Seattle families brace for school closures. What can we learn from last time?

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s Joy Anderson walked around her daughter's old elementary school on a sunny morning late last month, memories from her kindergarten year come flooding back.

"I remember coming and seeing her hanging off the monkey bars with all her friends, and all her friends were super diverse," Anderson recalled with a smile. "I used to just come and hang out, pick her up. The kids knew me, and the teacher liked me."

That was in 2008 at Cooper Elementary in West Seattle's Pigeon Point neighborhood —the last year before the school shut down. It was one of 11 schools to close in a two-year period.

Anderson's daughter, Olivia Wilkinson, only got that one year in that neighborhood school. Now 21 years old, Wilkinson says she still feels bitter about the closure. It's her first time back on campus since she graduated kindergarten: Cooper was shut down, and Pathfinder K-8 moved in.

"They robbed me of having a normal elementary school experience," Wilkinson said. "They robbed me of the memories I would have had here."

Looking back, Wilkinson believes the closure set her off course. She struggled academically, and bounced around numerous public and private schools. Wilkinson was recently was diagnosed with dyslexia — something Anderson believes would have been caught earlier, if Cooper had stayed open.

"They'd have figured this out by middle of first grade," Anderson said. "They'd have figured it out, because they were just so into making sure the kids succeeded."

Nearly 15 years after the last closures, Seattle Public Schools finds itself in a similar position.

Enrollment has declined about 9% over the last five years, and the district is in a budget crisis. Officials have proposed shuttering 20 elementary schools for the next school year.

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Parents and activists have pushed back, threatening lawsuits if the closures go ahead.

Anderson worries about history repeating itself.

"I think it's going to cast a huge negative cloud over the entire city," she said. "People will be fighting with their neighbors. I mean, it's going to be bad."

Anderson felt it firsthand in her own fight to keep her daughter's school open. Other parents, students, and former school board members who were around back said they're also concerned.

They recall fiery school board meetings that devolved into shouting — and sometimes even fist fights. A superintendent resigned. School board members faced recall efforts. The mayor threatened to step in.

And then, not long after schools closed, enrollment rebounded.

Kay Smith-Blum joined the school board in 2009, not long after the last wave of school closures. She said district enrollment projections had underestimated the birth rate, as more families moved in.

And, sure enough, Smith-Blum recalled , hundreds of kindergartners the district hadn't expected showed up.

"We didn't have seats for them," she said. "I mean, kids were literally hanging from the rafters."

The district scrambled, spending millions of dollars to reopen schools they had just shut down.

"You can imagine how expensive that was, how frustrating it was for us as a board," Smith-Blum said. "But for teachers and principals and families, it was outrageous and so harmful to the community."

Smith-Blum is worried the district is, once again, relying on faulty data to make such pivotal decisions — like closing schools, or selling school properties they may need down the road.

RELATED: How will Seattle Public Schools leaders decide which elementary schools should close?

Marni Campbell is the district's well-resourced schools officer, heading up the closure plan. She said the district is not currently planning on selling any buildings, and they're confident in their data.

"We've been very mindful," she said. "We've consulted with two external agencies to check our projection numbers, to make sure that we're doing this in a way that really hopefully recognizes the absolute challenge of the now, but is also building more toward that future."

But Campbell also acknowledged that these projections aren't an exact science and can shift.

"If you look at the history of our city and schools, many, many schools have opened and closed, they've reconstituted, they've become something different," Campbell said. "That's part of how we do business — but that doesn't mean it's easy ... so we try to avoid it."

Lisa Escobar was part of that shifting terrain last time around, as principal of Viewlands Elementary when it reopened in 2011, four years after it closed.

Even then, emotions were still raw.

"I realized at that point how much the school meant to the community," Escobar said, "and how much they grieved when it closed."

Rebuilding trust was hard, Escobar said.

"It is so traumatic for communities," she said. "I found out at Viewlands: It does last a long time, you know, they're not quick to forgive or to forget."

So, she looked for specific ways to knit the school community back together — to honor the past and build new traditions.

She hired a teacher whose children were affected by the closure to help shape the school's vision.

And, Viewlands had always had a science focus. But, given the school's proximity to Carkeek Park, Escobar took it one step further, and focus more on environmental science.

She created a new fifth grade project on students' carbon footprint.

And, as for something new, the school built a new rain garden. Escobar said each garden was meant to represent a different culture.

"So that we could not only honor what was there, but also invite the new cultures that had joined the community," Escobar explained.

This time around, the district plans a similar approach. Campbell said they're planning to create transition teams to help families work through the upheaval.

"All of these things are really highly, highly involved in the emotional life and emotional climate of our city and of our families and of our schools," Campbell said. "We want to proactively have some things in place to help support students."

District officials are expected to share multiple school closure proposals under consideration sometime this week.