Kansas City Closing Schools

This is a good insight into how hard it is for government to cut things.

Superintendent John Covington called for the closing or consolidation of almost half of the schools in the Kansas City, Missouri, school district, and a school board voted Wednesday to approve the downsizing.

Covington calls it the “right-size” plan,” but many residents say it’s plain wrong.

A packed room of people watched the board make its historic move after weeks of debate and years of declining enrollment. Some parents voiced their anger, while some students cried.

Yeah, it sucks to close schools, but look at the facts:

Covington said the closures were the first phase of “right-sizing” a district where enrollments have plummeted from more than 35,000 in the 1999-2000 school year to about 17,000 in 2009-10.

They are at less than HALF of enrollment.  How can anyone justify keeping open the same number of school buildings except with emotional arguments?  They can’t.  While I appreciate a school board that is willing to make some hard choices here, the public needs to get a grip and realize that it makes absolutely no sense to maintain the same infrastructure for half of the student population. 

1. While I think the KC school district is more ably managed than MPS, there are a lot of parallels, the biggest being the issue of stagnant or declining under-18 populations in many parts of the city.  The KC school district is basically home to people who can’t afford to get out of the district and young professionals without kids who want to live close to work or entertainment options.  The second kids are in the picture, families with the money to get out move into Blue Valley, Shawnee Mission, Park Hill, Blue Springs, on and on.  The suburban school districts around Kansas City are fantastic.

   I don’t doubt that this is the right move financially.  But how are we to approach public education in our urban core?  Kids often come from bad neighborhoods, have bad role models, come from broken families - none of which is necessarily a predictor in its own right but once you start to combine these factors it’s like a perfect storm of undesirable factors.

   Can schools be used as an effective weapon to combat these trends, or is there some other approach that’s needed?  And can we continue to allow people of means to benefit from their proximity to urban centers but then excuse themselves from the social costs that exist in those areas by just moving to the suburbs?  Do surrounding communities share in the responsibility for helping to fix these problems?

   Posted by Recess Supervisor on March 11, 2010 at 1532 hrs




2. In KC’s case, the urban core is utilized by surprisingly few people.    It may as well not have existed when I lived there and I derived little benfit from it.

   KC’s schools also have the problem of being on the side of the state line the likes to engage in building monuments to the state instead of adopting practical measures.  This may mark a change for KC.

   Posted by (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on March 11, 2010 at 1742 hrs




3. Closing schools is always painful. Witness the response of the people in the western periphery of Waupun’s school district when they consolidated all of their elementary school grades into one location. The folks in Fox Lake and Alto were livid about losing their schools.

   People often consider their schools to be the center of their neighborhoods. When they close, the folks in the neighborhood feel offended, as if the whole thing were an intentional snub.

   Posted by (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on March 11, 2010 at 1924 hrs




4. Word of advice, adapt.  Case in point.

   The high school John Hughes used to shoot the exterior and library scenes in The Breakfast Club is now a park district admin. building.

   They built Main East High School anticipating a continuum of the post war baby boom.  Instead, the local property values inflated beyond the reach of mainstream family incomes negating the need for a school.

   If you can’t re-purpose the closing KC schools you wind up with the shattered shell of the Marquette, MI Senior High School.  One of the first things you see driving into Marquette on US 41.

   Posted by (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on March 11, 2010 at 2043 hrs