Families and city leaders attended a “Save TOPS” meeting at the Eastlake school earlier this month. Thanks to a CHS reader for the picture.
The district is backing off its proposals to close schools across Seattle but it is not clear what its next steps will be to address a $131 million budget deficit for the current school year with continued financial shortfalls on the way.
Seattle Public Schools has canceled a series of community meetings to discuss the proposals and the planned closure of up to 21 elementary school campuses just as the meetings were to begin. The district’s first session was to take place Tuesday night.
“I am taking more time to reflect on plans to bring a consolidation recommendation this October. As a result, I am canceling the upcoming community meetings. A new schedule of engagement sessions will be released soon,” SPS Superintendent Brent Jones wrote in the message to families. “I understand the closure of schools is a very serious topic. After receiving thoughtful feedback from many of you, it is clear we need more time to carefully consider our next steps.”
The zigzag comes after strong pushback from families and skepticism from the Seattle School Board that they could support the district proposals.
CHS reported here on the district’s Option A and Option B proposals. Each option would shutter five elementary campuses in the Central Seattle area including Stevens and McGilvra. SPS says the closures would save between $25.5 million and $31.5 million a year.
Cuts in state funding and a forecast for a continued near-term drop in enrollment has the district scrambling to cover a $131 million budget deficit for the current school year with continued financial shortfalls expected over coming years.
While the plan would slice away schools in neighborhoods across the city, it is particularly harsh on the system’s “option schools” which allow students from across the district to choose campuses based on specialized programs. A dozen option schools would either be shut down or repurposed as neighborhood campuses.
Family groups have responded with calls for a pushback on the district’s proposals saying other cutbacks should be considered and making the case that campus closures produce less cost savings than projected. In an op-ed on CHS, the McGilvra Advocacy Committee writes that the district’s effort to close campuses “divides communities, zoning neighborhoods into different schools and dividing classmates, families, and friends, including the deaf and hard-of-hearing community at TOPS.”
A community meeting earlier this month to organize to help save TOPS from any cuts was reportedly attended by Seattle City Councilmembers Joy Hollingsworth and Tanya Woo.
The district, meanwhile, says it is working on new plans for making needed cuts.
“I want to assure you we are taking your concerns seriously. What we proposed last week were initial approaches, which we are now reworking,” superintendent Jones wrote. “While our financial challenges are real and it’s our fiscal responsibility to resolve them, it is very clear we need more time to listen and earn your trust as we resolve our structural deficit and revisit our timeline.”
The district is posting updates on the process on its “Well-Resourced Schools” page.
UPDATE: The parent group All Together For Seattle Schools has released a statement on the change in plans calling on the district to back off any decision that “closes schools, significantly changes school assignment boundaries, eliminates option programs, or makes cuts in the classroom.”
All Together for Seattle Schools is encouraged to learn that SPS is rescheduling their planned community meetings and reworking their budget deficit proposals before taking next steps. These actions demonstrate that community advocacy for students and schools across the district is making a difference.
We also remain opposed to any proposal that closes schools, significantly changes school assignment boundaries, eliminates option programs, or makes cuts in the classroom. The options SPS has presented will dismantle school communities that have spent years building welcoming environments, and the proposal lacks details of how services for our most vulnerable students would actually be delivered. District information on its budget and spending continues to lack transparency.
Our vision is for SPS to move in a different direction. Along with thousands of others, we propose to reorient SPS toward a welcoming, inclusive vision that meets the needs of every child with differentiated education and brings our city together – and make the state fund it, both here in Seattle and across the state. We believe SPS must build broad public support for a great public school system that provides a high-quality, responsive, and equitable education for every student. This means SPS should be centering students, their educators, and their school communities by building a system of schools that ensures academic rigor, includes diverse types and sizes of high-quality schools, and utilizes leading equity practices.
Several root causes contribute to the financial and academic crisis that SPS now faces, including district and school board mismanagement, flawed community engagement, and lack of coordination with local planning efforts such as housing and transportation.
Most importantly, the state legislature needs to meet its constitutional requirement by amply funding our public schools, most significantly in special education and for students experiencing homelessness. Our volunteer teams of energized, experienced, and passionate parents, educators and community members are mobilizing to urge state legislators to act. We are hopeful that our state legislators are listening to families and school districts across Washington. All Together for Seattle Schools is actively mobilizing to take action in partnership with parents from across the state.
