Editor's note: Fourteenth in a series of stories on the people, places and events that made news in the region in 2008. To read previously published newsmaker articles, see record-eagle.com/newsmakers.
TRAVERSE CITY -- At first, it was common to hear families and staff at Willow Hill Elementary ask each other whether they were Norris or Willow Hill.
Welcome to life after school closings.
Losing the familiar, Colleen Smith said, has been the hardest part of change. But now, almost four months into the school year, those questions of identity mostly have subsided.
"We're all Willow Hill and we're all moving on," said Smith, the school's principal. "But it's easier to move on when you're establishing relationships with one another."
When Traverse City Area Public Schools shut the doors of Norris, Glenn Loomis and Bertha Vos elementary schools for the last time in June, students, their parents and staff members all had to say goodbye to their buildings -- and, in many cases, to each other.
The decision to close the schools, considered a cost-saving measure, required the transfer of students to other district buildings -- Bertha Vos to Courtade Elementary, Glenn Loomis to Central Grade School and Norris to Willow Hill and Long Lake Elementary.
Smith was reassigned from Glenn Loomis this year and has the majority of the displaced Norris students in her building. She has encouraged students to form clubs with the hope they form trust and friendships.
"We're starting new traditions, and that's exciting," Smith said.
Perhaps the most vocal opposition came from Bertha Vos, once the district's easternmost school. Parents formed a nonprofit advocacy group and unsuccessfully sued the district to halt the transition.
The largest exodus of students leaving TCAPS this year, 30, came from Bertha Vos, district data show. Most went to Mill Creek Elementary in Elk Rapids Schools. Additional students from all three buildings open-enrolled in other TCAPS schools.
"Our whole neighborhood, there is not one elementary student who gets on a bus and goes to Courtade," said Julie Puckett, of Williamsburg, whose daughters were accepted into Central Grade School's Talented and Gifted program.
She said it is hard to completely let go when the district still faces budget shortfalls, a situation the closings were supposed to help.
"In my mind, we should be in a better place now," Puckett said. "I've come to accept the decision. It doesn't mean that I like it."
Kim Stern thought about switching daughter Alexandra, 8, and son Mitchell, 5, to Mill Creek this year, but stayed in TCAPS when she learned staff members would transition with them.
"It probably helped me more than it helped the kids, because they have just moved right in seamlessly," Stern said. "It's just been so much better than I could ever have thought."
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