Sunset and North City Elementary parents are exploring ways to save their schools and convince the Shoreline School Board to adopt other measures to pull the district out of its fiscal crisis.

An advisory committee recommended this month that both schools shut their doors this fall. That and other cuts aim to save the district $2.4 million. It’s estimated the district will end the fiscal year about $3.1 million in the red.

Sunset parents are talking to public relations firms that might take on their case. They’ve also found a lawyer.

“(We have) retained legal counsel to highlight and discuss potential regulatory and statutory violations in the process the committee and school board followed,” said Neil Neroutsos, a Sunset parent.

The group has a Web site, www.saveshorelineschools.com, has ordered yard signs and was working on a T-shirt.

Sunset Elementary students held a rally Friday, Jan. 12 at Spiro’s Pizza on Aurora Avenue. They handed out flyers and offered hot chocolate.

“We are staging a broad attack to get the message out that Sunset is not the right choice to be closed,” said Julie Fredrickson, a Sunset parent. “Even more than that, we’re trying to think big picture: What can we do to save all of our schools and boundaries?”

Fredrickson also is a teacher at the school, but is involved with the group as a parent, she said.

Closing schools is a short-term approach to a larger problem, she said.

“We want the board to look at and develop a plan that will work for the school and the city for the next 10 years, and not just a Band -Aid solution for next year,” she said.

Group members believe they have data that show it’s not feasible to close a school on the west side, and that Sunset isn’t the right school to close.

North City parents are still deciding what they will do in response to the recommendation.

They planned to hold a meeting the night of Thursday, Jan. 18 to figure that out, said Jeff Sackett, a North City parent. The meeting took place after the Enterprise deadline.

In the meantime, they’re working to get people on the boundary committee so that if the school does close, students won’t be split up to several different schools, said Gail Moss, co-president of the North City PTA.

“We want to have a good representation at the school board meeting (Monday, Jan. 22) to let them know we don’t want to be broken up into tiny pieces,” she said.

She described the school as a tight-knit family.

North City has its own grounds for contesting the committee’s recommendation, Sackett said.

“It’s unique, when you look at the demographics of the school,” he said. “You have a high percentage of assisted lunch, and the highly capable program.”

The committee didn’t take diversity into account, and that’s a concern, he said.

In the end, many families will be affected when boundaries are proposed to change, and there will likely be even more outcry when that happens, he said.

The board must wait 90 days from the date of the recommendation in early January to make its decision. In the meantime, separate public hearings will be held for each school to be closed.

A boundary committee will begin meeting soon to redraw attendance boundaries for elementary schools based on the committee’s recommendation.

Board members are scheduled to choose a time line for the hearing process at their Jan. 22 board meeting.