The district’s communication yesterday is validation of our work. We intend to continue organizing families and community members across Seattle against mass school closures, major school assignment boundary changes, elimination of option and alternative programs, and budget cuts in the classroom. We will need all of us to pivot away from this scarcity mindset approach of cuts and closures and toward one of abundance where we can envision and realize a great school district for all of our students. We urge the state legislature to embrace this vision and to fully fund it. We stand united – we’re all in this together!
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Some of the schools do have to get shut down eventually. Working class families are not a dime a dozen like they used to be here in Seattle and public schools have become a tad controversial… not to mention the potential battle that the Department of Education might have to face in 2025. It’s all a nightmare.
If we collected a simple state income tax like so many other states, we would never even have to consider shutting down public schools, not that we even have to now–it’s just a preference by rich tax cheats who don’t want to pay for the education of the working class who act like budget deficits are unforeseen catastrophic weather events. Your delusional claim that public schools have become “controversial” is one of the most out of touch things I think I’ve ever heard. Are you saying the majority of US students are somehow in a controversial form of education? Are you adjacent to a member of Hitler quote aficionados “Moms for Liberty”, the racist, classist, and religious fundamentalist organization unsuccessfully spouting similar drivel at school board meetings all across our country? You should try to find out what’s really going on in this city, if you even live here.
There is absolutely nothing controversial about public schools, the controversy is that private education even exists, period. Your taxes should pay for every Seattle child to have a k-12 education, regardless of economic status, color, or creed, and should additionally provide, at a minimum, matching funds to a supplementary federal government subsidy earmarked for state colleges to make them functionally tuition free. The UC system was the prized educational system of the West Coast until Ronald Reagan gutted their funding as governor (which in part subsidized the practically-free tuition) as a response to the uptick in college-educated anti-war protestors. And here you are defending the collusion of private interests with conservative politicians to make an objectively stupider public…real nice buddy.
This is what you’re defending:
https://newuniversity.org/2023/02/13/ronald-reagans-legacy-the-rise-of-student-loan-debt-in-america/
For the 2024-25 school year, Seattle Public Schools’ per-pupil expenditures are projected to be $26,292.
Source: https://www.seattleschools.org/departments/finance/budget/budget-development/
Stop talking about funding sources. The money is spent poorly.
Bertschi on Cap Hill is close to 30,000 a year, K-5 at Bush is about 37,000, High School closing in on 50,000 K
I will continue to talk about funding sources because they are sorely lacking. All while this nonsense is going on and we’re not even taxing them appropriately:
https://www.theurbanist.org/2024/09/24/policy-lab-ban-algorithmic-rental-price-setting/
You think it’s not justified to demand an increased tax base while our citizens are being fleeced and having their public schools closed around them? Heartless
Yeah…All my Boomer cousins had full ride state college. Room, board, books, the whole shebang. Average was like 112%-116% grants. They are all silicon valley gazillionaires now.
State income taxes are what is driving Californians up here to the North West. The western Washington model is seeing break down. No families, high rents and virtually unaffordable price tags for working class home buyers… no one economist has the answer. It’s all theory in real time.
Get with the majority of the country Tim, you can’t avoid taxes, or death. You know the idiom. Paying them is patriotic because it is pooled for the public good. And aside from that, what are you even talking about? Breaking down?? The Seattle area is booming while the entire rust belt is dying, and you think we’re suffering here or something? Yes, it’s expensive because of landlords and a lack of rent control or public housing initiatives. But your simplistic interpretation of the issues around the Puget Sound make you sound like you’re not very well traveled. A.) home prices are high everywhere because we have housing shortages nationwide in the places that are projected to have the most growth (cities), not because of some mystery economic puzzle, and B.) the Californians moving up here to avoid taxes are rich people…what point does that prove? You think poor Californians even have the money to move?? These rich assholes are just dodging taxes up here that they were previously paying into CA…a state with its own issues, but one with much more respectable tax rates (excluding property tax) and a GDP bigger than most nations.
