It’s hard not to compare Monday night’s Butler schools consolidation vote to an amputation.

It’s difficult, even agonizing to conclude that the school board voted 6-3 to remove vital parts of the school system in order to save it.

Officially, the board chose option 4B, which will close five of the district’s 11 neighborhood elementary schools and consolidate grades kindergarten through 4 in the remaining six elementary buildings. Grades 5 and 6 will attend the current junior high school while grades 7 and 8 will move to the intermediate high school.

The schools earmarked for closure are Broad Street, Center Avenue, Clearfield, Meridian and Oakland.

Monday’s vote authorizes Superintendent Dale Lumley to pursue the option, to hammer out the intricate details including the distribution of students, paring of faculty and support staff and implementation of classroom technology. The process will require a final board vote of approval later this year.

On paper — the district’s estimate, as prepared by consultant Thomas and Williamson — the consolidation will result in a $3.52 million annual savings.

But everyone agrees that the savings come with a price of their own.

Ten residents addressed the board: Eight of them were mothers of students. Several were members of the Butler Residents for Quality Schools organization, which favors a K-6 elementary model. All spoke eloquently and reasonably, asking the board for more consideration and research before deciding. At least two mentioned Sunshine Act violations and other efforts to preclude the public from the consolidation process.

“We will not wait and see how next year will start,” said Janet White, holding aloft a photo of her 7-year-old daughter. “We will not allow our children to be part of an experiment.

Board member Bill Halle echoed their concerns and suggested that attempts to shut out the public has created a distrust in the administration and the consolidation plan.

Board member John Conrad, an engineer by trade and one of three board members who voted against the motion, compared the winning option to the Edsel, a car that failed because nobody bought it. “We cannot tell people what they will buy,” Conrad said, alluding to the likelihood of some parents to enroll their children in cyber school or other alternative programs.

The discord seems universal, as is the sensitivity to the discord. Consolidation will be an agonizing process. And Conrad correctly advises the board and administration that the public deserves more information and detailed planning if they are to be persuaded to get behind the consolidation.

Board member Don Pringle, who attended Meridian School as a child, emphasized that his yes vote wasn’t made without considerable thought. His own son will be in a “bubble” class, bounced from one school building to another over several years because of consolidation. Friends on the faculty might lose their jobs, and some neighbors probably won’t even speak to him now, Pringle said.

But Pringle believes his vote — and the board’s action — is in the district’s best interest.

“This issue has been thrown at this board’s footsteps, and now is the time to do it,” Pringle said.

Indeed, now is the time.