Final Closure and Consolidation Finance Information

From the district's School Beat:

"Director DeBell provided a summary of the final report on
school closure, which is available at:

Some of the highlights include:

• Enrollment – just over 50 percent of students from closed schools enrolled in the designated receiving schools. Of the remaining 366 students, 154 left the District (a quarter of these were nonresidents).• Capital costs of the move will likely come in just underbudget at $1.5 million, which includes $400,000 to build a teen parent program center at South Lake.
• Long-term capital savings are estimated at $44 million for BTA-type projects and $351 million in levy projects.
• General fund costs were higher than estimated at $927,000.
• General fund savings in the first year, originally estimated to be $2.48 million, are $1.9 million. Savings are reduced because the Marshall building remained open for one more year, and Columbia is being used as the interim site for The New School.
• $1 million of the $1.9 million savings was directed back to the classroom via K-2 libraries, math adoption, and an additional staff member at each of the receiving schools."

The whole report is actually quite illuminating. Some other interesting things about it:

- MLK did the worst in student movement to a receiving school (TT Minor) at 36.2% with Viewlands at 58.3% going to Broadview-Thompson.

-"The original estimate for capital expenditures was between $1,455,000 and $1,495,000. As ofOctober 1, 2007 we had expended $1,077,983.00.1 We expect that number to go up slightly as a few lingering invoices are submitted, however, we still anticipate coming in under budget in the capital arena. The total includes $400,000 to build a new teen parenting program at South Lake to replace the program at John Marshall.
We expect a few additional projects to come out of the FY 2008 budget—we’re estimating $72,000 to install a window at Broadview-Thomson, finish the special education preschool playground at West Seattle Elementary, and complete a library work room build-out at Whitworth. In addition 2008 will see the completion of the greenhouse for Orca, which was a previously scheduled BTA II project."

I had wondered where the money was coming for the teen parenting program at South Lake. It has absolutely no business in this issue or from this pot of money. It should have been in BEX III. Also, this is the first I had heard that the teen parenting program at John Marshall would be closed. I had also advocated for more of the receiving schools to get upgrades from BEX III but they didn't. I'll have ask where this money actually came from. For example, Orca should have lockers if it's a K-8 and that's not reflected here.

-The district is counting on huge capital cost savings in not having these buildings open especially from seismic costs.

-There was a lot of honesty in the document. For example:

"It is clear that, especially in Seattle, where we have contracts that require people to be paid to move and where costs in general are higher, closing buildings is an expensive endeavor. However, these one-time costs are not so great that they detract from the overall savings (both general fund and capital fund) of having fewer buildings to maintain and staff. Honesty in the closure costs, along with an acknowledgment that we are committed to making closure asuccessful process for all involved, will make future budgeting for closures an easier and more transparent process."

It's good they acknowledge this but once again a statement like, "we'll try harder in the future to make things more transparent", gets old.

-I found this interesting:
"The delay in closing the John Marshall building, and the decision to move The New School into the Columbia building while their building was being completed reduced those savings to $1.9 million."
I hadn't known they weren't going to move New School out during their rebuild. That's quite a large cost.

- Problem: "Now, with some time and distance from the process, the principals have had time to reflect and offer suggestions for future school closure processes.
One item that has come up repeatedly is a belief that the process was under-funded and undermanaged."
Solution: "A suggestion made was to dedicate one central staff member to each pair of schools(closed and receiving) and make that person the liaison for the operational aspects of this process."

-More honesty:
"Principals also stressed the need for honesty throughout the process. We appeared too facile inour comments that everything would be better in the new buildings. It is true that with more students the schools can provide more services. However, that is small solace to teachers who are involuntarily removed from an environment they have created and are placed into a new environment with new people and new processes.
Communication throughout this process was relatively poor, in part because no one working on the project had done closures before, and in part because the project was under-funded and under-managed.

I give them points for some real honesty in their assessments. I deduct points for this coming as a surprise; one of the members of the C&C Committee did a report on the closures in the '80s that covered some of this. I'll be interested to see the reaction from different groups when this information is widely disseminated.

(All italics mine.)