The fact we need state taxes is a foregone conclusion, but tax-avoidance fetishists in Washington wouldn’t know any better because they have been coddled by the insane logic underlying this state’s constitution’s decrees regarding property, which are seemingly based on nothing more than generous legal interpretations of the whims of racist land speculators from the mid 1800s and the US government’s desires to expand into the Pacific. “It’s all theory in real time” what are you smoking?
“No families”? Why are you even commenting when you write nonsense like that. We need a state income tax NOW!
Woah, calm down friend. I think you’re coming in hotter than you need to here. I don’t read this as Tim saying THEY find them controversial, just that there are factions that are against the model and would prefer something different (charters, vouchers, whatever). And they’re not wrong about the decrease in families w/children as the city becomes increasingly unaffordable.
wow okay…
“working class families”?…who’s that? “not a dime a dozen like they used to be”???
Explain what’s “working class” and where they went. Honest question.
Increasingly families with children are moving out of Seattle due to increased cost of living and limited affordable housing options. The average single family home price in Seattle is something like $850K. There are a lot of variables to what’s “affordable”, but with a $100K down payment you’re still looking at needing an annual family income of $200K to comfortably afford payments on a 30 year mortgage (along with all the other expenses that come with having children). So yeah, a large percentage of the working class (personally defined by those not making $200K a year) are leaving town and moving to areas outside of Seattle where they can get more for less.
well a lot of them moved out of Seattle to, then, more affordable cities. Now rents in cities like Renton Auburn Tacoma, Puyallup are going up and fast, especially since the light rail is going to one day, in the not too distant future, connect Pierce, King and Snohomish county. So what’s working class? If you are struggling with rent and food insecurities, but don’t qualify for benefits, you are working class.
Ahhh okay…got ya…
My view is “working class” is everyone with a job. But I like your version. Folks who’ve fallen through the cracks.
“public schools have become a tad controversial”? I’m sorry, can you explain this?
I’ll let trump explain that one for America… long story short vote! It’s not my opinion. It’s the nature of this messy election cycle… so calm down fill out your ballot and hope for the best. But if he is elected, you will see what I mean by “controversial”.
The school districts “proposals” seemed to go way beyond what anyone would tolerate. Likely it was meant to help them start from a strong position when negotiations and tradeoffs will be made, but they went so far beyond reason that it backfired on them. Yes, schools will close but they should be more honest about it.
Saying schools must close is cowardly and unnecessarily conceding to the idea that public school attendance is not growing long term, which is NUTS even just considering the projected growth estimates for this city, let alone the current attendance rates having suffered just 4 years ago due to COVID. You think now all of a sudden public schools are just gonna start dying off? Really??? How about we just tax the wealthy more.
And, even if this budget shortage is a factor of lower student enrollment at certain campuses, which are therefore subject to being allocated less money to run — accepting that premise quickly becomes a slippery slope towards entertaining the concept of certain VERY CENTRALIZED but wealthy neighborhoods being able to pick and choose who they want even being educated there, which would be straight up red-lining our public school district based on wealth (and thus race, because we can’t escape that intersectionality) and leaning into austerity focused budget balancing GRIFTS that all modern data points to as never working out.
See below how Sam Brownback of Kansas literally destroyed his state’s education system by implementing the greediest, most dumb ass Reagan-esque tax cuts imaginable, as suggested by disgraced Reagan-era economist, Arthur Laffer. One of the most embarrassing displays of political incompetence from conservatives and private school advocates alike. Two sides of the same stupid worthless coin — shame on anyone capitulating to these freaks or normalizing their weird wealth-based education preferences that serve only to stroke their own egos and to calm their self-imposed and delusional fears born from the race and class wars they pay to have stoked by the corporate media.
https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-kansas-hard-times-snap-20161121-story.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_experiment
When you’re done yelling about stuff that happened thousands of miles here, remember that per-pupil spending in 2024-25 in SPS is $26,292. This is far higher than parochial school tuition and many private school tuitions. So the issue is not the money.
The issue is that the money is spent or managed poorly.
It’s hard to wisely manage money when you need more facilities than one total, period.
