Last week, the Kansas City School Board voted to close both the elementary and junior high schools that I attended from 1979 to 1982. Just like that, three years of my childhood disappeared.

For a long time, I had thought that the school where I attended Kindergarten, Franklin Elementary in Salina, Kan., had closed. But I was wrong. It is, as near as I can tell, still alive (albeit now named Franklin-Lowell Elementary). The school I attended from first through fourth grades, Cordley Elementary in Lawrence, Kan, is not only still around but boasts of being the oldest elementary school in the state. Yowsers!

And the schools I attended in Clovis, N.M., (Yucca Junior High and Clovis High) are still around--for now. The downsizing of Cannon Air Force Base outside of town might well affect the junior high. But that's still a couple years in the future.

Three years of my childhood just went poof. It's a weird feeling.

I'm not the only one in this position, of course. Lots of schools close all the time. Some folks are lucky enough (if you look at it that way) to be able to buy their old school as a residence/studio, as Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips did with his old school in south Oklahoma City. While Longan Elementary does sit in an interesting part of Kansas City, I'm not tempted to put in a bid.

When I read that Kansas City voted to close half of its schools, I knew that Longan would be on the list. The district tried to close it when I attended it thirty years ago. For a long time, it was just about the last neighborhood school in the district, one of the few that reflected the full diversity of the school district within the lines of its area. And then, over the last twenty years or so, the folks with kids moved away.

This was predictable. Back in 1979, My parents bought our Kansas City house in 1979 for $57,000. We moved in 1982, and (I think) made a little bit on the purchase. Not long ago, it went on the market for around $400,000. Gentrified? Try platinumified. What was a neighborhood of burnt-out hippies, young gay couples and the occasional family has turned into a neighborhood of lawyers, doctors, old gay couples and my parents. Kids? There are a few, but many less than when I was a kid.

Like most cities, Kansas City has seen an explosion in its downtown and other commercial areas in the last ten years. Unlike many cities, however, the folks moving in aren't breeders. They're spent breeders (what some still call empty-nesters) like my parents and other folks who don't have kids.

The reason for this is simple: schools. Despite a massive desegregation court case and hundreds of millions of dollars sunk into facilities, the schools didn't get any better. This shouldn't surprise anyone who knows anything about education, but there it is. The District was ordered to build all these new high schools and renovate countless elementary and middle schools--but the teachers didn't get much help at all.

When I was in school back in the late 70s and early 80s, I was a minority. There weren't a lot of white kids in Kansas City schools. I never really worried about it, but I noticed. You can't help but do that. I was an extreme minority at Lincoln in seventh grade, but I quickly observed that if you don't act like an asshole, you don't have any problems. I was seen as an interloper by some, I suppose, but a harmless interloper. Nobody bothered me.

Over the last 30 years, though, families of all colors have deserted the district. The population of the schools has plunged around 50 percent in the last 10 years alone. That's called voting with your feet.

So, let's see. You lose half your kids? You close half your schools. Makes sense to me. And now my old schools will sit vacant, waiting for classes that will likely never convene again.

Part of my childhood has vanished. I guess that's part of getting older. It's just a wee bit of a bummer.

Jon Worley's university of choice is going dancing as a 10 seed this week.