Anselmo Villarreal, executive director of Waukesha’s La Casa de Esperanza, said Tuesday that he and his agency were backing efforts to stop the closure of White Rock Elementary School, a facility known for its bilingual program for Hispanics.

School District Administration is proposing to parcel White Rock pupils among three other elementary schools as part of its larger plan to move 6^th graders into middle school. The shakeup would provide the cash strapped district more than $1 million in savings on building use and transportation costs, school officials say.

At a morning meeting at La Casa, Villarreal said school administration has not provided his agency nor concerned parents with details that are needed to justify the proposed closing. His support for the parents puts a powerful voice in their corner.

“The School District wants to maximize use of facilities and resources,” Villarreal said. “But what’s more important than anything else is the education of our children.”

Villarreal called the staff and the school “remarkable.”

“We cannot support the closing of White Rock,” he said. “We need to know that the great successes of White Rock will be duplicated. We don’t have answers for that and we don’t know where our children will go.”

No one from district administration or the School Board was there.

Villarreal said he sent a letter to the district last week that says he would not support the closing of White Rock.

Tony Baez, president of the Council for Spanish Speaking Inc., said the closure proposal falls into an economic strategy among school district administrators nationwide to “tighten up.”

“We’ve spent too much time building bilingual schools to let a school superintendent who basically lasts (in the district) for about three years,” Baez said. “Superintendents come and go but not the community.”

The district has held several neighborhood meetings, some at La Casa, to explain its rationale for the proposed closure, saying the school would have too few students and transportation costs could be cut because only one-third of the school’s pupils live inside its enrollment boundaries.

Parent Jose Lopez said at the meeting that he was confused by all of the facts and figures the district is using to justify the closing.

“There are so many official arguments,” Lopez said. “I get confused. I feel lied to.”

The proposal has yet to be a ted on the School Board, which reportedly is conflicted about the idea.