The Seattle School Board has approved a plan that could shutter 20 of its elementary school campuses across the city to help cover an expected $105 million budget gap.
Wednesday’s vote approved a plan from superintendent Brent Jones to consolidate the system’s elementary school campuses from 70 to 50 based on the district’s “Well-resourced Schools” framework it says has been shaped by public feedback and establishes a base level of resources that should be available on every campus including the number of teachers per grade level and additional resources like “education intensive service classrooms.”
To achieve that level, Jones says the district must reduce the number of elementary schools it supports to more than 400 students per campus. It currently supports about 23,000 students across 70 sites — just under 330 per campus.
“K-5 students would be better accommodated in approximately 50 sites evenly distributed with 10 per region,” a presentation on the proposal reads.
The framework would also call for maintaining the district’s current level of staffing that has also added to the deficit under the three-year deal reached with the teachers union in 2022. In the three-year pact, the district agreed to 7% raises for educators across the board, plus a 4% salary increase in year two, and a 3% raise in year three to cover the cost of inflation.
While concern about campus cuts has been swirling for years, the next part of the process from approving the plan to determining the recommended cuts will come quickly.
CHS reported here on the worry and confusion around the district as SPS undertook the “Well-resourced Schools” effort to gather feedback from “students, families, staff, and community partners” in a painful budget process it said could result in campus closures.
A looming budget deficit had SPS promising no closures until 2024 but predicting serious belt-tightening as it expects a decade of lower enrollment. Changes in state funding and a forecast for a continued near-term drop in enrollment had the district scrambling to cover a $131 million budget deficit for the current school year with continued financial shortfalls on the way.
The district’s breakdown of how it can best support the “Well-Resourced Schools” framework:
The uncertainty has been stressful for public school students and their families. “Save Stevens Elementary” flyers were posted last year to utility poles on the streets surrounding the Northern Capitol Hill school’s 19th at Galer campus. “Seattle Public Schools plans to close schools beginning in Fall 2024,” the posters read. “Stevens Elementary is on the chopping block. We need your help to save our school!”
SPS last went through rounds of campus closures a decade ago that included cuts for Capitol Hill and Central District communities. CHS reported here in 2013 as plans began moving forward to reopen Capitol Hill’s Meany Middle School campus after it had been shuttered during a round of economic belt tightening. In previous cutbacks, the district closed schools but kept campuses busy by shifting programs or leasing the properties to private and charter schools. By 2016, the district was reopening its shuttered or repurposed Capitol Hill and Central District area campuses. During the shuffling a decade ago, private schools like Hamlin Robinson leased facilities like E Union’s TT Minor campus until the district said it needed the properties back.
Today, the Seattle Public Schools system has grown to more than 100 schools serving more than 50,000 students. But enrollment in private schools has climbed with 20% of the city’s kids enrolled at private and Catholic campuses as of mid-2020 — a number that has grown during the pandemic and further tipped the demographic mix in the public system. Around 60% of Seattle is white. 60% of its public school kids are not.
The district’s latest preparations for economic crisis and dropping enrollment come as it also prepares for future growth. Long-term needs and more solid funding for non-operations investments like campus upgrades and new buildings means projects like a massively expanded Montlake Elementary are underway.
Wednesday night’s vote now sets up a process in which the district will host “a series of community information sessions” starting this month and into June when a “preliminary recommendation” on the specific closure plan will be delivered by the superintendent.
More than a decade ago as Seattle last suffered through the idea of cutting back its school system, critics showed how little is actually saved in the process. In 2009, the euphemism was “Closing Schools for Excellence.”
In 2024, other ways to cover the budget gap including emergency funding and staffing cuts will likely again be part of the debate as will the larger questions about how the state is funding its education system.
If shutdowns remain part of the plan, public meetings on each closure would follow. A final vote on the closures would come in fall. The campuses would go quiet or go into motion hosting private schools starting with the 2025/2026 school year.
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In the last election, our district, along with the rest of Seattle, voted overwhelmingly for the school candidates who took positions counter to the idea of “universal school.”(*)
Music teachers, librarians, counselors, food workers, maintenance personnel, etc., can all be funded by the City of Seattle. Other than a handful of administrative positions and the teachers themselves, these positions and more can be funded by the city.
Today? Counselor positions were created using funds from the city. Librarians, music teachers, and teacher’s assistants are paid for by each school’s PTA.
Director/school board president Liz Rankin touched on this in a budget meeting last October. It comes down to the fact that the school board doesn’t see, or want, money that they can’t raise directly. She complains about how these funds are “grants.” FWIW At the same meeting, another board member brought up how private schools provide scholarships based on financial need, which could support children who require advanced learning opportunities. The one school board member that talked about trying to attract children back to public schools is no longer on the board.
You will find no mention of the preschool classes that Seattle has funded, which go to help accommodate more children in school buildings and serve as a means to provide more funds to the schools. Seattle voters overwhelmingly vote for these programs but then we elect school board members who are unwilling to implement these types of programs.
You want to see equity through education? Providing publicly funded, free for everyone, preschool, is certainly path towards creating this sort of outcome.
If you go back through the election material, you will find that the candidates who spoke about how to fund universal education were the ones we did not elect. None of these candidates were the ones The Stranger liked,… although all of the candidates were considered progressive.
The outcome that the majority of voters in Seattle seem to want is not a vision that envisions universal education, so no one should be surprised that schools will be closed.
