Two shuttered Malheur County rural elementary schools are sitting idle with no plans of how they will be used despite promises from Ontario School District officials a year ago that the campuses would serve the community in some fashion.
One year after the Ontario School Board approved closing Cairo and Pioneer Elementary Schools in a move to put students in each grade into the same building, school officials won’t answer questions about the promises they made to the community about discussing the possibility of converting the buildings to house other educational programs, including a preschool.
The two schools were closed under a controversial plan to consolidate students in Ontario’s elementary schools, sometimes referred to as “grade-based schools” or “elementary reconfiguration.”
The plan shifted the district’s elementary students from five elementary schools to three, which closed Cairo and Pioneer Elementary Schools. The board voted on the elementary reconfiguration in February. Pioneer and Cairo schools closed at the end of the school year in June.
Superintendent Nikki Albisu hasn’t responded to questions and Bret Uptmor, school board chair, refused a recent request for an interview.
“The board has made no decision on what will happen with the two schools,” Uptmor said in an email on Thursday, Dec. 5.
In a January 8 announcement on the district’s website, Albisu the district intended to keep the Pioneer and Cairo schools as either “traditional small elementary schools” or as a science, technology, reading, engineering, art, and math magnet school for kindergarten to sixth grade.
She said this was because the district did not think it would have room at its middle school.
She emphasized then that the district would not sell the buildings. During the 2024-25 school year, she said the district would “assess the progress” of the transition to grade-based schools and consider “optional programming for those locations.”
She said programs from Cairo and Pioneer could include “pre-school programming, etc.”
Albisu recommended to the school board in February forming a committee of district staff and citizens to reach out to the public for ideas on what to do with the schools. “No records exist” of such a committee, the district reported by email on Wednesday, Dec. 4.
In April, Taryn Smith, district public relations manager, told the Enterprise that during the 2024-25 school year “mobile staff” with the district could have offices at Cairo and Pioneer. More recently, she said other than “regular maintenance and supervision of the buildings, there are not currently any full-time OSD staff housed at Cairo or Pioneer.”
Now, nearly a year later, the district still has no plan for the empty schools. The Enterprise asked for any documents the district had related to planned use of the schools.
Smith said “no records exist” about plans to introduce any new program for students at Pioneer and Cairo or any other plan for both buildings
Since closing the schools, according to Smith, there has been no memo, analysis or even an email about plans for how the district will use the two buildings, properties or equipment.
Now, the doors remain locked at Cairo, the lights are out, and there is no sign of life, with hula hoops sitting unused outside of the school.
Last year, over 200 students attended Pioneer, built in 1896, and Cairo Elementary Schools, established in 1957.
News tip? Send your information to Steven Mitchell at [email protected].
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