Doesn’t matter either way, the tax base needs to be increased. I do not care how much we spend per student because it does not matter–how do you not get this fundamental concept of public education? We let private entity Boeing get away with massive tax breaks while initiating stock buybacks, committing labor violations against Washingtonians, and building bombs to blow up Palestinian and Lebanese civilians, yet THIS is what you’re picking out as mismanagement of funds? It’s an artificial problem and everyone acts like it’s a mystery, yet it’s solved by one of the most basic functions of our government. Wow! Increase the tax base for the millionth time and no one will ever have to ask the question, “do we have the money to educate our kids in public schools?” It’s how other blue states with wealthy cities do it, whether you like it or not.
California has one of the highest income taxes in the nation yet still operates with a deficit of $30B. It doesnt seem like income solves deficits does it.
https://www.lao.ca.gov/reports/2023/4819/2024-25-Fiscal-Outlook-120723.pdf
No one *actually* cares about deficit spending in America, our currency runs the world, currently. Our military is the whole reason we have this massive deficit, but no one thinks to cut from their budget. GET REAL
Sounds good, we sell all our real assets and production facilities, real estate etc to foreign investment so we can print more paper and service that debt. The US dollar as the world’s trade currency is not an assured thing forever. Read about BRICS.
Also, you started this discussion saying we need to raise taxes. Why do we need to raise taxes at all if deficit spending is all the rage? Just take on more debt. Eventually our entire tax base can just be debt service!
You need to get a grip, but I suspect you’re someone who contributes very little to society other than the spew we see here.
Do you ever post about what’s actually happening in Seattle, or is every topic just a launchpad for you to describe how you’d like to reorient American society? You post as if you’re 5 miles off the ground talking leftist economic theory.
Here are the facts. Enrollment isn’t down due to “COVID”, it’s down because those kids are now in private schools. More kids could move to private schools in the future. You’re wrong that this is going to solve itself.
Dude…Look in the mirror.
There’s no sudden exodus to private schools.
> There’s no sudden exodus to private schools.
Seattle Times: Seattle private school enrollment spikes”
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/data/seattle-private-school-enrollment-spikes-ranks-no-2-among-big-cities/
“Sudden” being the key word there. It’s not a “sudden” thing.
“Seattle has had a relatively high private-school enrollment for many years.”
“Seattle, like San Francisco, is an affluent city, and many families have the means to afford private schools. It may also have roots in Seattle’s desegregation busing program of the 1970s and 1980s,”
This is straight from the article you used as reference. Clearly, ANY city with our advantages would end up with rich people going to private schools. Thus sucking all the money and talent from the public system.
Now here we are…It’s been 40+ years in the making.
“Seattle private school enrollment spikes” is the headline and that makes it sound sudden-ish, but you know it’s not totally my point butch. The point is that SPS enrollment dropped around the same amount that private school enrollment increased, so any narrative about families moving away because of covid was disproven. Understand that this is relatively recent data challenging some existing narratives.
It won’t solve itself if we continue to ignore the more humane and frankly inevitable housing solutions that Seattle desperately needs, which are causing the unaffordability crisis in housing and pushing out working class people to suburbs or exurbs. But I’m optimistic that social housing will continue being pushed through.
I’m sorry you don’t like what I’m saying, but acting like I’m just talking about unrelated stuff is silly…economics is connected to everything, and capitalist dogma implemented as policy is to blame for most of these issues, if not all. Also, I’m saying COVID causing attendance rates to drop could have been used as a canard by private school advocates to show a drop in attendance, claiming it is signifying a drop in public school interest (similar to how the republican party overburdened the post office financially through the USPS fairness act, which required USPS to always have all the money on hand which is necessary to pay off the medical benefits of all workers up to 75 years in advance) just to turn around and point to it as an example of fiscal irresponsibility when those insane requirements obviously were meant to bankrupt the public institution from within)
People like you (seemingly only in this comments section) are saying such dumb unsubstantiated stuff like “more kids will move to private school in the future” when clearly there aren’t more rich people than poor out there…only so many rich people can be cloistered in a city before they realize they need a working class to run all their businesses and favorite coffee shops…where will those workers and their kids go to school…Bertschi??? The math doesn’t add up John J…acting like citizens are just going to all convert to private schools is lunacy, and not an excuse to push for public school closures!
