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The TUSD Governing Board will vote tonight on whether to mothball any of four elementary schools slated for closure.

The schools — Midtown's Corbett and Rogers, the Downtown-area Ochoa and the East Side's Wrightstown — are slated for possible closure to address slumping enrollment in the Tucson Unified School District and to attempt to make some dent in a looming deficit that hovers around $8 million.

Parents trying to save the schools have said the closure process was rushed and may alienate families at a time when TUSD already is losing students.

Here's a look at how board members are leaning:

Adelita Grijalva

What she's said in the past: She opposed closures when the issue first arose in January and has questioned how realistic cost-saving projections are.

What she's saying now:

She said she has ruled out closing Ochoa and Corbett because it would be too traumatic for surrounding neighborhoods.

She's more conflicted about Rogers, partly because she feels it could increase enrollment and she's impressed by its special-education program.

Wrightstown is a bigger problem, she said. She can't justify the cost of running a school for 160 students and fears it will just land on a closure list again.

"What will they be able to do in three to five years that they haven't been able to do in the last three?"

Bruce Burke

What he's said in the past: "I've come to the conclusion that the last options are upon us, and this needs to be part of the mix," he said earlier in the year when the board was going back and forth on the issue.

What he's saying now: Burke won't name specific schools, but he said his vote will hinge largely on whether the schools that the students will be transferred to will be a good fit.

"This is not a short-term budget issue. It's a long-term drain on the budget, and we have to face those facts, as difficult as it is. It's a traumatic time for the community, and I recognize that, but in making the tough calls, it is our responsibility to look beyond individual schools to the larger community."

Judy Burns

What she's said in the past: "I think school closures should be the last thing you do," she said in January when the board voted 3-2 against closures.

What she's saying now: Burns remains a "no" vote on all of the schools, noting that outside auditors warned the process needed to be slowed to help solidify community support.

"We should really put this process on hold and start over again so we're sure we're doing the right thing," she said.

District number crunchers have not proved to her that the closures will reap the projected savings. "I know we have a threat of deficits, but we've been there before and it hasn't materialized. I'm not willing to disrupt families and children on something I'm not sure of."

Joel Ireland

What he's said in the past: He first voted against starting the closure process but then moved quickly to reconsider it.

"This is hard," he said then. "Nobody wants to close a school, but we can't sit here and hope that someone else will do the job (of closing schools)." Acknowledging that the deficit looms, he added, "Somewhere the school board has to step up and get that money to close in on the deficit."

Although Ireland has said he would be reluctant to close highly performing schools, he also was the key vote in reconsidering a board decision to cut funding for librarians and counselors, which put even more financial pressure on the district and may help swing his vote on closures as a compromise.

What he's saying now: Ireland did not return calls seeking comment.

Alex Rodriguez

What he's said in the past: He was one of the early supporters of launching the school-closure process.

What he's saying now: He won't say how he'll vote, but he says some level of closure is "likely warranted."

"The big issue is that we have 5,000 fewer students today than we did when we had our peak enrollment at 63,000, but we're funding our operations at the same levels, and that's unsustainable," he said.

Student impact will be an important measure for him — saying at Wrightstown, for example, students would have the chance to go to a school that outperforms or is on par with their current school.