Print
Email
It’s all over. Even the shouting.
Despite the chants and sometimes catcalls from an angry and sad audience mostly of parents, Thursday night the school board as expected voted to close five schools and play musical chairs with 13 other programs, altogether affecting more than 6,000 students of Seattle Public Schools’ 45,000 students.
The fire of the moment was constantly stoked by angry chants from a group in the lobby outside the school board’s meeting room in the central office building at Third South and Lander, but there’s nothing even a large group of parents can do to reverse the board’s 5-2 vote in favor of Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson’s plan.
Last night’s chants of “Hey, hey, ho, ho; school board members have got to go” won’t mean much to voters this fall when board members Mary Bass, Cheryl Chow, and board President Michael DeBell, if they run, are up for re-election. the reason: the electorate, mostly without kids in the affected schools, or even kids in schools at all, will cast ballots for candidates who say they saved money.
The rationale for the whole closure plan is to help close a feared $25 million budget gap, however small the savings from closing schools really is, and despite the cost in ill-will among families actually served by the district. In the end, however sweet revenge at the polls might be, it’s pretty unlikely to reopen any schools.
The only real chance for reversal may be in the courts. James Bible, president of the Seattle-Martin Luther King County branch of the NAACP, says the civil rights organization has to stand up for the African American community, which has been hit hard by the board’s action. One of the points closure opponents have made over the last couple months is that Goodloe-Johnson’s plan falls disproportionately on African American children and other minorities and low-income families. But it’s not just today’s under-enrollment in Central Area and South End schools that’s the problem, says Bible. “This is the result of purposeful neglect which the South End has seen over a large number of years, ” and therein lies his case. Bible, a Seattle attorney, said if the NAACP filed a lawsuit, they would seek an injunction to prevent the closures from taking effect.
The closure vote and the votes on six amendments leading up to it all split the same, with board members Bass and Harium Martin-Morris on one side and DeBell, Chow, Sherry Carr, Peter Maier, and Steve Sundquist on the other. Bass offered an amendment which would have reduced the number of closed schools from five to two and took the strongest stand against the superintendent’s plan. Martin-Morris proposed an amendment that would have protected Cooper Elementary, one of the schools on the closure list. Both those amendments failed 5-2, and Bass and Martin-Morris both voted against the overall plan, which passed 5-2.
Thursday’s vote leaves two big questions on the table. How much will the district be hurt by school closures; and how much has the process leading up to the vote hurt or helped Goodloe-Johnson’s ability to lead the schools forward?
Opponents of the superintendent’s closure plan repeatedly pointed out that school closures risk driving families away from the district, as happened when seven schools were closed two years ago. The district makes a good case that the opponents’ claims that as many as 20 percent of students from closed would leave the district puts the figure too high. But administrators can’t prove the effect is zero, much as they’d like to; and their examples range from 2 percent to 8 percent. That's real money, since from all funding sources the district receives about $12,000 per child per year and all this revenue is ultimately based on enrollment. It wouldn’t take much of an enrollment drop (fewer than 125 kids) to eat away the $1.4 million per year non-staff savings that’s supposed to result from closing the five schools.
And what does all this controversy mean for Goodloe-Johnson? Critics say the closure plan, which shifted a couple times and appeared to look for targets of opportunity — for instance, putting Montlake Elementary, the Center School, and Rainier Beach High School on the hit list for a week or so — was not well thought out. There’s also criticism that the superintendent has hidden behind buzz words and jargon, pushing her plan through with no real empathy for the affected families. Some who attended meetings with her during the process said it was easy to tell she hadn’t really come to listen. For many, the experience may all add up to distrust of the superintendent, and that would be a slide downhill from the hopes with which she was welcomed two years ago.
Out in the lobby, occasionally booming in when someone opened the doors, there was no doubt where some families and kids stood. The chant they raised was, “She says closures, we say no. Goodloe-Johnson’s got to go.”
Like what you just read? Support high quality local journalism by becoming a member of Crosscut.com today!
Twitter
Facebook
RSS Feeds
Comments:
Posted Fri, Jan 30, 7:49 a.m. Inappropriate
The Final Recommendation passed, and the Superintendent might consider this a victory. But it is puzzling that she and the Board risked so much political capital to push it through. It was an ill-conceived plan, rushed,seemed to have a predetermined outcome, and should have come after the new student assignment plan was implemented. Community members, school activists, and the media should continue to be skeptical and demand to see the so-called savings and real costs associated with the closings and shuffling of so many students.Goodwill has been squandered. SEA contract negotiations and a new Student Assignment Plan loom large for Goodloe-Johnson.
Posted Fri, Jan 30, 1:22 p.m. Inappropriate
The Seattle Schools took a big hit last night. All one has to do is look at the vitriol coming from those posting to the Seattle Times website. To them, the Seattle School District represents everything that is wrong with our society-web posts show a preoccupation with racial and class division and with administrators out of touch with the basics of learning.
Every time the school district attempts these major impact measures (6000 students negatively affected this time as pointed out by Mr. Lilly), people confirm to themselves that the Seattle Schools are dysfunctional. We will have to watch closely what this does to school enrollment- a previous writer made a good case that the enrollment decline after the last round of closures was underestimated since parents saw the writing on the wall the year earlier and pulled their kids out of school early- the decline of affected students might have actually been greater than 20%!
What isn't reflected are the numbers of people who are dissuaded from moving to Seattle, or from their current private school because of the Seattle schools disruption and stigma. At a time when lowered home prices and a deep recession should point to strong growth in Seattle public school enrollment, we can only hope to stay flush with the students we have because of the cloud over our public schools. I'm not imagining this- in the 11 years I have been involved with the Seattle Schools, I have been told over and over that the school administration doesn't care about middle class parents opting out. There have been no published data on enrollment and school district choice at kindergarten, middle school and high school levels, where these decisions are made by parents. I have never heard Goodloe-Johnson arguing for growing the district and enrollment has remained flat or down while the City's population and enrollment in private schools have increased.
