Starting on Tuesday, August 8, Seattle Public Schools will be holding a series of community meetings that are intended to, in their words, “envision what a well-resourced school looks like.”
Nowhere on the website for these meetings does SPS mention this discussion is happening as part of their plan to close an unknown number of schools across the district for the 2024-25 school year. An email sent to families on August 7 merely states that “Your feedback will help guide future district planning.” The district’s website includes the same sentence but adds “This fall, we will review your feedback and develop an inclusive and equitable plan.”
What isn’t made explicit is that in October, Superintendent Brent Jones is slated to propose schools the district will close. Here’s the key slide district admins showed the school board back in May:
Note that the “engagement” that was promised to begin by June is only beginning in the middle of August.
The stated intention behind these meetings is for the public to tell the district what a “well-resourced” school looks like. It appears that SPS will then come back in the fall and use that feedback to claim that, due to budget shortfalls, the only way to provide “well-resourced schools” is to close schools (SPS chooses to use the term “consolidate” instead).
These community meetings are therefore designed to manufacture consent for school closures. District leaders will defend their closure plans by claiming, “To be able to deliver a well-resourced school, we need to close schools. We’re merely following your guidance.”
The public ought to attend these meetings, but refuse to play along with the district’s rigged, misleading conversation. Instead, we need to flip the script on the district and demand the public make the decisions about how to manage SPS’s budget, including whether to close schools at all.
At no point has SPS asked parents, students, or community members whether school closures should be considered. Given the central role that schools play in our neighborhoods and our communities, and knowing that school closures are proven to have a negative impact on students, school closures should be a last resort for managing the district’s budget needs.
SPS faces a shortfall of at least $53 million for the 2024-25 school year, perhaps as high as $100 million. The primary reason for this is the lack of ample state funding as guaranteed by the state constitution. Districts all across the state are facing budget shortfalls; it’s not just in Seattle. The state legislature underfunds most aspects of public education, including teacher salaries, special education services, school buses, and more.
Seattle voters are asked to make up for this difference with our local levies. But the state also imposed a cap on how much money those levies can raise, a cap that is below the actual cost of providing a good public education to every child in our city.
Rather than decide amongst themselves how to respond, SPS administrators and school board directors must come to the public and ask us how to address the budget shortfall. The public should also press the legislature in the 2024 session for more funds, and finally push Seattle’s delegation to step up and fix our district’s financial woes — woes that, after all, the legislature inflicted on school districts statewide.
SPS has not been clear about how much money would be saved by closing schools. The initial estimate from SPS last spring was that closing schools could save $28 million.
When KUOW interviewed Assistant Superintendent of Operations Fred Podesta in February 2023 about school closures and the $28 million savings, he said, “this number is very speculative.” He then went on to list such potential “efficiencies” as fewer lunchrooms, custodians, and reducing the number of school sites that need to receive various deliveries.
Six months later, we still have not seen any further details from SPS about what savings would actually materialize. The $28 million estimate also did not include the possible cost of lost enrollment if families decide to leave the district rather than simply accept school closures.
Declining enrollment has also been cited as a reason to close schools. But we’ve been here before. In 2007 SPS closed five schools, claiming the need to save money amidst declining enrollment. But critics had claimed SPS’s projections were flawed, and they were right. By 2009, as enrollment began to rise again, SPS reopened most of those schools.
SPS’s enrollment declined during the pandemic. But it has shown signs of stabilizing over the last year. With local employers requiring workers to return to the office, it is possible that enrollment will soon rise. Here again, SPS needs to ask the public whether closing schools is the right way to handle fluctuating enrollment, rather than decide that for us.
It’s also worth noting that some SPS leaders believe closing schools is a good idea, regardless of budget needs or enrollment concerns. “We believe that consolidating into larger schools that have the resources they need is a good strategy, whether you have money problems or not,” Podesta told KIRO TV earlier this year. Whether the public believes this is a good strategy is unknown.
By closing schools, SPS will send the wrong message to families. Closures could trigger further flight away from SPS, accelerating the movement toward a two-tier educational system in Seattle, where the privileged pay to supplement their children’s public education with tutors or even private school while the less privileged are forced to accept a lower-quality education or a long commute to and from school each day.
Rather than close schools, it would be wiser for the public to press the legislature to properly fund our schools.
When attending these public meetings this month, Seattleites should not play along with the SPS script. Instead, the public should insist the district agree to the following:
- School closures must be an absolute last resort for managing the district’s budget and enrollment needs.
- SPS must convene a series of participatory budget public meetings between now and spring 2024 in order for the community to determine its priorities for dealing with any budget shortfalls.
- SPS cannot proceed with any plans to close schools without a clear and explicit mandate from the public to do so.
- If SPS receives that mandate, public meetings must be convened at every school in the district to discuss families’ needs and the potential impact of a closure before any list of schools is drawn up. These meetings must explicitly mention the possibility of school closures when they are advertised to the public.
- SPS must provide a detailed financial analysis of the impact of closures on budget and enrollment.
- SPS must publish a timeline by which school closures would be considered, including dates of public meetings and board votes.
- Any school closures or consolidations that may take effect in the 2024-25 school year must be announced before ballots are mailed on October 18.
- The board must not vote to close any schools between Election Day in November 2023 and the date in which a new school board is sworn in.
- The school board directors must vote to approve any plan to close, consolidate, or change the location of student instruction and school programs. SPS administration cannot simply decide and implement changes without board approval.