-Hello. I'm your host, Brian Callanan.
There's been a delay in the announcement
from Seattle Public Schools
on a plan to close as many as 20 elementary schools
in 2025,
but that hasn't stopped the growing concerns
of thousands of Seattle school families.
-We've looked at what the plan for well-resourced schools is,
and it does not look good.
-Seattle Public Schools had said they'd release
a list in late June of the 20 elementary schools
set to be closed in 2025.
Now the district is pushing that deadline back to this fall.
-It's a community effort, and we want to make sure
that we're taking the appropriate time.
-The superintendent wants more time to talk with families,
to explain how lower enrollment and other factors
have created a $94 million budget deficit for next year,
and the need for a closure and consolidation plan.
-I think that there is a significant level of frustration
around engagement.
-Advocates welcome more two-way communication
with the district after months of public meetings,
where some families felt left out.
[ Crowd shouting ]
-Thank you.
-Shouting is something that happens
when people don't feel like they are being heard.
-If we have fewer students,
we are going to need to reduce our costs.
-But 29 of Seattle's elementary schools
have fewer than 300 students,
creating an inequitable distribution of resources.
Plus... -This is an extraordinary
tragedy for the community.
-The school district is implementing new
public safety standards after a student was shot
and killed at Garfield High School.
-There are guns.
There are a lot of guns in our community.
-We go one-on-one
with Superintendent Dr. Brent Jones
to learn about the future of Seattle Public Schools.
-We're spending more than we're bringing in.
-That's next on "City Inside/Out."
♪♪
And welcome once again to "City Inside/Out."
I'm your host, Brian Callahan,
and I'm with the superintendent of Seattle Public Schools,
Dr. Brent Jones.
Superintendent Jones, thank you very much for taking the time.
-Glad to be here. Thank you, Brian.
-Let's jump right into it here.
I wanted to start by asking about your decision
to delay the announcement of this list
of about 20 elementary schools that could close in 2025.
At first, the plan was to release this list in early June.
Then we had a deadly shooting at Garfield High School,
which we will talk about in a little bit.
A tragic situation there.
And after that, it sounded like
we would learn about the closures in late June.
And now it looks like the fall.
So before we get into the budgetary issues
behind these potential closures of these schools,
when will the public see this list and why wait on this?
-Right, so our board asks me to put together
a preliminary recommendation.
And that preliminary recommendation would include
a list of schools.
We have a lot of work to do
in order to really bring a list together.
That's going to make sure that we impact student outcomes.
Uh, the delay,
if you will, in bringing out a list
is really a delay in making sure we're taking the time
to enhance this plan
so that we can create a system of well-resourced schools.
-Yeah. -We had the unfortunate incident
at Garfield High School.
Gave us an opportunity to step back and say,
"We also need to be focusing on safety right now,"
creating an environment where our students are safe
in immediate response to that tragedy.
In the meantime, we're also working on
making sure our plan is even stronger.
We heard community feedback.
Community wanted more information.
Wanted more transparency.
So we're going to take the time that we need
in order to make sure that that happens.
-Okay, looking like September
or when will we expect to see it?
-So we're looking at sometime in the fall
that we'll release the initial plan.
-Okay. -And that initial plan
will have not just a list,
but it will have all the contours of what makes
a system of well-resourced schools.
-Thank you, and I will get into what that
phrase means in just a second.
But I wanted to talk to you about this --
in terms of the criteria
you're going to use to determine which schools close
and which schools open.
I know you've been talking about that as well.
Can you explain that, please? -Yes.
There's a there's a range of criteria
that we're going to use.
Ranging from what is the building condition
to what are the type of programs our schools offer
to what's the capacity.
How do we move students in and out?
How do we move these services in a way
that actually creates a stronger,
more enduring system?
So there's a lot of criteria that go into it.
-Yeah, there's a point system I see there.
-There's point systems for physical buildings
for the layout, for how we would look at capacity.
And so all of those go into a formula,
if you will, that would create a list of schools
to consolidate into.
-All right, still a work in progress...
