School district leaders will soon face increasingly urgent pressure to address one of education's most feared questions: Should school buildings be closed or consolidated?
About 1% of public school buildings closed each year between 2014 and 2018, according to a study led by Douglas Harris.Professor of Education and Economics at Tulane University.
Harris said in an interview that the rate has likely slowed during the pandemic as COVID-19 relief aid has helped many regions overcome financial hardships.
But now bills are coming due in many places. Federal relief aid and pandemic-era state policies meant to protect schools from financial ruin are coming to an end. Enrollment declines are accelerating in many parts of the country.
Even with these factors at play, school closures tend to be a last resort for district leaders. Closure means the community loses buildings and programs with deep roots in the neighborhood. Sometimes it attracts negative media attention and incurs unexpected costs.
These losses aren't always easily quantified, Harris said.
“Every time we close a school, relationships are destroyed: friendships between students, parents and teachers,” he said.
Sometimes school closures lead to legal investigations. The U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights is currently investigating the Jefferson Parish School District in Louisiana. After the nonprofit Southern Poverty Law Center pointed out that closing schools there would likely violate the civil rights of black and brown students.. A study published last year found that between 2000 and 2018, majority-black schools were about three times more likely to close. As a school with a small number of black students,
This month, Education Week spoke to two district leaders whose school boards have approved proposals to close school buildings this year.
Billings, Montana, Superintendent Erwin Garcia and Oneida, New York, schools Superintendent Matt Carpenter are facing criticism from some community members and uncertainty about how their districts will adapt in the short and long term.
However, the superintendent and team considered many factors when deciding whether to close schools, which schools to close, and how to implement procedures. Here are a few:
Finance of the future, not just the present
The Billings School District is facing a $3.5 million deficit that has been building up since before the pandemic.
But Garcia, who previously served as Houston area administrator, is more concerned from a fiscal perspective about how much the deficit could grow in the coming years.
“We’re not very attractive to the new generation of teachers,” Garcia said of the district and state. “Why? Because we don’t pay enough.”
Teachers unions will no doubt expect pay increases in the upcoming negotiations, as teachers across the country have secured significant increases in new contracts in recent years. Garcia wants to pay his employees in line with inflation and help them justify keeping their talent local.
Employee salaries and benefits make up the majority of every district's annual operating budget. If these costs continue to increase, other costs, such as the cost of operating underutilized school buildings, must decrease.
Trajectories of class size and staffing models
Two elementary schools in Oneida, New York, have only one class per grade. Some other classes in the district are smaller, with as many as 13 or 14 students.
“If you’re talking about fiscal responsibility, that’s not enough,” said Carpenter, the school district superintendent.
The district also has more than $5 million worth of counselors, teachers and social workers, whose salaries are supported by federal COVID relief funds. That funding expires at the end of this year, but Carpenter wants to avoid laying those people off, especially since it provides critical support that will still be needed in the months ahead.
This means new spending on already strained budgets. Carpenter said from this perspective, it seemed necessary to eliminate the cost of operating school buildings and move services into existing buildings.
Enrollment and population trends
The population of the City of Billings has grown in recent years. However, declining birth rates have caused the region's enrollment numbers to move in the opposite direction.
Enrollment losses are not distributed evenly across the city. Overall, the region has seen a 1% decline in enrollment over the past five years. But schools in some areas, particularly the southern part of the city, saw declines of as much as 7%.
Garcia's team assessed how many students each unenrolled school would need to achieve a class size that would meet state requirements for maximum class size and maximize the value of hired staff. They identified five schools that each needed 50 to 90 more students to fully utilize their buildings.
Alternative Site and Building Uses for Students
Of those five schools, the Billings district chose Washington Elementary School as the best location for closure.
Part of that decision is purely financial. The school has the lowest enrollment and highest per-pupil tuition of any school in the district. The school's enrollment has fallen from 273 in 2018 to 190 next school year, with further declines expected.
But Washington Elementary School is meaningful to Garcia and his team for other reasons as well.
For starters, there are three other elementary schools nearby that can easily accommodate new students without forcing former Washington Elementary families into much longer commutes.
“Every child will go to a nearby school,” Garcia said. “The teacher-to-student ratio in the surrounding schools is so low that we don’t have to hire any full-time staff.”
Washington Elementary is also suitable for repurposing, Garcia said. The district recently received approval from the State Board of Education to open two new district-operated charter schools. One offers early college programs for high school students and the other provides resources to students who have dropped out of high school.
Garcia said the financial benefits of the latter program, which is a lifeline for students who need help getting back on track, have been underestimated. That is, the more students who enroll in a city's schools instead of leaving them, the more enrollment-based funding the district will receive. situation.
Meanwhile, in Oneida, a consultant proposed two viable options for consolidating the school by closing North Broad Elementary School. That means keeping the district's three remaining elementary schools as K-5 schools or reconfiguring their buildings to offer fewer grades.
“What he drove was there was no one particular model that worked,” Carpenter said of the consultant.
Carpenter and colleagues preferred the latter approach. Next fall, all district students in pre-K, kindergarten and first grade will attend school in one building. Years 2 and 3 will be located in different schools. The third school will serve fourth and fifth graders.
In the coming months, district leaders will develop a plan for student transportation, student transfers, and helping parents and students understand how the process that led to these changes has unfolded.
“Not everyone in the community can attend every meeting or have access to every data point,” Carpenter said. “Being able to properly explain this to the parents and communities it directly impacts is an uphill battle.”