In contrast to the problems and policies of school boards of the 1950's and 1960's, when school enrollments increased at an unprecedented rate, the problems of school boards in the 1970's became those of retrenchment. Responding to the issues of declining enrollments and fiscal restraints, the Ontario Ministry of Education in 1981 required every school board in the province to develop, approve, and publicize a school closure policy for use within its jurisdiction. This document reports on a study of the 98 resulting school closure policies to determine (1) the criteria used in the decisionmaking, (2) the internal factors affecting the decision, (3) the external factors influencing the decisionmaking, and (4) the implementation of the plans themselves. The study also incorporated the data into a model depicting the process of school closure decisionmaking employed by Ontario school boards. After a description of the theoretical rationale and methodology of the study, the document presents the findings of three stages of the study: study and review, decisionmaking, and implementation. Most policies were very complete in stage 1, less complete in stage 2, and relatively incomplete in stage 3, indicating a need for further research of both successful and unsuccessful decision and implementation strategies. (IW)