Seattle Times' Article on Seattle Schools and School Closure/Consolidation
The Times had an article this morning, Seattle may need to close schools to save money. I was wondering when they might get around to printing something.
The Times says SPS is "tiptoeing around the idea that it may have to close some schools in a few years." If they listened to that Work Session on the Budget, they wouldn't have said "tiptoeing."
The district's party line:
If SPS were to consolidate, staffers argue, students might get better access to specialized programs, social workers, specialists, school counselors and nurses — resources that students have continuously requested in the last school year.
Podesta said the district believes that “consolidating into larger schools that have the resources they need is a good strategy whether you have money problems or not.”
If the latter were true AND SPS has had money issues for years, how come no one has suggested it before?
Five years from now, SPS staff projects the district could have as many as 48,515 students, or as few as 45,017. If the worst-case scenario were to happen, that would represent a 16% drop in enrollment from 2019-20.
Enrollment projections are estimates because the pandemic has delayed the release of some 2020 census data, Podesta said.
He also said:
What’s equitable [and] conditions of the building are also going to be taken into account when thinking about this.”
Just what I thought - race and building condition will be the two main criteria to pick who closes.
And Jones said:
“We’re thinking about this more of a school consolidation than school closures because our intent won’t be to get rid of our buildings — it would be to maybe repurpose them,” Jones said.
As buildings for charter schools so the district will have a new revenue stream?
Gotta say, those comments at the end of the story are not kind but some offer some ideas:
Comments
I personally would love to see less emphasis on "equity" and more on excellence; especially given how abysmal the outcomes have been for non-white/asian students. SPS has bought deeply into the soft bigotry of low expectations and it shows in their achievement gaps.
I know you don't like charter schools but it seems inevitable that they will be given some prime location buildings to gain a foothold in Seattle. Do you really think that charters are worse than SPS as currently run? Not some idealized public school system but the one we actually have?
2) Not sure if you mean WA state charters? But it a bit of apples and oranges to compare an entire district to a one-off charter school. And WA state charters have NOT fared all that well.
3) There's a bill in the legislature to extend the 5-year window for up to 40 charter schools. I have to laugh at that because we are told - over and over - how parents are just dying for them and yet....
hangon
The influx of children with unchecked behavioral problems and resulting classroom chaos many years ago drove us to private school. There is absolutely nothing that SPS could do that would lure us back. Much too little, too late. Private schools reopened much faster and the educational rigor remained: no ridiculous “A for everyone”. Best of luck everyone.
Forever Private
If SPS really does lease space out to charter schools - and they don't collapse from lack of enrollment - won't that really go some way towards answering why families keep un-enrolling or not even starting at SPS?
As for the comments at the end of the article, that first one is dead on. Offer a compelling product and families will absolutely beat down their doors to enroll. I really don't believe most of us delight in spending a minimum of $10k/year on top of the taxes we already to pay to get our children schooled up in what we consider to be an acceptable manner. But it truly seems that SPS believes "academic excellence" is anathema to its mission... whatever that is.
- One More Eckstein Parent
Every syllable we spend worrying about them, I think, distracts us from much more pressing issues like funding.
Do you know what kind of school actually is playing a role in public school enrollment? It's private schools. Not charters, not homeschooling, but private schools. About 30% of school-aged children in Seattle are attending private schools. We have snooty traditional private schools, we have woke progressive private schools, we have conservative Evangelical private schools, we have Catholic schools, we have private schools of other faith communities, too, we have private schools offering child-directed learning, we have private schools with minimally structured programs, and we have highly structured private schools, we have private schools for dyslexia, for gifted/highly capable kids, and we have private schools that are designed oxymoronically around unschooling. We have girls' schools, boys' schools. There are language immersion private schools. Some are tiny, some are huge. Some cost $18,000 a year, some cost close to $70,000 a year. All offer financial aid of some kind. Seattle just has a ton of private schools. Way more than most other cities our size, with way more kids attending them than other cities our size.
Private school attendance should be at the forefront of every education policy conversation we are having in Seattle, especially around enrollment, but the Cone of Silence somehow prevents this. But, yes, let's belabor the trivial role charters play in public education here and continue to ignore the private elephant in our classrooms.
EdPolicy Wonk
You raise a great point, but I’m not sure anyone likes the idea of renting out previously public school buildings to private schools any better. Honesty, if this arrangement can keep the district afloat, it’s not so terrible, and it maintains those buildings and a hope that the district will live to see better days. But it also enables the district to continue being awful.
District fer Rent
Stet
Ouch
@Melissa - I was curious about the Birth-to-K ratio I found in SPS' enrollment report and how it compares with other comparable school districts. I wasn't able to find a lot of info googling around so I'm wondering if other districts call it something else. At any rate, for anyone who doesn't know - it's a measure of % of births in an area and then subsequent enrollment in the area kindergarten 5 years on. A value >1 (100%) means a net influx of people and a value <1 means either private school or people moving away. The most recent enrollment report goes back to I think 2017 but you can put together a longer data chain looking at earlier enrollment reports. Essentially, Birth-to-K peaked for SPS in 2012 = 72.7%, falling to 64.3% in 2016 and staying basically level there until 2020 plummeted to 54.4% and then in 2021 to 52.5%. So what's going on? Presumably a ratio that low means a LOT of people decamp from Seattle when they have kids and one of the bigger reasons for people moving is because of... schools. At least in my experience.
-One More Eckstein Parent