Seattle school closures: Cuts in all the wrong places

Seattle Public Schools is headed for a “defund the police” moment. The district is proposing a closure/consolidation policy so contrary to its long-term interests, so ideologically driven and brimming with unintended negative consequences, that our city will look back at it with disbelief.

I’m talking about the current proposals, one to close 21 schools and another that would close 17 schools. The district has a large budget deficit resulting from labor contracts it could not afford, declining enrollment and depleting of onetime pandemic resources to backfill ongoing expenses. Eighty percent of the district budget is for people, salaries, wages and benefits, and that is where the cuts should fall. There are too many layers of administration at the central office. Operating schools is the other 20% and the savings are small. The other side of the equation is enrollment. Every student enrolled brings an average of $26,292 in funding from various sources.

After all other efforts are exhausted, closing schools should be the last policy measure. There is little evidence that other budget cuts have been tried. There is no evidence that growing enrollment has been attempted, and shutting down the highly capable program has clearly hurt enrollment. The city of Seattle is not contemplating closing parks, community centers and libraries to close its deficit.

I say all this as the retired school board president who served last time SPS closed schools in 2009. We had much more excess capacity, with empty seats in half-empty buildings, than we do presently. Our enrollment was 46,000 instead of the present 50,000. Our goals were primarily academic; we closed schools with low enrollment and low academic performance and moved those children to nearby schools with better academic outcomes and opportunities. Yes, we hoped to save money but the savings were ultimately less than our staff projected — a few million dollars at best. We hoped to improve our students’ academic, social and curricular opportunities. We combined five school closures with changes in the assignment plan, expansion of international education and improved outreach to parents to grow enrollment dramatically over the following years.

The biggest flaw in this mostly closed and disjointed policy process has been the complete lack of anticipation of its effect on enrollment. The district projects saving $30 million by closing and consolidating 20 schools. That figure is highly suspect because moving thousands of students and staff costs lots of money.

The real pain will come when some portion of the 5,000-6,000 students who are asked to move to a different school choose to leave Seattle Public Schools. If 10% of affected families choose private, parochial, alternative or scholarship schools, or move from Seattle, the budget savings are cut in half. If 20% choose to leave, the deficit grows even larger because funding follows students. Not all families can afford to move out of public schools, but with a median family income of $116,000, many families can and many do.

The district could be fighting for a better market share of families going to private school. They could ask why people leave, and work to recruit every family possible. Many families like smaller elementary schools and bilingual immersion schools. They may not want to move to a larger school or a standard curriculum. Twenty years ago, the Gates Foundation was spending hundreds of millions of dollars trying to get smaller schools with personalized education up and running in order to improve academic outcomes. This points directly to the second great flaw in this policy: Academic performance will not be part of the criteria for choosing schools to close. A smaller elementary school of 250-300 students, fully enrolled and performing in the top 5% academically statewide, can be closed. The staff is dispersed, the students are dispersed, a high-performing community of learners and teachers is destroyed in the name of what — efficiency, equality, budget savings. Really?

Superintendent Brent Jones and the current School Board have laid out a vision of “well-resourced schools” as the prime motivation to justify this closure process. It’s a top-down process of reconfiguring all elementary schools to be very similar. While this sounds good in theory, it runs counter to the earlier visions for Seattle schools. Originating with Superintendent John Stanford back in the 1990s, the school autonomy and choice model has proved to be both effective and popular. It resulted in more money spent at schools and less on central administration, a proliferation of curricula, themes and after-school programs across the city. It allowed for schools of various sizes offering everything from Montessori education to bilingual immersion.

The catch was that you had to attract and retain families and keep your school full or you could be closed or reconfigured. Autonomy with accountability still works well. It’s written into labor contracts and board policies. It doesn’t result in every child getting the same education, and that may be the crux of the situation. In the cause of racial and social justice, this board and superintendent have been moving toward homogenous schools and away from choices. The closure policy will be a huge and irreversible step in that direction.

Teachers and principals used to confide in me that they just keep their heads down and wait for the latest policy storm from “downtown” to blow over. Parents would tell me how much they liked their children’s school but how difficult and bureaucratic the district was. This time is different; this will blow up. Our budget solution during the Great Recession was cutting central administration by 30% and raising class sizes. That can still work. Starting the closure process will mean hundreds of parents and teachers will look for the exits and, just like our police force, it will be very difficult to win them back.

Parents will and should fight hard to keep their schools open. Their taxes pay for the school, and their volunteer hours improve the school. Teachers, administrators and support staff are each a real community, looking out for each other, helping each other improve, while working together for years. They will fight hard to keep their workplace open. SPS, change course before you damage the school system for years to come.