vacant seats are expected by 2035, including in middle and high school, as younger students move to higher grades, officials said.
Each empty seat costs the district over $17,000 a year in local, state and federal funding.
Here’s a timeline of key parts of the process.
About 74% of the state’s 115 school districts face similar challenges, The News & Observer has reported. A Carolina Demography analysis cited multiple reasons, from lower birth rates to higher housing costs and a change in the state’s immigrant-born population.
Trice has said he wants to move as quickly as possible to give families and staff time to make their plans before the affected school closes.
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This story was originally published June 4, 2026 at 9:38 PM.