Thoughts on KCMO planning to consolidate schools - and an Old School Redux

 On Saturday, new school district Superintendent John Covington announced that the KCMO school district was planning on closing many of the city's public schools. The final number may be as high as half of the city's school buildings -- 30 total schools.

 First of all, let's make no mistake -- consolidation is absolutely necessary. The school district has dropped in the number of students dramatically over the past decade.  In 1999-2000, the KCMO school district housed 35,712 students. This year, the district is educating only 17,275 students.

The declines have been driven by a number of factors -- including the movement of families to other parts of the city that have better quality schools, as well as an increase in the number of charter schools available in the city.

The decrease in number of students for the school district has led to many of the school buildings being only half, or less than half, full. The half-empty buildings drives up the costs for the district because they have to be cleaned, maintained, and heated -- and also lead to disciplinary issues because it is easy for students to find trouble in unused wings and floors of school buildings.

Closing some school buildings is absolutely the responsible thing to do...but it does come at a cost.

Schools are a major part of neighborhoods. Families prefer to live in neighborhoods where they can be close to schools. Also, neighborhoods take pride in their schools and can often lead to the bringing of neighborhoods together.

Meanwhile, many neighborhoods throughout the city badly suffer from old, abandoned school buildings causing blight and safety issues in the neighborhoods -- creating often entire city blocks of a large, abandoned, dilapidated building and the surrounding grounds. Closed and abandoned school buildings are very bad for local neighborhoods.

So the situation is a catch 22 for the city, and the school district. There is certainly no easy solution.  However, if the school district wants to handle the consolidation successfully, and with city support, it will have to balance the very difficult challenge.

The number one priority MUST be improving the schools -- and the education received by the students there. The single biggest problem facing Kansas City, MO right now is the schools. Many of the city's other problems like crime & poverty, stem directly from our traditionally poor education system. Other many of our other problems stem from the unwillingness of middle-class families to live in the city because of the poor schools -- which weakens the tax base, and the demand for housing in the city -- which lowers property values and tax revenues.

So the schools MUST be #1.

However, the district needs to work with the city on the best ways to handle closed school buildings. While some should be kept in the short term with the hope that the district can grow again and move back into the buildings, most will need at least short term solutions to keep them used.  The district and the city should work together to see which abandoned schools would make good community centers/park space, which could be leased (or sold) to Charter schools, and which ones could be leased (or sold) as office space or loft space.

But simply leaving the buildings to decay in the neighborhoods cannot be an option. Because the 2nd most important thing our city needs is fewer abandoned, blighted buildings that lead to safety issues in neighborhoods.

I believe the consolidation can be done -- and in fact must be done -- well for the betterment of the city.

For more info on the school consolidation, you can get all the info about each school here.

Update:

Have an opinion about the schools?  Here is a list of how to let the schoolboard know your thoughts. They are actually providing a variety of ways of letting them know your thoughts and will be posting them for everyone to read at www.kcu4ea.org/kcmsdforums/ So contact them and be part of the converstation:

VIA TEXT MESSAGE: 
Instructions
- send your comments in a text message to:  95495
- start your message with KCMSDFORUMS 
- you will receive an auto text message to confirm we got your text. 
- you may sign your name or be anonymous 

Example
- to: 95495
- message: kcmsdforums i believe in the kcmsd [or whatever your message is]

VIA TWITTER:
Instructions
- If you have a twitter account, tweet your comments and use the hashtag #kcmsdforums
- comments using this hashtag will be posted at www.kcu4ea.org/kcmsdforums/ along with the text message comments received.  

Example
- tweet: i believe in the kcmsd [or whatever your message is] #kcmsdforums

VIA DISTRICT FORUMS:

Date / Locations
- Tuesday, Feb. 16 – Northeast Elementary School, 4904 Independence Ave. 
(6:30 to 8:30 p.m.)
(Askew, East, Fairview, Garfield, Gladstone, James, McCoy, Northeast Elementary, Northeast HS, Pitcher, Rogers, Scarritt, Trailwoods, West Rock Creek, Whittier, Woodland)

- Wednesday, Feb. 17 – M.L. King Elementary School, 4201 –A Indiana 
(6:30 to 8:30 p.m.)
(Carver, Central HS, Central Middle, Delano, Faxon Montessori, Franklin, King, Ladd, Melcher, Moore, Richardson, TAPC, Weeks)

- Thursday, Feb. 18 – Paseo Academy, 4747 Flora 
(6:30 to 8:30 p.m.)
(ACE, Ace 6th Grade, ACE Lower, Banneker, Holliday, KCMSA, Knotts, Paige, Paseo, Pinkerton, Troost)

- Friday, Feb. 19 – Foreign Language Academy, 3450 Warwick 
(6:30 to 8:30 p.m.)
(Attucks, Border Star, Douglas, Foreign Language Academy, Garcia, Hartman, Lincoln College Prep, Lincoln Middle, Longan, Longfellow, Manual, Phillips, Southwest, Swinney, Westport, Westport Middle, Wheatley)

- Saturday, Feb. 20 – J. A. Rogers, 6400 E. 23rd. Street 
(10:30 to 12:00 p.m.)