There are multiple problems in life. SPS is poorly run and the city has a housing shortage.
What happens is you have no specific insight into what’s happening at SPS so you post these disconnected rants ignoring our current per-pupil spending and implying SPS’ current offering is beyond reproach. You reach for analogies from what you understand — national politics, leftist economic theory — to explain our local woes, but this just prevents you from offering actual analysis.
Sure that not everyone can afford to go to private schools, but private school enrollment has “spiked” and there is probably ways to go. Did I even say enrollment would go up forever in some sort of impossible fashion?
Private schools can continue to drain enrollment from SPS, making the budget worse. SPS needs to work to increase enrollment by improving their offering. Phasing out the highly capable cohort problem is a mistake. Removing option and alternative schools as SPS proposed will make enrollment even worse. This isn’t about “private school advocates” acting like republican members of congress (?), but rather families making the best choices for their children.
You think the solution is for new income taxes to increase the spending per pupil. This is fighting uphill because unless SPS improves their offering, the cheaper to teach students who raise group outcomes will continue going to private schools in numbers. A progressive income tax further faces political and legal hurdles and it isn’t an actual solution for what’s happening in the next year.
Public schools won’t disappear, what a bad faith characterization of the concerns I’ve expressed.
Curious, do you have any kids or plans to have them?
So choke the life out of public schools until they improve?
wow…okay…That’s a lot of words to say that.
Why are you mischaracterizing what I wrote? I’m describing how the state funding is allocated based on enrollment and how SPS can increase enrollment by focusing on excellence.
Some people here are saying schools need to close because of declining enrollment. They’re nodding to a reality of declining enrollment. I disagree, saying that most schools on the list don’t need to close, but rather SPS needs to change course to intentionally increase enrollment. There may be a handful of elementary schools that aren’t worth keeping open, but mostly that SPS was planning to shutter many option and alternative schools.
Do you get that parents who care enough to send their kid to a school further away because it’s special … are the type of parent who may look into a private school if the offering gets worse? Some can afford it and others can angle for a scholarship.
Is this why you think public schools will disappear? Because the Seattle chamber of commerce keeps trying to kill affordable housing?? The solution is in the byline…
https://www.thestranger.com/news/2024/09/24/79709633/mayor-harrell-sacrifices-200-million-of-affordable-housing-rather-than-taxing-the-rich
Correction to above…the solution is in the headline!
WEED TAX… GIVE TO SCHOOLS
chHill please don’t rip me a new one… like them other two… lol
You had the best idea by far!!!! Other states like Colorado put much more of their weed tax revenue into public education, but we’d likely still need to collect more money from super wealthy people, too. Public schools are for everyone!!
If you are down 4k kids, you do need to do something to right size. The other problem is anyone with income is heading to private schools, and closing local schools is just going to increase that. Personally I’d wait until high school to spend the money on private school…
Really? Then why are there not private schools everywhere? Where’s those new schools being built? We are talking 1000’s of kids. Did they disappear?
One of the options in the previous plan was to rent out redundant school buildings to private sector.
I have the money to pay for private school and I would never, EVER put my child through that. It’s disgusting and creates maladapted adults. The only point is networking and racial homogeneity (aka avoiding black people) and it’s sickening.
@ chHill
Given you have the extra funds and will not be availing yourself to private schools, can we all look forward to your direct additional contribution to the SPS operating budget each year in the amount that private school tuition would have cost?
Thank you in advance for generously helping close the SPS budget gap and also avoiding what you feel are the “disgusting” horrors of private school at the same time!
Sounds like you could afford some therapy
You would rather have the schools focus on the needs of your child over you paying for tuition?
That is not better, catch up; you are not making any sort of noble sacrifice which your comment implies. There is a real opportunity loss for the children that the schools could be focusing on.
Sps is 130 million in the red, this is due to the agreement between the district and the union last year to fund programs and pay increases that both knew were not funded. This problem was created by them.
Couple that with an almost 10 percent decrease in student enrollment and we have no choice to consolidate schools and cut teachers.
Proposing increasing taxes because mismanagement by the district, by agreeing to the demands of the union is not the answer.
Let alone it will not happen anytime soon and we have to balance the budget now.
Maybe the lesson is not to create an unrealistic budget.