Renton teachers and families packed a school board meeting Wednesday night with angry and sad words about the district’s decision to close Black River High School.

The district announced April 1 that the school, known to help students who don’t succeed in Renton’s three comprehensive high schools, will close at the end of the year.

“These kids are my family,” said Black River horticulture teacher Carol Grimes at Wednesday’s meeting. “These kids feel like you’ve come and thrown them away.”

Many of the about 125 students will be sent back to comprehensive high schools, with some attending to Running Start and the Sartori Education Center.

“You’ve got a lot of kids there who have no idea what they’re going to do,” said mother Wendy Bluhm. “I’m sure dropping out is going through their minds.”

The school was slated to close in two years with the opening of the Secondary Learning Center, which will combine Sartori and Black River.

The center was going to be built beside Black River, and then the high school was going to be torn down after a transition.

Now the district has decided to build the center on the school’s site.

The plans changed about a month or two ago when the executive director of facilities, Rick Stracke, questioned the safety of building in such a tight space with students.

“Any time you have a construction site and you have children involved, you worry quite a bit about their safety,” Stracke said.

He also raised concerns about the former site having too much ground water, making it unstable for building, he said. “I don’t want the building to fall apart.”

It will likely be cheaper and better to build on the Black River High School site, he said.

An initial soil sample test was taken but during a dry season.

After seeing a creek of water constantly running across the property, he ordered a second study for April, which has proven to be pretty rainy.

“It just magnifies the problem,” he said of the water, adding safety was his major concern.

District administrators decided instead of finding another location for the school to close it down altogether.

Black River’s freshman class is small, meaning by time the school transitioned into the Secondary Learning Center, there would only be a few students, said spokesperson Randy Matheson.

It was always the plan to close the high school. The district has a new vision for its alternative schools, he said.

The Secondary Learning Center will consolidate multiple programs, focusing heavily on career and technical education opportunities, he said.

“Our goal has been to provide a building with a continuum of services,” said Kathleen Bailey, Renton’s chief academic officer of secondary education.

The decision didn’t have anything to do with the budget, although the district is facing a $4.3 million budget shortfall this year, Matheson said.

The district will save about $300,000 by closing Black River.

The teachers are working with human resources to find jobs in new programs throughout the district, although no jobs are guaranteed, he said.

After most of the audience had left the meeting, Renton School Board Director David Merrill expressed his frustration over a breakdown in communication.

One student commented that when they were first told the school was closing, she thought it was a joke because it was April Fool’s Day.

Several teachers spoke, many on the verge of tears. Some parents, standing a few feet from the board, yelled with hands raised. Even a few graduated students, now adults, came.

“I’ve been working there five years and I have never seen such a secret,” said Black River secretary Janie White at the meeting.

Most of the board wore unmoved faces through the comments. Director Todd Franceschina offered a crying student a box of tissues.

Equally stern, Superintendent Mary Alice Heuschel slumped in her chair reflecting.

She closed the board meeting by saying she wanted to repair what damage had been done, adding, “None of this was the intent.”