-Yes, indeed. -...as I understand it.
I remember speaking with you last May,
Dr. Jones, and this idea of closing schools
was still a maybe at that point
it really hadn't been decided yet.
But now and you've been saying this in public meetings,
this message is, "We don't have the resources to continue
down the path we're going right now."
Can you give a brief explanation of how we ended up
in this place of needing to consolidate schools,
of a $94 million budget deficit?
Can you talk about that, please? -Certainly.
We've had for many years, actually a structural deficit.
What's different last year and this year is we had
federal dollars for one-time expenses.
We had state dollars for one-time expenses.
Those have dried up. Those aren't available anymore.
So the times when we were in the black, if you will,
was due to the fact
that we actually had one-time funds available.
Those one-time funds aren't available.
So this is tantamount to a structural deficit.
We're spending more than we're bringing in.
And our revenue, if you will, is about enrollment.
And if our enrollment goes down
and we don't have supplemental funds
to make up that -- that net loss, we have a deficit.
And so last year, we had $131 million challenge.
We did a lot of different --
we had a lot of different interventions in order to
bring that to a balanced budget, which we submitted.
This year, we had $105 million deficit.
And we've done also a lot of work to plug those gaps.
Next year, it looks like we're going to have,
once again, another deficit.
And so layoffs, furloughs.
-Yeah. That's all on the table, it sounds like.
-Everything is on the table as we go forward.
So, it's a challenge,
and we try to keep those cuts away from schools
as much as possible.
But now we're in a point where
one of the ideas that we had
was to consolidate schools to save money.
-Okay, and I wanted to make sure I touch on one thing,
too, the number of kids
that are coming to school I know that suffered
during the pandemic,
but that number is dropped.
And that's when you talk about the state
and the funding that is provided to our schools.
That's a big deal when you have fewer students,
you're getting fewer dollars.
That's a piece of this too, right?
-That's correct.
In the last five years or so,
we've lost almost 5,000 students.
During the COVID years,
we saw that on a steeper decline.
But we've known for several years, based on our projections,
that we're going to have less students.
We have less school-aged children.
-Yeah, fewer people are having kids.
-Fewer people are having kids,
affordability issues in the city.
And this happens to be a national trend.
I think it's just a matter of our demographics right now.
And so, again, the way we get funding from the state
is through enrollment.
And so when we don't have enrollment,
we have to think about things such as consolidating schools.
-Got it, and I want to get back to this idea
of a well-resourced school -- What is that?
How does it serve the needs of all students?
And I'm talking about the ones with special needs,
highly capable students too. Let's talk about this, please.
What's a well-resourced school?
-So we started down this path, and one of the methods
that we're going to use to try to reconcile our budget
was to talk about school consolidations.
And so we said, "Let's not just look at this as a budget issue.
Let's look at this as a stability issue.
How do we have stable programs?
How do we have stable services? How do we have stable staffing?
So that when we look at a system of well-resourced schools,
it's predictable.
It's consistent.
Students, families know what to expect.
Right now, we have to -- as enrollment drops,
goes up and down, we have to move staff.
In every October, there's an enrollment adjustment.
If we could bring the resources together to prevent,
these type of herky-jerky staffing adjustments,
then we have created this system that is consistent
and predictable, therefore well-resourced schools.
We know that what the community wants,
the community has said, "We want stable staffing."
The community says, "We want art,
P.E. and music teachers."
This community said, "We want to have
beautiful schools that are safe
and with community gathering spaces."
And so this is the definition of well-resourced schools.
We asked the community through a bunch of
community engagement sessions,
"What do you think about this concept
of well-resourced schools?"
They defined it and we're trying to actualize it now.
-Got it, and when you talk about moving students
around this whole idea of consolidation,
I think the idea is you've got some schools
that have fewer than 300 kids in them,
a number of them I know around the district.
And so the idea is when you have few kids here
and maybe more kids here,
it can lead to some inequities in terms of
how you distribute resources.
And I want to make sure I key in on that part too.