If school district enrollment declines after this latest move, more state dollars will be lost and more closures and cutbacks are on the horizon. Let's not kid ourselves, this is not strong medicine that the school board and superintendent are dispensing. This is a slow poisoning of the patient, where we wake up one day to a crippled school district with 1/4 of the enrollment at its peak and wonder what happened. This is not just the history of the Seattle Public Schools over the last 30 years but urban school districts across the country where disruptive rebalancing experiments push away the very families the school district needs. Fiscal crises becomes a regular event, the electorate loses confidence in bond measures and eventually the school district is taken over by the state when they can't dig themselves out. It doesn't take a student of history to see that this is a common occurrence in urban school districts across the nation. I predict that Seattle Schools won't be taken over just yet, but will just stay in a constant state of malaise.
I believe that declining enrollment and transition costs will eat up any savings from this last round of closures and unnecessary program moves. We'll be back at the table closing high schools and middle class parents will be patting themselves on the back for buying a house in Issaquah instead of Seattle. Meanwhile, the kids that this "rebalancing" was supposed to help-the poor and minority children, will be left in worse shape.
Unfortunately, I'm not up to "anger" yet as a result of the superintendent and board's lack of vision, it's just plain "depressing" for the system and sad for the kids. Unfortunately, the Board bought off on a short term measure, which doesn't even look that great on paper, that just makes the patient sicker in the long run.
Posted Fri, Jan 30, 1:46 p.m. Inappropriate
I'm a parent of two kids who have been in Seattle Schools for 9 and 7 years, respectively, and I'm married to a Seattle teacher, so you can't challenge my street creds. And with that, I'll say that the only parts of the opposition to this plan that I've understood is the objections of individuals who will miss their own particular school. Of course they'd be sad and wouldn't want change to somethign they've worked hard to build and will be sad to lose. No one would expect anything else. But we need to remember, as the fellow who posted on Crosscut earlier this week told us, he survived a school closure 30 years ago, and so will these folks.
The personal objections make sense. But it strikes me that the remaining objections are all based on a desire for an alternate reality than the one we find ourselves in. Yes, it would be great to be allowed to charge higher property taxes to get more money to the schools. Yes, it would be great if the lawsuit currently seeking an increase in funds for "basic education" succeeds, the legislature actually allocates more money to Seattle, and the Board decides to put that extra money into keeping facilities open and not into, say, smaller class size for younger kids, all day kindergaren for all, more arts and PE education, or decent school lunches. Yes, it would be great if the Obama stimulus plan puts billions into urban districts and we get our fair share starting in the next 6 months. And it would be great if there were more kids attending schools in the south end of Seattle.
When and if those things happen, adjustments can be made. Maybe we'll have a south end baby boomlet, like they're having on QA and Magnolia now, and we'll need to re-open schools to fit all the new kids. Maybe our politicians will stop underfunding education and we can open more doors. Maybe the recession will end and the dip in state funds will go away. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.
We're dealing with the here and now. Every school in this District faces significant cutbacks next year. There just isn't enough money to go around. I say, if we can save an instructional aide somewhere, an art teacher somewhere else, and a full time librarian in a third school because we've lowered the number of rooms we have to heat, I'm all for it.
What we need now isn't a lawsuit trying to stop these closures. What we need, instead, is to come together as a community and figure out how to give these displaced kids the best possible education we can, as close to home as makes sense, and with programs varied enough to accomodate the different learning styles of the kids and the varied educational styles and preferneces of the famillies. We need to give the displaced educators options that work for them. And let's not forget "the little things" that we need to be doing at the same time, like moving forward to close the achievement gap that still bedevils us.
Posted Sat, Jan 31, 11:21 a.m. Inappropriate
I pretty much agree with what has been said above, but for me there is a background point that is ignored. The Board/Administration is acting on a premise that is patently false: the belief that large elementary schools are some kind of improvement over smaller ones. The goal now seems to put students into K-8 schools of upward and over 800 students. No one seriously concerned with the climate of learning for small children would buy into that. Elementary schools should have 250-350 students maximum. We have lost schools that are perfect for children (M. L. King, Viewlands, etc.) and shoved the children into megaschools that are too big and filled beyond comfort as well (Broadview-Thomson, etc.). The district falsely claims that some schools are too small, then overpopulates other schools.
I know the argument about financial savings, how much they regret not putting half the students into the Kingdome when they could. But small schools need minimal administrative presence (perhaps only a principal and secretarial help). Moreover, the argument about building maintenance can't be made when the district fails to maintain buildings as a regular policy. Doesn't it bother you that the district allows Old Hay to deteriorate, then says the building is too deteriorated to use?
My own thought is that we take a hard turn. We reopen several of the closed small schools sitting vacant. We turn the mega-schools into several more moderate sized junior highs/middle schools. We minimize administration positions. We close one high school (probably Beach but maybe Ingraham). We commit Lincoln High to serious education purposes. Do you remember the millions spent a short time ago to get Lincoln up to useable standards? We commit to roaming special content teachers rather than site based one. Art, music, p.e., etc., can work with several elementary schools each.
And we be as neighborhood oriented as possible in the elementary area. And we hire good teachers and leave them alone to teach.
Posted Wed, Feb 4, 6:13 a.m. Inappropriate
Dick - You style of writing is disingenuous. You are trying to convince us that what you are saying is what we are thinking - and it isn't.
Your second to last paragraph beginning with, "And what does all this controversy mean for Goodloe-Johnson?" is journalistic mess of facts and opinions.