Seattle school closures: Why almost every student would be affected

Four community meetings later, the same central question remained about Seattle Public Schools’ pitch to close about 20 elementary schools by the next school year: Which ones?

But these meetings, at times contentious and emotional, did shed more light on how SPS would decide which schools to shut down, the categories of workers who stood to lose their jobs, and how much of a dent the closures will make in the district’s big budget problem. 

The Seattle Times observed all four sessions, the last one held Tuesday, and talked to district officials afterward. Here’s what we learned:  

Almost every student would be affected

While only 20 yet-to-be-named elementary schools are targeted for closure, the impact will be felt in nearly every K-5 building. That’s because SPS intends to redraw attendance boundaries broadly. Only “a handful” of schools might emerge unscathed by the changes, according to Fred Podesta, the district’s chief operations officer.

That means a student who now attends a school that will not close could still end up changing schools in the 2025-26 academic year.

New recommended boundaries are expected to be released in the coming weeks when the district identifies what schools it would like to close.

Closing schools won’t solve the budget problem 

Superintendent Brent Jones has pitched the school closure plan as part of a multipronged approach to close a $129 million deficit in the 2025-26 school year, improve support for students and bring fiscal stability to the district. 

The closures will save the district only about $1.5 million per building, leaving the district to find the rest through additional cuts, the Legislature and the goodwill of deep-pocketed philanthropists. 

SPS officials are hoping the Legislature will come through with $30 million to $50 million to help close the gap. 

The district does not plan to sell the unused buildings. It will work with the city and local communities to decide how to use them. While SPS could generate some revenues from leasing the schools, the district is not counting on getting a windfall from that. Schools buildings, for example, could be used by the YMCA, Boys & Girls Clubs, or child-care operators.

Some of the buildings could be sold in the future, but they’ll comprise a small number of the unused facilities, Podesta said last week.

The new schools could have about 400 to 450 students 

Why is the district pushing for so many closures if it’s not going to save large sums of money? SPS says it’s inefficient and inequitable to run 105 schools for its estimated 48,000 students. Some are simply too small.

Twenty-nine of the elementary schools have fewer than 300 students. Another two dozen have between 300 and 400 students enrolled.

The new schools, Jones said, will have between about 400 and 450 students — bigger, but not overcrowded. It’s harder to fund and maintain a full slate of academic and social-emotional support programs at schools with smaller enrollments, according to the district. SPS uses the term “well-resourced schools” to describe the smaller elementary system, where the schools would have multiple teachers per grade, art, music and PE teachers, and often full-time support staff. Every school would also offer pre-K.

“They won’t be large, giant buildings that are unruly,” Jones told attendees at Tuesday’s Zoom session. “These are going to be schools that actually are about 400 to 450 students. This will allow us to have the staffing and the resource allocation in a way that makes sense for services and programs.”

Some people will lose their jobs  

Some principals, maintenance workers and office and food service workers may lose their jobs. It’s unclear how many will be displaced permanently, transfer to new buildings, or replace retiring workers elsewhere in the district. And the situation for teachers is even more murky since some would presumably move with their students to new schools. 

This has the attention of the Seattle Education Association, who represents many district employees.

“What I do know is that it’s really important that the district [works] not just with the SEA, but with all of the labor partners,” said Jennifer Matter, the association president. 

“We’re all going to be impacted if they do move forward with the decision to close schools. We will need to go to the bargaining table to determine what that process of school closures looks like, as well as how to mitigate the disruption, make that transition as smooth as possible, and ensure that we’re all heading in the same direction of ‘well-resourced schools.’ ”

Remaining schools will have more special education services 

Some 43% of students in special education programs, especially those who need intensive support, attend schools outside of their neighborhoods. The system of “well-resourced schools” that the district is pitching will have three inclusive classrooms for students who need intensive support and programs.

The district said those students will share classrooms with general education students as much as possible. Whether that’s an improvement for students over the current model will be in the details and implementation. 

Special education advocates have questions. Students will be closer to their families, but will they remain in segregated classrooms or integrated into general education classes? Who will staff those classrooms and what training will they get to work with students? 

“They are trying to solve a problem with busing, which admittedly is a problem,” said Janis White, a former president of the Seattle Special Education PTSA. “It sounds good.”

But White is worried this would result in more segregated classrooms, which she described as “an ableist system that educates children with intensive needs separately. We need to move away from that system, not reinforce it.”

SPS can pivot when pressured

The first community meeting at Roosevelt High School on May 28 was a communications disaster for the district, to say the least. Many parents showed up hoping to ask Jones direct questions about the closure plan and about the alternatives the district considered. 

But after the superintendent walked through his presentation, Bev Redmond, the district’s chief of staff and spokesperson, directed attendees to scan a QR Code and enter their questions and comments into an online platform called ThoughtExchange.

That did not go over well. Some attendees shouted their questions at Jones and Redmond.

The district issued a mea culpa and changed the format two days later at Garfield High School. The new format gave attendees the opportunity to ask district employees questions in small-group settings. They also submitted written questions, some of which district experts answered in a panel discussion. In the final Zoom session on Tuesday, parents entered questions in the chat, which SPS officials answered live.

“We value, we value, we value our community’s input,” Redmond said. “We’re glad that we took the time and reworked our meetings to make sure that we could hear from as many families and answer as many of the questions in real time as we possibly could.”

Next steps

Some of the questions stuck with district leaders, particularly on how option schools — non-neighborhood schools that families apply to attend — fit into the analysis. Other questions they are still pondering focused on the equity framework that will be used to determine which schools to close and where to draw new attendance boundaries, and how long students will have to travel to get to school. 

“We’ve said that we really want to emphasize the importance of stable neighborhood schools. What implications does that have for option schools? We probably could fill that in a little bit better,” Podesta said.

Jones was expected to present his recommendations for closures and an analysis of the impacts to the School Board next week, but the meeting was postponed, in part, because of a fatal shooting outside of Garfield High School on Thursday. 

Amarr Murphy, a 17-year-old running back on the school’s varsity football team, was shot and killed after attempting to break up a fight outside of the school. Garfield canceled classes Friday and Monday.

The board also wanted to give the district staff enough time to absorb the comments and feedback from the community sessions and incorporate them in the recommendations, Board President Liza Rankin said. 

“I need to see more how feedback from the community is part of the recommendations, and those feedback sessions just ended,” she said. “We have a tragedy in Garfield that is taking people in a lot of different directions, and we need time to process it.”

“An update” on the proposed school closures will be on the agenda at a rescheduled meeting on June 26.