Comments

[InsideBub]

Brent, thanks for this post! The sense of "closing schools is fine, as long as it's not the one my kids go to" is so strong that it resembles many NIMBY shouting matches. The long term survival and improvement of the KCSD is probably the most important issue facing this city. The KCSD must be much more proactive and flexible than ever before if it wants to be able to shed these properties in a manner that will actually benefit the neighborhoods.

[Brent]

Bub,

It does stink for anyone who's kids and neighborhood schools are impacted.

But, the numbers make it painfully obvious that some downsizing has to occur. How deep, and where, is going to be the School Board's work.

I live in one of the neighborhoods where one of the main schools is on the chopping block. It will really stink for my neighborhood. But in the end, we have to find a way to improve the school system in the city...the entire city depends on it.

But the school district does have a responsibility to the neighborhoods to be sure they're not stuck with decaying, delapidating buildings that become blighted and a safe haven for criminals.

[Dave]

My children go to a charter school that is bursting at the seams, looking to expand, has money, and would love to buy an empty KCMO building. There are four that are in the right area, are the right size, and have been vacant for awhile that But word is the district won't sell to charter schools. Terrible public policy.

[InsideBub]

The KCSD Board's policy has been to not sell or lease any of its properties to another educational use beccause they are considered competitors. This policy will have to be reconsidered as part of the KCSD's plan for disposing of these properties - assuming that there is a plan for what to do with their excess properties.

[theyenguy]

I say close most every schoolin Kansas City; the schools have been a failed public experiment.
The shools have failed for a number of reasons:
1) Boys drop out and participate in gangs, and girls seeking esteem and control, get pregnant.
2) The schools fail to provide relevant education -- they fail to provide technical education
3) The teachers only indoctrinate, they fail to educate; they fail to help the students develop critical -- analytical thinking skills.

Kansas City is a dying inner city like Detroit; it's on the verge of bankruptcy; in fact it is an economic dead zone, that stands in stark contrast to Overland Park.

Unfortunately, the stock market and bond markets are on the verge of collapse, so all of America as a whole will go the way of Kansas City.

If I were a teenager, I would be scared to death to go to a public school in Kansas City -- I would drop out and homeschool myself and get a GED.

[TheYenGuy]

Mike Mish Sheldon in article Kansas City School District Faces Bankruptcy, Closes 29 of 61 schools provides helpful insight into the Kansas City Schools.

For decades critics of the public schools have been saying, "You can't solve educational problems by throwing money at them." The education establishment and its supporters have replied, "No one's ever tried." In Kansas City they did try. To improve the education of black students and encourage desegregation, a federal judge invited the Kansas City, Missouri, School District to come up with a cost-is-no-object educational plan and ordered local and state taxpayers to find the money to pay for it.

Kansas City spent as much as $11,700 per pupil--more money per pupil, on a cost of living adjusted basis, than any other of the 280 largest districts in the country. The money bought higher teachers' salaries, 15 new schools, and such amenities as an Olympic-sized swimming pool with an underwater viewing room, television and animation studios, a robotics lab, a 25-acre wildlife sanctuary, a zoo, a model United Nations with simultaneous translation capability, and field trips to Mexico and Senegal. The student-teacher ratio was 12 or 13 to 1, the lowest of any major school district in the country.

The results were dismal. Test scores did not rise; the black-white gap did not diminish; and there was less, not greater, integration.

The Kansas City experiment suggests that, indeed, educational problems can't be solved by throwing money at them, that the structural problems of our current educational system are far more important than a lack of material resources, and that the focus on desegregation diverted attention from the real problem, low achievement.

Throwing money at the problem wasted $2 billion. Now the district faces bankruptcy, and is forced to abandon now decaying schools bought with wasted taxpayer money.

In Kansas City, as in Detroit, every child was left behind ... for decades.

Closing schools is the correct decision.