A step-by-step procedure, defined to help the Hamden Public Schools (Connecticut) board of education with the task of choosing one or more elementary schools to close, develops a list of criteria used for comparing and ranking elementary schools into a working system intended to give a precise, objective structure to the board's decision-making process. The criteria define many kinds of advantages and disadvantages of school buildings, all of which are to be considered in relation to each other before the board makes any decisions about retentions and closings. The criteria are designed to evaluate the elementary school buildings as educational plants and in relation to their surrounding neighborhoods and potential enrollments. The criteria are divided into three weighted categories: educational criteria, 40 percent; community impact, 40 percent; and financial, 20 percent. Each individual criterion has five parts: (1) title, (2) questions the data are designed to answer, (3) explanation, (4) data to be collected, and (5) scoring procedure. (MLF)