-Yes, so our students,
when the enrollment numbers are really low --
our staffing is allocated based on our numbers.
And so some of our students don't have full-time nurses.
Some of our students don't have full-time librarians.
Some of our schools don't have these services
that you can get if you scale to a larger school size number.
And so we want to make sure all of our students have access
to a workforce that has all the programmatic wants,
wishes, and desires that families expect.
We want to make sure that they have all the services,
such as mental health services.
And this way we can do this with a school size
probably around 400 or so.
But many of our schools, as you mentioned,
are under 300, and none of our contiguous school districts
have any schools that are under 300.
It's just hard to scale to that level.
-Okay. Thank you. I want to get back to this whole idea of
how SPS has been interacting with the public here.
I know there have been several public meetings about this plan
over the past couple of weeks
to create this system of well-resourced schools.
I know there's been some yelling
and some emotional moments there.
The PTS has talked to me about this,
saying some people are not feeling heard,
not feeling included.
I just wanted to ask how you think you've done
in that department, If you had to give
SPS a letter grade on this, the public outreach
you've done with the school consolidation plan,
what grade would that be?
-Yeah, so, we have --
We have a grade of, I'd say, an A for effort.
-Okay. -And maybe a C for execution.
In that we want to make sure
that we are communicating in a way that's clear,
that we're bringing folks along
so that they understand what we're trying to do.
And it's difficult to do that when it's a supercharged issue,
like people losing their ability to go to the school
that they want to in their neighborhood.
And so we have to adjust how we move
and how we engage community
so that we can bring them along with us.
One of the reason we delayed to bring a list forward
or bring the preliminary plan forward,
is we know that we need to talk to the community more.
We know that we need to bring them along.
We know that we need to explain what our intentions are.
I think people are understanding the need for consolidation.
How we do it is -- is a big deal,
and I think people really want to see that --
that detail of what we're trying to do.
-How do you improve on that? The communication piece.
I know you've done a lot of outreach.
You've had a number of different responses online
to the different things you've proposed.
How do you do that?
How do you change that narrative there?
-Yes, we just have to keep showing up
and we have to keep listening to community and principles
of authentic engagement is we meet people
where they are and we try to understand what their needs are.
And so we have to just keep showing up,
bringing relevant information, being consistent.
And then when things aren't
where we need to be, we need to be honest about that.
And so we need to build trust along the way
so that people understand this isn't something
that we do on a regular basis.
And so if we were trying to act like this
is a perfect situation,
that we have muscle memory on how to do this,
I think we would lose trust.
So I think part of it is about being honest about
where we are in terms of status. -Okay. Thank you.
I wanted to go down one more path with public outreach
because as I understand it,
state law requires there's a public hearing
at every school site that might be scheduled to close.
So let's say you put out a list in December about this,
try to hold 20 public hearings,
then try to get your school board to vote on this
before the end of the year.
I'm just thinking that timing is a little tight here.
Do you feel optimistic that SPS can achieve all of that
by the end of this year?
Talk about that timeline if you can, Doctor.
-Yeah, so one of the pieces
as we go through this process, we're finding we need support.
We need we need help from third-party folks
who have expertise in various areas
that are going to be part of this plan.
And so the more that we can bring in support,
the probably the faster we can go on
the development of the plan.
But again, we want to make sure we're moving
at the speed of where people are ready
to understand what we're trying to do.
And so the timeline is very tight.
We're looking at perhaps a fall submittal of a preliminary plan.
And then before the end of the school --
the academic year -- excuse me, the calendar year,
we want to make sure that we're communicating to folks,
"This is what's going to happen."
And so for us to be able to engage in meaningful ways,
for us to be able to share information in meaningful ways,
and get that feedback
and incorporate it to enhance our plan,
it's a tight timeline, frankly.
-Got it. Okay. We'll see what happens.
That's something that's going to play out
over the next couple of months here.
I also wanted to go down this path with you, too,
because it doesn't sound like closing down schools
is a complete answer, at least from a budgetary perspective.
