Seattle school closures: Budget shortfall means tough choices

Seattle Public Schools are $104 million in the hole and nobody is coming to save us. Not the Legislature (been there, tried that), not local billionaires, not Boeing or The Gates Foundation. Since, as my middle schooler would say, “the maths are not mathing,” closing 20 elementary schools is a tough but necessary decision. The alternative is death by a thousand staff cuts — nurses, librarians, counselors and arts teachers’ time shredded to ribbons as they shuttle between two (or more) schools. Many of us are already seeing this reality reflected in our schools’ 2024-25 budgets.

Failure to consolidate will mean schools rely even more on inequitable PTA fundraising to fill gaps from staffing to basic supplies. School fundraising in Seattle is already out of control and keeping half-empty buildings open will only add to our dependence on these funds.  

None of us wants to be in this position. I certainly don’t want my child’s elementary school to close, a feeling that seems universal among SPS parents — through a recent School Board meeting, on social media and in The Seattle Times, I’m hearing parents express feelings of worry, loss and anger. Plans are being hatched to prevent or delay closures. And, unfortunately, there are parents already threatening to pull their kids from the district, or warning that, even if they won’t, others will.

We’ve seen this threat to disenroll before, during Seattle’s era of racial integration efforts. Between 1965 and 1985, private school enrollment soared and the number of white students enrolled in SPS dropped from 80,000 to 25,000. Not all parents who disenrolled their children during this time did so because of racism; parents then and now disenroll their children for varied reasons. But, regardless of intent, an exodus of white and privileged families results in a poorer, more segregated district.

Ironically, in my role as a chapter leader for Integrated Schools, I’ve counseled many children of white flight who regret their parents’ choices and are now choosing to send their own kids to racially integrated public schools.

If history and other municipalities are any kind of guide, once the schools targeted for closure are announced, we’ll be in for a series of increasingly ugly public meetings. And I wonder: Can we just not?

Can we avoid trotting our kids up to the mic and asking the School Board to look into their precious faces and explain to them why their school has to close? Can we avoid describing school closures as “traumatic”? Can we avoid tokenizing families of color and bandying about the word “equity” until it’s lost all meaning?

All this grief about closure is a testament to the quality of Seattle Public Schools and the sense of belonging they create. I know that if my child’s school were to close, I would feel a sense of loss, even knowing that many of his classmates and teachers would likely be moving together to a new building. As a community, we will need to come together and grieve these spaces and the communities they held. I hope that we can support and make space for each other to mourn even as we come together to co-create communities just as welcoming as the ones we left behind.

My own experience as an Army brat who attended four different elementary schools showed me that switching schools can be both nerve-wracking and exciting, and much of that depends on how parents frame the change. In fact, Department of Defense-run schools provide a great example of how to help students transition from one school to another without learning loss. DoD schools even avoided widespread learning loss during the pandemic.

Of course, it’s not just military families who change schools. We already expect most SPS students to switch between elementary and middle school and all to change between middle and high school. No one considers these moves “traumatic.” 

Parents, let’s commit to framing any school changes as positive when speaking to or around our kids. While we debate these changes, instead of focusing exclusively on “my child, my child, my child,” let’s recenter this conversation on our children collectively, ensuring that all can thrive. Let’s make sure that the new bus routes work for families and that a disproportionate burden doesn’t fall on Black and brown folks, as happened during desegregation. Let’s make sure that, moving forward, our budget and staffing is stable enough to minimize these kinds of disruptions. And I hope that Superintendent Brent Jones and the School Board will take this opportunity to create a consolidation plan that, wherever possible, increases our racial and economic integration rather than maintaining current levels of segregation.

Budget shortfalls necessitate tough choices. Tough choices call upon us to live up to our values. If we value public education as the best way to create a true, multiracial democracy, then it’s time to commit to keeping an open mind and giving consolidated schools a fair shot.