Seattle Schools Superintendent Pulls Back Big-Time on Closures
Update:
There are many takeaways from this messaging.
1. This smaller closure model has been done elsewhere like in Chicago. I think a go-slo approach is a good idea especially for a district that struggles with messaging and public engagement.
2. However, NO ONE should think this is the end. I think the district is very determined to close more schools. But now they have gotten the message that wholesale "out with K-8s and Option Schools" is not going to work. I think there are those both on the Board and in senior leadership that just wanted to wipe them out. It's a sad thing to see because I believe every school should be examined on its merits, not just on its program form.
3. I have to wonder about the district's desire to have this all in place by the end of 2024. As I stated in my post on the legalities of closing schools, I don't see how they can do it legally or fairly. I note that the Times seems to believe "within 90 days" is the working time but it's odd that neither the state nor board policy used that word "within. "
In his letter to parents, Superintendent Jones said;
You know what DOESN'T honor communities? What DOESN'T build trust?
Announcing very late in the game what schools are to be closed, stuffing those 5 required legal hearings, plus one required for the Superintendent ,right before the winter holidays.
Let's look at the timeline that I see.
The Superintendent says:
Let's go with Monday, October 28th.
He also says:
We will be hosting community gatherings for both general information purposes as well as to share specific plans and transition supports for impacted schools.
I do not believe that the hearings would be the same as meetings for specific schools and their transition plans. Or maybe? But I suspect all that will happen before Thanksgiving. They may even announce the dates for the hearings because board policy says the hearings have to be advertised for two weeks before they happen so that would put the hearings to the week of December 9th.
The final Intro announcement would be at the Board's regular meeting on November 19th, with the final vote on December 18th. School lets out on December 20th.
Seems just a bit cruel.
4. I compared the original criteria with this listed criteria but I see that academics is still not part of it.
Here's what's different:
Original
Well-Resourced Capacity (building): Examines the school building to determine if the facility can hold 400+ students including intentional space for intensive IEP services and preschool classrooms.
Well-Resourced Capacity (system): Examines if as a whole, SPS is using our building capacity effectively.
Regional Distribution: Examines if our district has the right number of schools for the number of students in the area with space for growth.
New
They have put capacity and enrollment together.
They took out "regional distribution." But now they have:
- Minimizing disruption for students and staff: Facility’s ability to keep as many students and families together as possible
- Maintaining student access to specialized service models: Facility’s ability to house the resources students need to thrive
end of update
I'm covering the Board meeting about the Superintendent's contract so I haven't analyzed all of the message to parents.
But, it's down to 5 elementary schools to close for 2025-2026. They have taken K-8 and Option Schools entirely off the list.
Comments
So.....if I am understanding this correctly and it's true that the tiny under-enrolled K-5 option school where I teach is no longer being considered for consolidation, then can we please have our wait list back? Or at least an apology for how this process has impacted our enrollment and staffing?
We are down to one kindergarten classroom and lost a teacher because our 20+-student wait list simply disappeared in late August. (Even a younger sibling was initially not allowed in, although the family was able to successfully appeal.) Meanwhile, the ongoing buzz about whether or not our school will be closed/consolidated hasn't been great for enrollment either.
If closing/consolidating our school wasn't a done deal, SPS should have at least let the wait list move. I'm glad they're finally backing off of option schools, but in our case a lot of the damage is already done.
-- Option School Teacher
Burned, whether it's 5 schools or 20 schools, cuts will indeed have to occur and it's gonna hurt.
NB Mom - I noticed that as well but given they said they are not closing any K-8s/option schools, I think the 5 have to be elementaries.
Concerned1
This narrative about "deeper cuts" is utter nonsense, as closures do not save meaningful money and typically cost money in the first year. The process of closing a school is just not free.
Michael DeBell served on the board for 12 years, during all three closures in the 00's, the implementation of the current student assignment plan and the BEX IV levy that reopened new schools. He wrote a piece in the Seattle Times confirming that the "projected savings" never happened.
I served on the BEX IV committee. The BEX IV levy was double the BEX III levy. SPS wanted to include in their messaging "how much money was saved" by the closures for the schools needing to reopen.
After all the associated costs of the closures were tabulated, there just wasn't any savings. IIRC, it was $10M over 8 years. It really boiled down to saving the cost of principal and replacing that principal with an assistant principal at the larger schools.
The bottom line was pretty simple. Students still needed teachers and building still needed to be maintained.
In the real world, it is simply hard to close schools. IIRC correctly, there was a target of 10 schools during each of the closure rounds and it was incredibly hard to do this. It took well over a year each time as the "reality" hit. Only one school was closed in the first round and five each in the second and third rounds.
Closing 5 schools is no easy task. Frankly, staff found the work load of closing 5 schools to be overwhelming to their systems during the 00's. They really needed to have had community meetings LAST SPRING to pull this off.
The glass palace is only looking at the theory of closing schools. The way you test that theory is to give it some daylight and have community meetings where the "boots on the ground" fill in details that are just missed by administrators who really don't know what is happening in those buildings.
Nobody who actually works in a school would have overlooked all the sped implications in the first proposal.
Screwed Up
Putting aside building condition and other factors and only looking at enrollment, can we all agree that there's is a ridiculous amount of fiscal irresponsibility in letting things continue as is? Some data from the September P223 Enrollment Report (https://www.seattleschools.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/P223_Sep24.pdf) on elementary and K-8 enrollment:
- 8 schools have fewer than 200 students enrolled with Sandpoint reporting only 145
-25 schools have between 200 - 300 students enrolled
-19 schools have between 300 - 350 students enrolled
Folks this is nuts. For perspective, if we look at Lake Washington (the next largest district in the region), they have one elementary with under 300 students.
The longer we kick this can down the road, the more we can assure that a high quality education for all students in SPS will be harder to attain.
I'm not sure I'm hearing emotion in all this except for parents are affected schools. The emotion I hear the most is anger because this has been handled so poorly.
Those are good stats you bring out. I will remind you that some, not all, of those schools had waitlists and the district, year after year, refused to move them even as space existed. So parents didn't vote with their feet; the district made a decision.
There is absolutely a need to rationalize capacity. That process is significantly different from "mass closures."
Currently there is a significant imbalance between boundaries and building capacity. I was on the BEX V levy oversight committee. Multiple members pointed out that the plans for BEX V would potentially trigger closures, without a plan to deploy all the new capacity that BEX V was going to bring on line.
The stated reason for all the extra elementary capacity was that the "system" needed more space for pre-schools and before and after care and other community partners that had been evicted during the over-full years. Staff repeated explained that nobody would ever suggest closures again as they were simply destructive.
But alas, there was the regular leadership turn over and none of the architects of BEX V are still around and then there was that little pandemic.
According to the "plan" in 2019 or 2020, there needed to be a district wide plan to deploy all that new capacity. But now we are six years into BEX V and staff is getting ready to deploy BEX VI ... but yet ... there was NEVER any process to incorporate all the added capacity.
I am not opposed to a handful of well thought out consolidations to smooth out all the imbalances. We have beautiful empty new buildings with ZERO PLAN to fill those buildings.
We have the current problem because of a leadership failure. The rhetoric of mass closures will only harm students and not address the underlying leadership vacuum or the capacity imbalance.
When people were asked to pay billions of dollars out of their household budgets, there better be a better reason to do so than just doing as a habit.
Faced with the realities of decreased enrollments and the dire need to close multiple schools in order to save an average of $4 million per school, does Seattle Public Schools absolutely have to do $ billions worth of building projects?
Com'on