Closing those schools might save in between 50 and $75 million.
I've seen some of these numbers.
Or maybe about half of the money needed to fill
this $94 million budget gap that SPS has been looking at.
I just wanted to talk about some of those numbers there,
because closing schools is not a complete answer.
It sounds like you might be considering layoffs
or other ideas too.
Can you talk about the dollars and cents with me, please?
-Absolutely, and so, school consolidations is one lever.
There are other type of efficiencies
we have to gain through other means.
As I mentioned, we've had furlough days,
we've scaled back on some of the discretionary funds
that are going to schools.
We've delayed some of the, uh --
the cost of living allocations for certain staff.
And so those things are going to need to continue to happen.
The $30 million or so is what we're projecting
for a school consolidation package.
But all those savings may not be realized, frankly,
in the first year.
And so it's a multi-year effort
that will see some savings.
-Okay. All right. Thank you for that.
I need to ask a delicate question,
if I can with you, Dr. Jones.
And it's this --
SPS agreed to a three-year teachers union contract
in 2022 that was projected to add $94 million to the deficit
we've been talking about.
And I understand the importance of paying teachers fairly,
but was that spending money you didn't have?
-It was money that we needed to spend, frankly.
And in our forecasting, we made allocation for that.
We knew that there was going to be a time
that we had to pay up on that debt, if you will.
But it was necessary to retain our workforce,
to honor the work that our faculty do,
and all of our educators.
And so we knew this was going to be a challenge,
but it was necessary to pay what our teachers actually deserve.
And so we knew it going in, we knew it afterwards,
and it was a challenge,
but there's no regrets on us doing that.
-What's 2025 going to be like?
Because I think that's when the next deal is set
to be inked, right?
-Yes, and so what I want to give credit to our labor partners.
They understand the state of affairs that we're in right now.
And so I think they're going to come to the table.
We're going to come to the table
with some reasonable demands of each other.
And so I'm optimistic
that we'll do what we need to do to make sure
that folks are recognized and compensated well
and understand our -- our current dilemma.
-Okay, thank you for that.
And I wanted to talk about this dilemma
and what it means in terms of how our state funds education,
because that really feels like it's at the root
of some of these systemic issues we're talking about.
And I think it's important to point out you know it as well.
Seattle is not the only district
going through this exhausting exercise
of potentially closing schools here.
So I saw it last session here.
State lawmakers didn't make a lot of headway
on school funding this early part of this year.
And I guess it would seem that waiting until early 2025
for them to help out Seattle and other districts
would be taking a little bit of a gamble in terms of the work
that you're doing right now.
I guess I wanted to look at this big picture with you,
Dr. Jones, what is your message to our state legislators
about school funding?
Are you anticipating any sort of meaningful support
from Olympia next year?
-It's whether I'm anticipating it or not.
It needs to happen.
We have, for example, special education services.
Special education services have a cost.
We want to make sure we're serving our students well.
We don't get fully funded for those services.
So what we're saying is, we don't have the means
to provide the services that we're obligated
to provide for our students.
And so whether I'm anticipating it or not,
it is a must for us to be able to be fully-funded
for the services that we provide our students.
We've had over several years,
a decline in the percentage of money
coming from the state to K-12.
We need to make sure we're getting back to
those original levels, and it's an imperative for this year,
in this session, for it to be a session
that's really dedicated to funding education.
It's a cascading impact
that we continue to have these budgets,
and we bring balanced budgets forward.
But if we don't bring full funding to education,
we're going to be in this predicament every year.
And we can only cut for so long.
And so we are going to make sure
that we understand what our needs are.
We're going to talk about materials and supplies.
We're going to talk about transportation,
special education.
Those three areas are where most of our districts,
at least locally, are focusing
to make sure that we're -- we're bringing in resources
from -- from the state for those items.
-How does Seattle's school levies fit into this picture?
Because those are supposed to be paying for
above and beyond type of stuff, I know.
Can you talk about that, please?
-Yes, so we're grateful for our levies.
