Seattle school closures: Plan won’t fix budget; board should reject it

On May 8, the Seattle School Board voted unanimously, with no debate or deliberation, to approve a plan that calls for closing 20 elementary schools in the 2025-26 school year. This flawed plan, built on faulty assumptions, was rushed through without consulting families. Parents should demand the Seattle school board abandon this plan and work collaboratively with the public to find alternatives that address Seattle Public Schools’ budget deficit.

SPS’ “plan for a system of well-resourced schools” is built on three misleading or outright false claims: that it will reduce our budget deficit; that it will help kids and close equity gaps; and that it is the result of a consultative process with Seattle parents. None of these claims are true.

First, this plan will not save money and won’t help us close our budget deficit. At no point has SPS presented serious financial analysis showing “how” closing schools will lower operating expenses. In fact, Superintendent Brent Jones himself suggested that the savings would be minimal and take two to five years to materialize. In reality, most of SPS’ operating costs are people, like teachers. Simply moving those people from one building to another does not reduce costs. In fact, closing schools creates new transition and maintenance costs. The only way this plan can materially reduce SPS operating costs is if it is a covert way to lay off teachers and reopen collective bargaining agreements. If that is SPS’ real intent, they should come out and say so. 

In 2013 Chicago closed 50 small public schools in the hopes of reducing budget deficits and shrinking costs. It was a failure. Enrollment continued to fall, and shuttering schools created new costs without lowering others. As a result, Chicago’s schools deficit grew by almost 25%.

Second, closing schools will hurt kids, not help them. This plan will disrupt the education of thousands of kids, many of whom lived through the chaos of the pandemic and remote learning. Even though consolidations aren’t slated to take place until the 2025-26 school year, families will live in limbo for months, uncertain of their child’s school placement. SPS claims that bigger schools will be “well-resourced” and staffed with more art teachers and nurses. But of course this is in direct conflict with lowering costs. In reality, the ratio of students to support staff and teachers will be the same at the end of this plan, but we’ll have lost unique neighborhood schools and lived through years of disruption.

Here, Chicago’s experience is also instructive. Analysis by the University of Chicago, the Chicago Times and WBEZ found that kids from closed schools had worse educational outcomes. As one student wryly noted, “We all have the same amount of students [and teachers] teaching the same stuff.”

Finally, SPS will claim that this plan is the result of community engagement. It was not. Last summer the district held a series of community meetings on “well-resourced schools.” At each meeting, Superintendent Brent Jones opened by downplaying the risk of school closures, and then staff led a series of highly structured discussions about what resources parents would like to see at their school. At no point did the district level with parents about the reality of its plans or ask communities to weigh in on the idea of closures.

Not only is this plan based on misleading and false claims, it will deeply damage our city. This isn’t really a plan to close 20 schools, it’s a plan to upend 20 neighborhoods, and some of these schools are 100 years old. Kids who walked to school will now face long bus rides or need a ride from a parent. Families will leave SPS for better options elsewhere. Instead of abandoning neighborhood schools because they are “underutilized,” we should embrace them as a source of diversity and strength.

Seattle is a great city, and we deserve great public schools. But great schools will require a new vision for public education that is truly inclusive, where every family in Seattle sees public school as an exciting option for their child, and our schools are supported by a broad coalition of deeply invested parents. When that is true, we will have the political will to demand systemic funding change in Olympia.

The superintendent’s plan is not just a distraction from that bigger vision, it is a deeply divisive step backward. Instead of a broader coalition, we will have a narrower one. Instead of engaged parents fighting for a great education for all, we will have neighborhoods fighting each other to spare their school from the chopping block. Instead of well-resourced schools we will have impoverished ones.

The Seattle School Board should reject this plan. We deserve better.