*) I would use a label other than “those who are opposed to universal education” if I had ever found one that doesn’t have a negative connotation, the idea is that educational dollars should be spent more inlined with the “if you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you” ideology ( just trade out the word “attorney” for “school/teacher” ). I get it, but I don’t agree with it.
Wait, what? Why should the City fund school personnel? With what money?
“Counselor positions were created using funds from the city. Librarians, music teachers, and teacher’s assistants are paid for by each school’s PTA.”
No, not true. There have always been counselor positions but the City generously gave money for more of them because of COVID-related mental health issues. A few librarians/music teachers and TAs are paid for partly by PTAs. And, the district and the Board want to end that.
City Pre-Ks do NOT add additional funding to buildings. It pays for the teachers but the City pays zero rent to the district (but I think they should pay).
It is not a question of “why” but a question of “why not”?
The city could pay for Librarians, music teachers, etc…, there is nothing that stops the city from funding these sorts of positions in the schools.
The positions paid for by PTA(s) are not ending, the money is instead going to the central office where they plan on redistributing those funds for position directly ( FWIW, I don’t agree with this ). Having the city fund these positions though could end the same problem that SPS identified.
Having large cities involved in the financing of schools in a more direct manner is not uncommon and Seattle is obviously large enough that it needs to adopt a policy where the city takes a more direct role in funding the schools.
We are in agreement that the City of Seattle should be paying SPS upkeep on buildings where Pre-K is happening. If Seattle did pay and frankly made the program a bit more well known, it is hard to imagine that there would need to be the same number of schools closed.
Note on libraries: Seattle could have the Seattle Public Library pick up the mission of the SPS Libraries. SPL could staff the libraries, create a program for library and reading specialist interns… they have the know how that SPS lacks.
The district and unions brought this on themselves but agreeing to the last contract.
Well, the Board and the Superintendent certainly knew that they did not have the funding for the contract they agreed to; I don’t know if the union truly knew that or not. I can see why the Legislature would drag its feet to give SPS more dollars with this kind of spending.
The union had to have an idea of the budget. The idea that the district caved in to the teachers demands AND that teachers likely knew full well about the budget woes is wild. “B-b-but it’s for the chiiiiiiiidrrrren”
I agree the union is not blameless.
Did I just read that elementary schools only have a school nurse 2 days a week? What if you get injured the other 3 days?
There’s usually a person on-site who is trained in first aid and giving daily medications when there’s no nurse. School nurses do a LOT more than that. They are a part of the IEP process. They train staff members on providing various supports to students, such as handling students with seizures or feeding tubes. They support families in ensuring their child’s medical needs are met by helping them follow the procedures necessary to have medication or other medical supports provided at the school. Parents of children with diabetes will often prefer to send their child to a school with a full-time nurse as they feel their child’s condition can be supported better by a fully trained professional.
Office staff do it and it can be a lot.
This has been an issue for a long time. My mom was school nurse at Ballard in the 2000s. The district only funded her for 4 days a week; the PTA covered the 5th day. Most personnel funding comes from the state from a really outdated formula. The state severely funds public education and has so for decades. Some of our legislators think schools should just be about academics, and do not think nurses or other support professionals are necessary.
There may be some benefits to having fewer, larger elementary schools like a nurse five days a week. But there are lot of costs related to closing schools that may not outweigh the benefits. And, SPS has shown ZERO work to support this plan. They are trying to get away with it without being accountable to taxpayers, students, families, and school communities.
With new cuts, our kid’s school is down to a nurse 1 day a week, and we are losing an office person and assistant principal, so if a kid is sick it would likely fall to the one office person and the principal. SO tough and unreasonable. Note, we are in the Southend.
An ideal time to build the hugely expanded Montlake elementary- now all they have to do is figure out what to fill it with.
Well, just as with Alki Elementary and John Rogers Elementary, Montlake is being built bigger so they can close a nearby school. I’m old enough to remember when staff said no way could Montlake be built bigger because of the size of their land. So now they are building to add kids but taken away playground space. (And Alki will have zero school parking and 1 ADA spot…across the street.)
If I had to venture a guess for Montlake, I would say it’s McGilvra or Stevens.
Or/and Lowell. That building needs renovation, whereas Stevens is in decent shape and has capacity. McGilvra is pretty far away because you have to get around Broadmoor. I bet SPS will leave McGilvra, close Lowell and reassign its students to Montlake and Stevens. Or maybe both Lowell and Stevens get closed. No matter what, this sucks and I wish more parents would choose SPS.
Would be a cool if SPS was the kind of place parents wanted to choose. I mean they abandoned the schools for a reason.
I am sure excellence is right around the corner.
Stopping new housing and having a city of 80 year olds live in all the houses hasn’t really worked out.
There was record housing construction in 2023, 21% above the 2022 number. The City doesn’t control interest rates, but it has dropped/loosened SEPA and design review requirements and upzoned.
This all goes back to the pandemic, when in Fall 2020 private schools began to reopen for in-person education, and public charters (like Summit Sierra at 12th and King) opened full time in-person shortly thereafter. SPS finally re-opened for a feeble 2 half days per week in May 2021 (after Jay Inslee embarrassed SPS into re-opening). Garfield faced huge disenrollment of whites and asians during this time. SPS progressives who love to talk about equity are fakes, their actions sunk the very at-risk students they purport to support. Progressive psycho-babble at its most destructive.
Somehow the usual suspects are finding it in themselves to blame Bruce Harrell and the city council for this despite this clearly being a school board failure. Tiresome how everything becomes about scoring political points. Anyone of the people pretending to care about this want to try and help actually solve the problem?