We've passed our levies almost at 80%
for the last couple of years,
and they are supposed to be enriching.
They are supposed to be supplemental.
They're not supposed to be supplanting the money
that we get from the state, and so we rely on our levies.
I think it's about 14, 15% of our total budget.
And so many, many years ago,
there have been levee failures and that sent districts --
that sends districts like ours into a tailspin.
And so we're grateful for those --
those enrichment dollars.
-Yeah, because some districts around our area
do not get those yes votes.
-And -- and we went to the state last year to ask for more
ability to use those funds, and we have a cap
on how much we can use in terms of levy.
And so those funds are really important.
We don't want to fund basic education with levy funds,
but we're at a point
where we're trying to pull in all resources
to fund the bigger picture.
-Okay. I want to ask a logistics question, if I could.
So let's see --
Let's say possibly some schools are closing in the fall of 2025.
A certain number of schools shut down.
What happens to those school buildings at that point?
Would the district sell them?
Who would maintain them? Can you break that down?
-Yeah, so we want to make sure that our buildings are --
that we may vacate our community assets,
that these are buildings serve purposes
that are going to -- that we're going to work
in conjunction with the city of Seattle,
looking at their comp plan.
How can we make these buildings
into community centers?
How can we make these buildings into perhaps training sites,
conference centers, or athletic facilities,
art facilities, studios, those of the like.
So we -- we think that there's plenty of opportunity
for us to repurpose those buildings and hold on to them.
We know that there's a potential for our enrollment to increase,
so we don't want to shutter buildings
and not have those in our inventory.
So it's going to be important that we maintain them
so that they add value to the community.
But at the same time,
we need to keep them in our in our inventory.
-And I wanted to ask you about that
because in between 2007, 2009,
so recession time nationally here, SPS shut down 11 schools.
But then a few years after that, we had
kids coming back in big numbers,
and it cost the district millions to reopen some schools
that had recently closed.
And I'm seeing there are some signs of life
in terms of school population
overall in the Seattle public schools here.
So I'm wondering how you're looking at that.
I know you don't want to waste money ahead of time,
but you have to be real with what's happening now.
Help me with that idea of not wanting to re-re-open schools,
I guess a couple of years from now.
-Yeah, so we have doubled
and tripled down on our understanding
of what the enrollment trends are.
And for the last couple of decades even,
we've been pretty spot-on on our projections.
The COVID years,
we were probably slightly off given relative to other years.
But we know from a demographic perspective,
what are we expecting for -- in terms of live births,
in terms of affordability,
in terms of economic forecasting.
And so we're pretty confident in the number of students
that we'll be seeing coming in and out of the district.
And so we don't want to again, cut off opportunities
for us to build more capacity in our buildings.
We want to make sure that we maintain some capacity.
And what we're looking at right now is we're about
65% capacity in our elementary schools.
We want to move that up to about 80, at least 85% capacity.
We still have 15% capacity to grow.
And so at our current pace, at our current projections,
we know that there's a balance
between what buildings we need to maybe close
for a period of time.
And we still have capacity within our existing
portfolio of schools. -Thank you.
I want to make sure that I cover an announcement
you made recently about public safety in Seattle schools.
A lot of families have been talking about this
all over Seattle.
Following the death of 17-year-old Amarr Murphy-Paine,
a Garfield student who's trying to break up a fight on a campus
in the middle of a school day, shot and killed.
No arrests have been made.
You wrote to Seattle school families about this,
some investments you're starting to make in the fall
to improve public safety.
Can you talk about those, please?
-Yes, it's heavy for us to kind of deal with this.
We are a school district, and not necessarily
an entity that is prepared to deal with gun violence.
And so we are recognizing our role in trying
to create an ecosystem of safety.
Amarr's passing prompted us to continue to double down
on some things that we're doing,
but again, we're trying to think through now,
how do we provide exterior support for safety?
How do we provide safety for our perimeter?
-This was this $2 million you were talking about, right?
-This is the $2 million that I'm allocating
to put some immediate personnel
at our exterior perimeters of our schools
to make them safer.
