Closing Schools, September 9, 2024

I wanted to add this story from ProPublica, The Unequal Effects of School Closings. 

Summary blurb:

As more families opt for charter and private schools or homeschooling in the wake of the pandemic, cities around the country are shuttering schools. The effects fall hardest on majority-Black schools and special-needs students. 

 

I bring this article to your attention for two reasons.

 

One, I think there could be every chance that one school picked might be a partially renovated building. I'm not sure staff and parents currently in an SPS building like that should breathe easy. A good example would be Cedar Park Elementary.

I say this because of Director Brandon Hersey's words, over and over, to staff that some communities would be hurt more by closing their school than others. It's great that he wants to protect school communities in his district but does that preclude other directors from speaking up? 

 

Honestly, I think if Hersey pushes back hard on any school closures in his district, I suspect he would use the tool of bullying to get his way and try to shame any other director who might speak up for their district.

 

Two, the article also talks about this effects of closures on the surrounding community.

The story starts in the micro of the closing of a renovated school in Rochester, New York. Bold mine

Kpor took pleasure in dropping by the school, a handsome two-story structure that was built in 1916 and underwent a full renovation and expansion several years ago. The school was in the 19th Ward, in southwest Rochester, a predominantly Black, working- and middle-class neighborhood of century-old homes. The principal, Eva Thomas, oversaw a staff that prided itself on maintaining a warm environment for 299 students, from kindergarten through sixth grade, more than 90% of whom were Black or Latino. Student artwork filled the hallways, and parent participation was encouraged. School 10 dated only to 2009 — the building had housed different programs before that — but it had strong ties to the neighborhood, owing partly to its namesake, a pioneering Black research scientist who, at the age of 95, still made frequent visits to speak to students. “When parents chose to go to this particular school, it was because of the community that they have within our school, the culture that they have,” Kpor told me.

 

About the district:

Enrollment had declined from nearly 34,000 in 2003 to less than 23,000 last year, the result of flight to the suburbs, falling birth rates and the expansion of local charter schools, whose student population had grown from less than 2,000 to nearly 8,000 during that time. Between 2020 and 2022, the district’s enrollment had dropped by more than 10%.

 

So Seattle Schools does not have a charter school problem and lucky for that because things would likely be worse if there were more of them (there are two of them within the district). 

 

But it does have a birth rate change, coupled with very high housing prices. And, COVID really did damage to so many districts including enrollment. 

 

Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, public school enrollment has declined by about a million students, and researchers attribute the drop to families switching to private schools — aided by an expansion of voucher programs in many red and purple states — and to homeschooling, which has seen especially strong growth. In addition, as of last year, an estimated 50,000 students are unaccounted for — many of them are simply not in school.

 

Again, no voucher program in Washington State (and you better fight to not allow this to happen).

 

School 10 was among the second group (to be closed). The school would cease to exist, and its building, with its new gymnasium-auditorium and its light-filled two-story atrium, would be turned over to a public Montessori school for pre-K through sixth grade, which had been sharing space with another school. 

 

To the effects on surrounding community to the closing of a school:

 

Still, there is a pathos to a closed school that doesn’t apply to a shuttered courthouse or post office. The abandonment of a building once full of young voices is an indelible sign of the action having moved elsewhere. 

 

There is a tangible cost, too. Researchers have found that students whose schools have been closed often experience declines in attendance and achievement, and that they tend to be less likely to graduate from college or find employment. Closures tend to fall disproportionately on majority-Black schools, even beyond what would be expected on the basis of enrollment and performance data. In some cities, efforts to close underpopulated schools have become major political issues. 

 

“School closures are difficult events that rend the community, the fabric of the community,” Thomas Dee, a professor of education at Stanford, said. He has been collecting data on declining enrollment in partnership with The Associated Press. “The concern I have is that it’s going to be yet another layer of the educational harm of the pandemic.”

 

“I am concerned there is a tipping point and we’re past it,” she said. Rachel Barnhart, a former TV news reporter who attended city schools and now serves in the county legislature, agreed. “It’s like you’re watching institutions decline in real time,” she told me. “Anchors of the community are disappearing.”

 

Kpor wondered how many other families were in similar situations, with assignments that didn’t take into account the specific context of their lives. “All of this plays into why kids are not going to school,” she said. “You’re placing kids in locations that don’t meet the families’ needs.”

 

Big thought here that needs to be in the SPS transition plan:

 

It was also unclear to her which branch of the central office was handling placement appeals. “It’s all a jumble, and no one really knows how things work,” she said.

 

Back to the school in question in the article:

After the assembly, I asked Cooper what he made of the closure. “It’s tragic,” he said. “It points to the fundamental instability in the future of the schools. Children need stability, and they aren’t getting it in terms of the educational process.”

 

To which SPS is PROMISING better schools for all. It's a big promise and parents should hold their feet to the fire on it. 

 

But, in the end...

 

“One girl said she feels like she’s never going to make friends like she had here,” Crockton-Brown said. “But we have to move on. We have no other choice.”