Seattle Public Schools is holding a series of community meetings to present its plans to shutter 20 elementary campuses across the city to address budget woes and, the district says, establish “a new foundation of stability and consistency that our students and staff need to thrive.”

The meetings will take place throughout May and June. The meeting for communities around the Central District and Capitol Hill has been scheduled, surprisingly, on Memorial Day weekend. UPDATE: The district has rescheduled the meeting to Thursday, May 30th:

“Our goal is that all schools would include the elements that many of our families, staff, and students said were important during the Well-Resourced Schools Engagement Sessions last fall and earlier this spring,” SPS chief of staff Bev Redmond writes.

CHS reported here on the Seattle School Board’s vote approving 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.

The framework would also call for maintaining the district’s current level of staffing that has added to the deficit under the three-year deal reached with the teachers union in 2022

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.

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.

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