We've done a lot to improve the interior of our schools
in terms of safety, now we're tasked with,
and it's a mandate that we have to
take the steps in conjunction with the city.
And I just had a conversation with Chief Rahr.
-Oh, great. -How are we going to work
together as a collective?
And really do what's necessary to create
more safety around our schools.
There are guns.
There are a lot of guns in our community.
We have to understand that and accept that as our reality
and see what we can do, again, collectively
to make more safety around our perimeters of our buildings.
-And in talking with Interim Chief Rahr here,
I know the district banned school resource officers
four years ago -- is it time to bring them back?
Have law enforcement stationed on campus?
Are we talking about armed security at our high schools?
Metal detectors? What's -- what's on the table here?
-Yeah, so everything is on the table
in terms of what can we do to really, you know,
I keep using this term, create an ecosystem of safety.
We have to be pragmatic.
We can't be idealistic about what resources we have available
to us, what tactics,
what mechanisms that we're going to use.
The beauty of the fact that we have a relationship,
a good working relationship with the city of Seattle,
is that we can avail ourselves
to more creative opportunities and resources.
And so there's nothing in our way for moving us forward.
And so the concept of a school resource officer,
our school resource officers that we've had in our buildings
in the past have been assets to not only the buildings
but to the community.
And so that can be back on the table.
That's not a barrier
for us to move forward with strategies that are enduring.
-Got it, and it's that balance, I think,
between wanting to make sure
that kids feel safe and not wanting to feel
like they're in a police state at school.
Can you help me with that balance?
-Yeah, so for the last, I'd say 10 or 15 years,
we've been working on creating a welcoming environment
for students, and a sense of belonging.
And those have been strong focuses for us.
We've created restorative justice.
We we've created care coordinators.
We've created all of these
programs and means and personnel to bring in,
mental health support, to bring in social emotional support
so that our students are having this welcoming environment.
Now, we're having to not only look at a welcoming environment,
but we're also having to have a safe environment.
And so again, when I talk about this ecosystem of safety,
it's emotional safety, social safety,
physical safety, and really trying to be --
have more expertise in how all those fit together.
-Got it, I need to start wrapping up with you.
And I know these concerns about public safety
and -- and closing schools make it difficult
for families all throughout Seattle
to see a lot of the good things
that are going on in Seattle public schools.
And I know also this is a personal struggle for you.
You shared this in some of the meetings.
You yourself change schools four times
as a young man, were bussed from south to north.
I wanted to wrap up with you and ask a message.
If you could, that you might have for school families,
for taxpayers out there concerned about the future
of Seattle Public Schools.
-Seattle Public Schools is a strong school district,
and when we compare ourselves to other urban school districts
across the country, in every court,
every measure, we're in the top quartile.
So if we compare ourselves to the LAs
and the Denvers and the Atlantas,
Seattle Public Schools is doing really well,
and most of our students are thriving.
And so we're trying to create this system
of well-resourced schools to maintain that,
to stabilize that.
I think our parents will find that --
you ask nine out of ten parents,
"How is your student doing?"
And they're going to say they're doing really well.
If some of our students aren't, we're not serving really well.
And that's been historical.
And those are some of the disproportionate outcomes
that we're getting from some of our families
and some of our students.
But overall, Seattle Public Schools
has been a really strong school district
in multiple measures.
And so we are looking at this consolidation
and we're looking at making sure our budget is stable
so that we can maintain the things
that are working in Seattle public schools.
And so we're clear-eyed about that.
And our mission is very clear around what we need to be doing,
and so all of this reconciliation
is in service of that. -All right.
Thank you very much for that, Dr. Jones.
-Thank you. -We will be right back.
What are people saying on social media about
the possible closure of up to 20 elementary schools in Seattle?
One person writes...
Another person comments...
We'd like to know what you think.
Send us an email at contact@seattlechannel.org
or find us on social media.
Thank you for that input.
Dr. Jones, thank you for your input as well.
And we will see you next time on "City Inside/Out."
♪♪