As she waited in the car pick-up line at Western Hills Elementary, RaKya DeLoch dug behind her seat and resurfaced moments later, thumbing through a composition notebook. She'd filled a page with notes on the city's public schools that had shuttered in recent memory, many a short drive from her home.
We need more transparency, DeLoch had written. How are we deciding which schools should close?
But DeLoch soon turned her attention to her son, Logan, as he climbed in the back next to his brother, who DeLoch had just picked up from Geyer Springs Early Childhood Center that October afternoon.
"How was school today, baby?" DeLoch asked Logan.
"It was 'good?'" DeLoch teased the second grader. "Just 'good?'"
Like many in Little Rock, DeLoch, 33, has memories of schools that no longer exist. A single mother of four, she left home for college but eventually returned because, she said, she wanted to raise her family where she was raised.
Tucked in her quiet neighborhood is the shell of Meadowcliff Elementary, closed after the 2021-22 school year. The doors have since been boarded shut, the ground littered with plastic wrappers and stray concrete blocks. A large sign advertises the property for sale.
"It's just not the same," DeLoch said. "It's not the same at all."
In early September, a handful of Little Rock School District officials and school board members gathered in a boardroom to unveil a plan called LRSD Forward . Competition from other schooling options was growing, Superintendent Jermall Wright said at the event. The district had lost thousands of students in recent years, he said, and faced an "immediate financial challenge." It soon became clear closures were on the table.
LRSD Forward named several options. Each listed three or four schools to be closed. Each listed Western Hills, the lowest-enrolled traditional school in the Little Rock School District.
DeLoch was heartbroken. She'd first sent Logan, who struggles with anxiety and a speech impediment, to school in Conway, but staff couldn't understand him well and tried to suspend him when he grew frustrated, DeLoch said. She then tried Bale Elementary, but didn't find the close community she was looking for.
Western Hills was "a different ballgame," DeLoch said. Staff cared for Logan and guided the family through finding him a counselor. They watched a visibly stressed DeLoch's kids at a school event. When she locked herself out of her home and car and arrived at a parent-teacher conference an hour late, Logan's teacher met with her anyway.
In mid-October, after a month of community meetings, the board approved a plan that would close the school, along with McDermott and Mabelvale elementaries.
Logan was just beginning to thrive at Western Hills, DeLoch said, after a tough transition phase. "He absolutely loves school," she said. "This year, every day is, 'It was awesome! It was great!'" DeLoch worried another new environment, Logan's fourth in as many years, would be hard on him.
"Stability is what children need," DeLoch said. "Who's to say next year they won't close again?"
The Little Rock School District has long been losing students. It began the 2015-16 school year with more than 23,000, state data shows; that count has since steadily declined and by 2025-26 was 18,964; an 18% drop in a decade. Between last year and this year, the district lost nearly 550 more.
That decline has strained the district which, like others in Arkansas, receives state funding based on student counts -- this year, more than $8,000 per student . District officials have said the district operates too many schools for its enrollment; at particularly lower-enrolled schools, its cost to educate one student exceeds $13,000 and even -- in the case of a handful of schools, including Western Hills -- $14,000.
The district's operating fund balance plummeted from more than $30 million in 2022-23 to $11 million in 2025-26. In its LRSD Forward plan, the district said it would have to cut $4 million to $7 million from its operating expenses quickly to achieve financial stability in the long run.
The district has already closed at least 10 traditional schools in the last decade, most of them elementary schools. At least four others were converted to a new program: J.A. Fair and McClellan high schools became K-8s; Rockefeller and Romine elementaries became early childhood centers.
In September, DeLoch was one of dozens of parents who filled the cafetorium of the former Brady Elementary, closed in 2025-26, for a community meeting. Toward the end, she stood to speak. Her son had an Individualized Education Program for students with disabilities, she said. Western Hills had nurtured him.
"Taking that away is going to devastate him," she said.
DeLoch understood the need to make cuts, she said, but "looking at just the enrollment" didn't make sense. She asked the district to consider: What else does the school offer?
Wright had warned in February, as the district was developing its budget for this year, that its financial challenges would fall hard on its highest-need schools. The district had in recent years made additional investments in those schools -- lower student-teacher ratios, more support staff -- but "we just don't have the money to be able to do those things anymore," he'd said.
When it comes to closures, the community has taken notice, said board member Selandria Jackson, who represents part of the majority-Black and Hispanic southwest Little Rock, at an October board work session.
"I know that you have to look at the numbers and utilization," Jackson said. "But the perception from the public is, 'It's always the same areas that're hardest-hit.'"
Students of color and low-income students have been disproportionately represented in the district's closed traditional schools over the last decade, state data shows. In many cases, the differences were substantial. Meadowcliff in its final year was 77% Black, 20% Hispanic and 3% white, with 96% of students classified as low-income based on eligibility for free or reduced lunch; the district was 60% Black, 16% Hispanic, 20% white and 61% low-income.
DeLoch said her neighborhood has felt the impact of Meadowcliff's closure far beyond campus: The maintenance of its public spaces has lagged. It's less lively.
Activist Anika Whitfield, who lives near Franklin Elementary, echoed the sentiment at a September board meeting.
"My grocery store's not there anymore. Our crime rate increased. Vandalism increased in my neighborhood. The whole community feels different than when I grew up," she told the board.
Franklin, closed after the 2016-17 school year, was 90% Black, 4% Hispanic, 5% white and 92% low-income. The district was 64% Black, 14% Hispanic, 18% white and 59% low-income.
The district "didn't care about us," Whitfield continued at the board meeting, "like they didn't care about the Little Rock Nine," drawing scattered murmurs of agreement from the audience.
"I'm asking us not to repeat history," she said.
Public school advocates point to options beyond traditional public schools as a factor driving the Little Rock School District's loss of students. More than a third of the city's school-age children don't attend the district's schools, according to a report shared by board member Eugene Krupitsky at an August board work session.
Many of those families choose charter schools, the report said. Others choose private schools.
Some of the private school students attend with the help of state money. The Educational Freedom Account program, established by Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders' 2023 LEARNS Act, provides families taxpayer funds -- this year, just over $7,200 per student -- to use on private school or homeschool expenses. State funding for the program has ballooned since its inception and will exceed $379 million this year.
More than 4,500 students in Little Rock last year attended private school or homeschool using Educational Freedom Account mon