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This story about massive cuts in Kansas City schools has been generating a lot of attention today on CNN and other major news outlets:
Kansas City school officials promised Thursday to shut down nearly half the district’s schools by the start of classes in the fall without offering details of how they intend to implement the complicated plan in just a matter of months. The drastic project also calls for cutting hundreds of jobs and shuffling thousands of students — changes that officials say are needed to keep the district from using up what little is left of the $2 billion it received as part of a groundbreaking desegregation case…
… Wanda J. Blanchett, dean of the school of education at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, said Thursday that Covington’s planned cuts and his timetable were not only feasible, but critically important. "And the reason I say that is because the district is still operating as far as its infrastructure is concerned as though it’s serving 75,000 students," she said. "But in reality, it’s serving slightly under 17,000 students. Not only is it feasible, but it’s the right thing to do."
My question is this: Why have the number of students in Kansas City schools declined so drastically? The population of the city has remained relatively stable over the past few decades. My guess is that any parents who have the means have either been moving out of the city or have been sending their kids to private school. No matter what the explanation, this situation is a giant red flag. Our urban schools are in crisis.
What’s on your mind tonight?
10 Comments
Well there is home skoolin’. It’s not just for scary religious folkes anymore.
O Dear God.
Half of the schools? Who cares about the culture war! That is a disaster for so many people who will live disadvantaged! I don’t care about religion or the lack thereof when I see a picture of young people reaching adulthood with so little hope. I can only hope that people in Kansas repair this catastrophe before it comes home to roost. Issues like this transcend the culture barrier and are shared human concerns.
Moss: help me out. Your bio says you are a pastor. What does your faith tell us about how to address all these issues? Tonight I met a young woman from Arizona fresh into Seattle who is trying to attach herself socially to people by showing risque photos of herself to men in a bar. She probably had educational opportunities (she was audibly uneducated) like those about to be “offered” in Kansas. How do I rectify the positions of so-called “social conservatives” who claim your religion backs them with the results of the public policies they produce like what you characterize is about to happen to education in Kansas or what happens with the people I meet around town coming from the interior who have so little to position themselves with when bargaining with society?
The KC School Board is doing the right thing. I happen to have a little experience in this area; my mother was a school teacher and after retirement served on a local school board task force that, during a time of declining enrollment, had to decide which schools to close/consolidate, which vacant school sites to sell off, and which to keep for possible future re-opening (which did happen about 15 years later).
When average enrollment drops below half of capacity, keeping schools open hurts, rather than helps, student educational opportunities. While it is an inconvenience to parents who have to transport their kids longer distances, the upside offset is tremendous.
First, you get to eliminate a layer of non-classroom administrative and maintenance overhead. You typically get rid of personnel on the higher end of the pay scale like principals and VPs. Second, you save on equipment. One school, one copy machine instead of two schools and two copy machines. One school, one good library and computer lab instead of two crappy libraries and obsolete computer labs.
Third, after consolidation you can often offer a better range of classes because you have a deeper teacher staff at each remaining school. With two schools you might only have one foreign language class at each school; with one school you could have two teachers and two language classes. Even offering two classes in the same language can be beneficial because you can have one class for slower students and one for the more proficient. Or you can offer the same class at two different times, allowing kids greater flexibility in scheduling. Same holds true for science and math classes. (Jeez, I never wanted to have a first-period math class! Still not fully awake and running on all cylinders!) The deeper staff also means more qualified teachers for AP classes, art/music/theater classes, etc.
Excellent questions, Seymour. My first response is that the Christian faith is quite diverse. There are many Christians who stand in the tradition of MLK and many others who have fought for social justice over the years. Please do not lump us in with the far right.
Second, my hope is that there are dedicated people of faith and non-faith who are already doing everything they can to bring hope and opportunity to children in the inner city. In fact, I know there are, because I spent a year in KC interning at a program that helps homeless families find housing.
We just need to keep fighting the good fight until a majority of Americans understand that crumbling inner cities are ultimately bad for us all. And we also need to stop drawing dichotomies such as Christian vs. secular and left vs. right. Our nation is more complicated than that.
Well said, BigJess. It does seem that the school board had no choice but to do this. My concern is how the situation got to this point. How can a city with a steady population lose so many public school students? Something is seriously wrong.
Jim –
Your fears about the district losing kids to suburban districts and/or private schools are definitely valid. However, even in the affluent area I grew up in, there is a cyclical variation in the population of children. Most parents have kids when in their late 20′s to late 30′s. And they tend to have all those kids within a ten year span. (Oldest is a max of ten or eleven years old when the youngest is born.) Then there is about a 15-20 year lag before the oldest of those kids start to have their own kids, and when those kids get to school age. Over time you get this wave effect; wave, trough, wave, trough. That’s why closing schools is often required, but getting rid of the shuttered schools can be a big mistake, because someday you’ll need to open them back up again.
Jim –
Another thing that just occurred to me: are we seeing in school system enrollment a lagging effect of the incarceration crisis? I mean, think about it: all those young men in prison are taking potential fathers out of the civilian population. Same with the ballooning increase over the past 15 years in women being incarcerated. Given the disproportionate number of minorities affected by the prison boom, and the fact that these minorities also tend to be in larger, central-city school districts, I think it’s a plausible scenario.
My guess is that the factors you mention could account for small variations in school enrollment, but not losing half of the student population. Having worked in several different urban ministries, I know for a fact that most people who can get out of the inner city do so as quickly as they can.
“Why have the number of students in Kansas City schools declined so drastically?
Good question, Jim. Where did those 58,000 students go? And why? Posters here have made some excellent points and raised a number of valid questions. But what we can’t know from the limited information available is:
1. Are private schools growing at the same rate public schools are declining in population?
2. Is there a horrific drop-out rate in the public schools?
3. After closing half the schools, will the remaining schools offer a greater variety of classes and learning opportunities, or will more students be stuffed into existing classes taught by the present number of teachers?
4. Has the local economy collapsed in Kansas City, that people are leaving there in droves?
Seems to me that a yes to any of those questions is serious cause for alarm–and not only for Kansas City.