With the five in-person “well-resourced schools” meetings complete (see Beth Day’s live tweets here), it’s time to reflect on what we learned about Seattle Public Schools’ plans. And what we see is both disturbing and inspiring.
SPS doesn’t want to involve the public in the actual school closures decisions
It is no secret that SPS is considering closing public schools for the 2024-25 school year. It’s been in the news since February. It’s come up at multiple board meetings. But bizarrely, district officials refused to acknowledge this at this month’s community meetings. Bev Redmond, Rocky Torres, and Brent Jones danced around this fact when addressing the audiences.
They took pains to say no closures would happen in 2023-24, leaving attendees dangling about what would happen in 2024-25. These admins said that the Superintendent would offer a plan in November, but never said what the plan would be for, even though we all know it’s intended to be a school closure plan.
Only at the final meeting, on Thursday, August 17, at Robert Eagle Staff Middle School, did anyone in the SPS administration come close to acknowledging that they are going to propose close schools. Superintendent Jones said that “school consolidation” (SPS’ preferred euphemism for school closures) could offer more services and help reduce a $100 million budget deficit.
The failure to be candid with the public cast a pall over what were otherwise positive conversations at the breakout tables. Attendees know that school closures are on the table, making SPS’ refusal to actually acknowledge that all the more notable. The effect was to reinforce existing public concerns that district officials are not trustworthy and to lend an air of smoke and mirrors to the proceedings.
It also made clear to the public that SPS does not intend to meaningfully include us in the actual decisions about school closures. We learned that the district plans to send out a survey in September — and that’s the extent of the outreach. We are concerned that their model will be the recent changes to school bell times, which were simply announced to the public as a done deal without any prior consultation with families, and then rubber stamped by the board without close scrutiny.
SPS officials repeatedly mentioned that “Dr. Jones will share his plan in November.” That phrasing matters. The closure plan won’t be the public’s plan. It won’t be the elected School Board Directors’ plan. It will be the Superintendent’s plan, crafted by the central office rather than by the community or even by a task force — as if this is the Superintendent’s district, rather than ours.
We the people of Seattle are not going to be meaningfully consulted or involved in this plan. To add insult to injury, it’s going to be discussed in a lame duck session after the school board election, instead of in October as originally planned. SPS still has not told the public when an actual vote would take place.
The public meetings ultimately played out as we had surmised earlier this month — they were mere exercises for SPS to get families to say what they want in their schools and then use the community’s words to justify closures. The district will point to the items on the post-it notes and say that if we truly want these, we have to agree to close schools.
School boundaries will change too — and nobody is talking about this
If you close public schools, the kids who attend those schools will need to be moved to other nearby schools. And that will require school boundaries to change. Yet nobody at SPS is talking publicly about this. In fact, district admins never once mentioned it at the public meetings. We did notice, however, that the 2023-24 Board Plan includes a “Well-Resourced School Attendance Area Recommendations” vote on November 15, which will be the last meeting of the current school board. Will this be the meeting where they vote to close schools? If only the district would tell us.
It seems that the district plans to simply spring this on unsuspecting families as well, and do so after the election to ensure that any current board members cannot be held accountable at the ballot box for SPS’ actions.
There is broad alignment among the public about what we do want from schools
Despite the contemptuous attitude SPS has for their families, Seattle still strongly supports its public schools and is in broad alignment about what we want from them. Here are some of the common items shared in the small groups, based on what we saw on the post-it notes shared on the easels.
School Buildings & Learning Spaces
- Schools that are easy for kids to walk and bike to, where families don’t have to drive
- Schools as centers of their neighborhood, a crucial community asset
- Access to open/green spaces with lots of opportunities for play
- Lots of natural light, large windows
- Healthy buildings — AC, HEPA filtering, lots of air circulation
- Space for community programs, including before- and after-school care
Notably, we couldn’t find any examples of families wanting mega-schools, such as the 500- and 650-student elementary schools that the BEX levy is paying for. Smaller neighborhood schools facilitate more of a community feeling, especially at the K-5 level.
Support Services & Resources
- Universal proactive screening for student learning styles and mental health needs
- Counselors and social workers at every school
- Full-time nurse at every school
- Small class sizes
- Universal free school meals for all kids at all grades
- Art and music classes at every school
- Student-organized and teacher-supported clubs
- No-cut recreational sports, including at the elementary schools
- Social-emotional learning and resources
- Libraries stocked with books and full-time librarians at every school
- Staff to support special education, including instructional assistants
Academic & Extracurricular Programs
- Art and music classes at every school
- Social and emotional learning in the classrooms
- Black history and ethnic studies
- Foreign languages
- Option schools
- Allow schools to specialize rather than have a rigid single curriculum at every school
There was also a lot of support for differentiated learning, recognizing that children are not widgets and should not be given a one-size-fits-all curriculum. Despite what we often hear from SPS admins, families have nuanced and reasonable views on things like advanced learning. There was a lot of support for different kinds of advanced learning opportunities, whether it’s a cohort, a self-contained school, or pullout programs for kids for just part of the day at their neighborhood school. There was also strong support for ensuring these programs are inclusive and spread equitably throughout the district.
Similarly, there was a lot of support for bringing back “walk to math” and other curricular choices that meet kids where they are, rather than imposing a standardized solution that treats all kids the same by grade level.
We will have a fuller analysis of public feedback in the coming days.
Seattle is fed up with Democrats’ Hunger Games approach to public education
Our state legislators should have been at these meetings as well. Everything that families asked for, from universal mental health screening to full-time nurses to smaller class sizes, air-conditioned schools, and so much more, aren’t provided because those legislators refuse to do it. Instead of writing checks to close districts’ budget gaps and avert cuts and closures, the Democratic majority in Olympia would rather watch from the sidelines as we play Hunger Games against each other to see whose schools stay open and whose close, whose kids thrive and whose kids get walloped by yet another massive disruption, this time caused not by a force of nature but by a choice of uncaring politicians.
Seattle residents want every child who lives here to get a great education within the public system. We’re willing to pay for it and willing to put in the work to overcome the obstacles that get in the way of building and maintaining such a system. There was a lot of hope in those rooms, despite the frustration at SPS’s refusal to be honest with families about school closure plans.