A parents group is calling for action after the Seattle Public Schools superintendent told the school board earlier this week he is considering fully backtracking on a planned shutdown of campuses including Capitol Hill’s Stevens Elementary.
“This is a pivotal moment for Seattle Public Schools from which we believe it can learn and grow,” the All Together For Seattle Schools group said in a statement. “The district’s announcement that it may reconsider its closure plans demonstrates that the district needs to fundamentally rethink its governance and management approach, and the way it engages the community.”
The group is calling on Superintendent Brent Jones and the district to immediately “abandon its school closure plans,” saying “there remains no benefits to student outcomes or the budget deficit, and enrollment projections are on the upswing.”
Tuesday, Jones announced he is considering shelving the shutdown plan and withdrawing his “preliminary recommendation” in an update to the district’s elected school board.
The parent group is now calling on SPS to choose another path for financial stabilization — and to get its act together.
“We believe the district and board must get their house in order to build public trust and build confidence with state legislators in Olympia that more funding for public education will be prioritized for student success in SPS,” the group writes.
CHS reported here on families at Stevens Elementary confronting schools officials about the closure plans in a meeting at the North Capitol Hill campus last week.
The landmark-protected school campus is one of four Seattle elementary schools on a list of planned “consolidations” as the district backed down from an initial plan that could have cut 21 campuses from the system after public outcry. In the face of a projected more-than-$130 million budget deficit, officials say the Stevens closure would save the district around $1.5 million a year.
$5 A MONTH TO HELP KEEP CHS PAYWALL-FREE THIS SPRING
Subscribe to CHS to help us hire writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. CHS is a pay what you can community news site with no required sign-in or paywall. To stay that way, we need you.
Become a subscriber to help us cover the neighborhood for $5 a month -- or choose your level of support 
I am a school counselor in SPS and am incredibly disappointed by the move to abandon closure plans. I am deeply concerned about what the other moves the district will take to balance the budget. Based on my knowledge of how individual schools are funded, I anticipate the student to teacher rations will go up and funding for other supportive staff (librarians, school psychologists, restorative coordinators, social workers and counselors) will go down. There are school psychologists who have to split their time at 3-4 schools to have a full-time job. Also, low-income schools (Title schools) get more funding, but that designation is determined by the district and they can make it more or less stringent. For example, in lean times, a school might need 75% of their students to qualify for free or reduced lunch instead of 60%. That means fewer schools get additional funding to pay for interventionists, additional counselors, etc.
I don’t want to go around closing schools willy-nilly. I wish that the district shared their other options for balancing the budgets so parents could know what would happen if we don’t close super small schools.
Change is really hard for kids. Having their school close and moving somewhere new would suck. No matter what, students in SPS are going to be impacted by budget cuts. The question is: how many students?
Nothing against school counselors and I wish there were more of them but you have an obvious invested interest in preferring closures over other budget saving measures. I am forced to consider, is it really about the potential number of students affected or about your and/or your friends employment?
wow…that’s just wrong.
A plan needs to include more than closing schools. SPS leadership team is top heavy yet they were unable to answer essential questions about a plan they created. Jones got a raise, a director hired a 6 figure assistant, and there are a myriad of things we don’t know. Also, it’s not unique to counselors to split time-teachers also have multi school assignments. What’s your point?
Check the ratio of SPS administrative staff to in-school professionals over the past 10 years. The schools have not gotten remarkably better with the growth in the administration, and that’s the first place to look to fix the budget mess….
The vast majority of those positions are not funded, and somewhere between two to three teachers could be hired with that money if the state did increase funding.
We have a winner….
It seems unrealistic to expect administration to cut their own jobs. The only logical solution is a head tax on private schools equal to that amount of state funding being withheld due to private school attendance. This will serve a dual purpose of putting weaker privates out of business while generating tremendous amounts of new revenue to the schools.
The private schools are non-profits, some of which are religious organizations. You cannot tax children.
As regards to what can be done with Stevens?
The groups that were lining up to take over the administration of Stevens were all non-profits as well, all of them were expecting to get free rent and utilities like how other groups which have taken over SPS unused property do.
Stevens is well positioned to be used as an emergency homeless shelter; there is even a daycare facility on the property that could be used for families. It has a cafeteria and there is plenty of space in the gym for bringing people in from the cold when needed, and a large piece of open land that is already gated which could be used for tiny homes.
As Seattle moves towards bigger schools, many of these properties that were used for smaller schools could be converted to provide for more housing in the neighborhoods.
What is all this talk about non-profits??? You can certainly tax the parents of children. If their parents can’t afford…public school is always there (as it should be). Public school should be run by the state and federal governments, and no one else should be educating.
The fact that we have non-profits anywhere near schools is one of the most egregious problems causing our budget shortfalls and bring up the question of school closures in the first place, because funds that would otherwise go to public schools are being siphoned to private charter and parochial schools.
You’re describing Stevens’ amenities as if they need re-purposing…you know what all those amenities are perfect for? A public elementary school…
Seattle should have the education budget to do whatever it wants with schools, big or small. WE NEED STATE INCOME TAX NOW. HEAD TAX ON PRIVATE SCHOOLS. CAPITAL GAINS TAX. VACANCY TAX. WE ARE PISSING AWAY OUR CHILDREN’S FUTURE AND HANDING IT TO THE WEALTHY.
“non profit” like a church.
Private schools are diverting money w/o results or worse. Any 15 minute read would tell anyone that
The real solution is to start teaching kids again, focus on education quality and encourage parents to send kids back to public schools.
Public school districts around Seattle are rated much higher (Bellevue, Lake WA, Sammamish, Shoreline, etc)… and rich parents who still bother to live in Seattle send their kids to private schools.
It’s embarrassing, and it’s definitely not sustainable.