The Alternative to Closing Schools (According to SPS)

 I did previously report this out. 

Senior leadership did a Budget Work Session on August 28th. In it. they had the two choices. Closing schools (with specifics on savings) or what I am calling "Plan B" below.

Plan B

Alternative Budget Reductions for 2025-2026 

Potential Reductions.                        Positions     Savings

Eliminate all Elem. & K -8 School Asst. Principals        22          $  5.0 million
Increase middle & high school class sizes to 34:1         72.2         $11.2 million
Increase 4th & 5th grades class sizes to 30:1                 32.5         $  5.0 million
Increase K -3 class sizes (varies)                                     15            $  2.3 million
Reduce all Librarian positions to .5 max                       15.5         $  2.7 million
Eliminate all School Equity Funds                                                 $  5.4 million

 Total  157.2 positions   $31.6 million

They have 3 statements about class size but know what? That class size is going up anyway. There is no way that they are putting more kids in fewer buildings and coming out with lower or the same class sizes. 

What I would ask is - can they do a combo of closing and some of Plan B to save more schools? 

Comments

Anonymous said…
Whoa! Assistant principals make $227k!?!
9/12/24, 5:49 PM
Patrick said…
This is one of the times I wonder what planet SPS lives on. My child's classes were 33 to 35 in K-3, 35 to 40 in 4-5, 40-45 in 6-12.
(Does this mean the class sizes would go DOWN? haha)
9/12/24, 8:21 PM
Stuart J said…
31.6 in this list, and 30 some supposedly in the school closing plan still only gets to about 62 million, out of 100 million. I do not see how they are going to get the other 40 million.

9/12/24, 8:58 PM
dj said…
As Patrick notes, many of our kids already have class sizes as large or larger than those in this proposal so I’m not sure what they think they are proposing. I also am not sure parents are intent on saving vice principals.
9/13/24, 7:52 AM
MLB said…
We will find that they will HAVE to close schools and increase class sizes/cut available resources for our schools. Which makes me call BS to the gaslighting that has been this past year of "Well Resourced Schools" mishigas. How much money was spent on that campaign? To what avail? All of the benefits that we ideated a well resourced school would have are exactly the easiest things to cut to solve the budget deficit.
9/13/24, 11:13 AM
Anonymous said…
Keep in mind, they are not raising the contractual "cap" on teacher to student ratios, they are only calculating building budgets with that ratio. That means they want middle and high schools to figure out which classes to cut AGAIN and which classes to overload with even more students after they funded 6-12 at 1/30 instead of the previous 1/29. Additionally, they shorted our enrollment projections to help with the budgeting "math" and told us we weren't getting an October bump based on real numbers. They shorted us over 100 students in that projection. Effectively, upping the ratio and then shorting the total students to shave off a bit more FTE.

Please, do not do that to the 6-12 schools. Your students will not have quality electives and their core classes will not have enough chairs or desks to fit the 36-40 or more students assigned to a teacher.

-TeacherWithPets
9/13/24, 11:29 AM
uber said…
What I don't see on this list is any cuts to the HC bloat at JCSS. There are ZERO impacts to the adult that are making these hard decisions. There are so many overpaid folks who have no impact whatsoever on children directly and too many middle managers who would not be able to manage employment elsewhere.
9/13/24, 11:40 AM
Anonymous said…
Feels like we need a budget refresher. I don’t understand the metrics being used. I believe this disaster is primarily driven by how the state funds education. That doesn’t take SPS off the hook, but we need to be sure the state changes their policies if we are to get anywhere. SPS has a lot of kids with special education needs, but costs are not fully covered.

The city has a massive families and education level and a payroll tax that youth just got increased $20 million in a few days of advocacy last year. We need to be able to tap into other resources.

I also can’t help but think that the state is partly the one pushing for bigger schools, but Seattle is a dense urban environment with strong community schools. We have a lot of young kids, and if sps let people have more options, we would have increased enrollment. We have so many different types of learners, it is absurd to go back to a neighborhood model (but not really, since they are tearing apart some neighborhoods in the process). Increase access and options for great schools, like dual language, k-8 and highly capable services. High demand for programs and that’s what you cut?

Sps alum and parent of 3 sps students with varied educational needs
9/13/24, 11:10 PM
Anonymous said…
False dichotomy.

Here are the places I would ask SPS to look first before even suggesting closing a school to close a budget gap.

1. Decrease spending at the central office to bring it more in line with other districts.

2. Be transparent about every current contract with every consultant to SPS. Then determine if any of them are more important than a kid's educational experience.

3. Disclose how much is spent annually on online curriculum costs. Think about whether an elementary school online science curriculum (for example) is really worth the annual expense.

4. Disclose the costs of all standardized tests that are not state or federally mandated.

I could go on....

NW Mom
9/15/24, 1:53 PM
Anonymous said…
The central office “cleaning house” needs to happen asap. In the superintendent cabinet - the rest of us mere mortals have a lot of extra work on our plates. They gave us extra work but not extra salary. Come to JSCEE any day and it’s ghost town.
If Jones is incapable of making his staff produce a decent plan to get us out of the deficit, then he needs to fire the incompetent people making around a quarter million dollars a year. I am talking Marni Campbell (WRS), Mike Starosky (chief of schools), Pat Sander (student services), Sarah Pritchett (HR), all the executive directors of schools that do nothing, Caleb Perkins and Cashel toner (academics not happening) and that young guy form out of town they hired as second chief of staff to do engagement after Bev Redmond failed so miserably.
And if Dr Jones can’t fire those people then he needs to be fired. And if the board does not fire him then the board needs to be removed.

Let’s do it
9/15/24, 8:50 PM
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