LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Students Are More than Statistics
The human cost of closing Morongo Basin's neighborhood schools
The Morongo Unified School District (MUSD) reports that student enrollment has fallen from approximately 10,000 students at its peak1 to around 7,300 today and could fall further still. At the committee's April 9 meeting, as reported by the Hi-Desert Star, Superintendent Patricio Vargas presented alternate scenarios, one of which would close Palm Vista Elementary School on Baseline Road in Twentynine Palms as well as Landers and Morongo Valley elementary schools. Students would be reassigned to the closest campuses.
To the Editor:
The unfolding school closures situation in the Morongo Basin is not about budgets or facilities. It’s a stark test: Do we still remember what public institutions are for?
It is wrapped in all that anemic jargon—“efficiency, optimization, sustainability.” Sounds professional, one might think. But it’s just smoke and mirrors. Children become mere statistical headcounts. Schools turn into cost centers. Working parents’ daily routine hell becomes just another logistic task to solve on a long administrative spreadsheet.
But a neighborhood school is not just an enrollment form. It is the invisible framework that makes life possible: it is near and it is there to support your family. In the desert, where distance is real and working families are already at the limit, this isn’t sentimental, it is structural. And it is fundamental.
For far too many kids, it’s the only place they are fed, asked how they are, and where they are not treated like a problem to be “solved”. That isn’t extra. That is everyday reality.
When we discuss children as “units” to shuffle for cleaner numbers to brag about during an annual superintendents’ meeting, public education has already betrayed its purpose.
We all want better schools and stronger programs. But one doesn’t create real futures by dismantling what people depend on. You strengthen what is already there instead.
Parents are not rejecting changes. They’re rejecting a deattached, mechanical version of it—disruption first, explanation later, accountability—never.
This is how institutions fail: “efficiency” becomes moral cover for decisions made over people’s heads. Euphemisms. Delays. Processes without teeth. This quiet expectation that the public will get tired and quit.
We will not.
As Americans, we are trained since childhood to swallow nonsense politely, “keep it to yourself,” mistake fatigue for quiet wisdom. Public life rots under such habits. A healthy community shows up, speaks up, and refuses to surrender its children to managed decline.
These parents fighting for their children’s future are not the issue. But the public school that runs without the public—by consultants, executives, and PR teams—is.
A working mother rushing between jobs for a school pickup, a special needs child who gets one stable place every day, teachers, aides— all these people are not collateral damage. They are the whole damn point.
But this community will transcend.
We don’t need more polished messaging and colorful presentations. We need the courage to say it plainly: closing these schools isn’t prudent. It is immoral. Schools are not spreadsheets. They are part of the social contract. And if I learnt something during years I’ve been living here is that our desert community would not tear that down for some administrative convenience.
Vadim Altschuler, Twentynine Palms
Petition: Protect Morongo Basin Schools from Closure
Upcoming meetings:
MUSD Board Meeting
Tuesday, April 21, 2026 at 6:00 PM
Joshua Tree Elementary School
4950 Sunburst Ave, Joshua Tree
Enrollment Committee Meeting
Tuesday, April 29, 2026 at 6:00 PM
Joshua Tree Professional Development Center
(Old Joshua Tree Elementary)
6061 Sunburst Ave, Joshua Tree
MUSD Board Meeting
Tuesday, May 5, 2026 at 6:00 PM
Joshua Tree Elementary School
4950 Sunburst Ave, Joshua Tree
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A date not reported by the school district.