Education Week - February 7, 2024 - 4

Pressure to Close Schools Is Ramping Up.
What Districts Need to Know
Falling enrollments and tight budgets are
prompting communities to consider school
closures. But doing so is never simple
By Mark Lieberman
Just before the pandemic began,
administrators for the Oneida school
district in upstate New York started
pondering a plan to consolidate two
elementary schools where enrollment
had been steadily declining for years.
The onset of COVID-19, and the
burst of federal relief aid that followed
it, put those plans on hold. In recent
months, though, the 1,700-student
district has revisited the possibility
that it could better serve students and
spend resources more prudently with
five schools instead of six.
On paper, the decision might seem
simple. Having one less building
reduces the cost of facilities maintenance,
as well as compensation for
principals and their deputies, nurses,
counselors, and other building aides.
That, in turn, frees up funds that could
be redirected to staffing and support
for students at the remaining schools.
But closing a school is almost always
a logistically and emotionally arduous
process.
The Oneida district's students live
across 42 square miles, which means
closing a school could lengthen bus
rides for many. Staff at the shuttered
school might not be keen on shifting
to another school, meaning the district
could find itself needing to fill positions
it otherwise wouldn't. And the school
building slated for closure, North Broad
Street Elementary, has been a fixture in
the community since it opened in 1911,
meaning the 10,000-person city would
be losing a part of its identity.
" We heard from people saying, my
father went to that school 90 years
ago. Please don't close the school, "
said Matt Carpenter, the district's
superintendent since 2021. " That's
something that we have to consider. "
Dilemmas like these will almost certainly
crop up for many district leaders
in the coming months and years.
After a handful of years of statelevel
surpluses and unprecedented
infusions of federal cash, the financial
outlook for districts could be less rosy
going forward. The rate of births nationwide
is dropping and public school
enrollment never fully bounced back
as expected from pandemic declines,
which means schools will have fewer
students to educate, and fewer perpupil
funds to work with.
The pressure to close schools has
already begun to accelerate in some
places. Big-city districts like Boston,
Memphis, Tenn., Wichita, Kan., and
Jackson, Miss., are either considering
plans to shutter and consolidate school
buildings or have already decided to do
so, as have plenty of smaller districts in
states like Missouri and Indiana.
The still-growing body of research
on the impacts of school closures suggests
district leaders need to develop
deliberate and detailed plans with
abundant community input. Handled
poorly, research shows, closures can
exacerbate racial inequities and hamper
student achievement. They can
often fall short of generating significant
savings as well.
Here are a few key factors districts
need to keep top of mind as they ponder
the costs and benefits of closing
one or multiple schools:
1. Make realistic estimates
of cost savings
The vast majority of school district
budgets goes toward salaries and
benefits for staff. Axing one facility
to trim the costs of energy and maintenance
may not guarantee a meaningful
difference in many districts'
financial fortunes.
The process of losing a school
building also brings its own expenses,
said Francis A. Pearman, an
assistant professor at the Stanford
Graduate School of Education who
studies school closures.
Districts often hire consultants to
help sort through closure options or
game out new transportation scenarios.
Even the act of closing a physical
building-boarding up doors and
windows, erecting protective fencing,
maintaining and marketing the building
for a possible sale-costs money.
" When we're thinking about closures
purely from a financial standpoint, it's
not entirely clear that the arrow points
in the direction that we would presume
it to point, " Pearman said.
Still, districts constrained by limited
resources often see value in cutting
down on school buildings.
The Billings district in Montana has
built up a deficit of $3.5 million over
the last seven years. State education
funding has declined, in part because
overall enrollment has dropped slightly
from 17,000 in 2018 to 16,500 students
this year, with some portions of the district
seeing steeper falls than others.
Even if that deficit were manageable
without making big moves like
closing a school, Garcia said, he can't
ignore that it will inevitably grow even
deeper. Collective bargaining with
the district's staff unions is coming
up. Teachers in a state whose average
pay for educators is on the lower end
nationally deserve a raise to keep pace
with inflation, he believes.
" I cannot go to the teachers' union
and pretend that a 1 percent increase
is going to address the 12 percent to 15
percent inflation that the teachers face
right now, " Garcia said.
Instead, his team examined how
much the district is spending per stu4
| EDUCATION WEEK | February 7, 2024 | www.edweek.org
dent on staff compensation in each
school building. The average was
roughly $5,000 per pupil, but in some
schools with falling numbers of students,
that figure approached $10,000.
District leaders determined that
roughly 200 students from Washington
Elementary School could move to
one of three nearby schools without
the need for a single new full-time
employee. Beginning this fall, staff
from that building will fill gaps in other
schools.
" Nobody wants to work for a school
district that is perpetually broke. I
don't think that sends a good message
for the taxpayers, " Garcia said. " If we
can do better, let's do better. "
2. Explore viable alternatives
Schools are often the anchors
of neighborhoods and communities,
providing a crucial gathering
place for social and cultural events.
They're also among the largest employers
in an area.
Losing that community space and
economic driver when a school closes
can be harmful to nearby residents,
especially when the former school sits
in a neighborhood in poverty, or in a
rural area with few or no other public
spaces or employers.
Plus, closed school buildings often
languish for years, falling into disrepair
or eventually getting sold to a private
company that changes its purpose.
" If we shut those school buildings
down, those rural communities lose
that source of social life and economic
well-being, " said Mara Casey Tieken,
an associate professor of education
at Bates College who has conducted
research on the impacts of school closures,
particularly in rural areas.
In Billings, instead of leaving the
building behind, Superintendent Garcia's
team plans to transform the facility
into a home for two new districtrun
charter schools.
Closing the building altogether
would have been more financially
prudent, Garcia said. But he didn't feel
right arriving in the district from a faraway
state and immediately moving
to get rid of a beloved school building.
" No superintendent really wants to
close schools just because of funds, " he
said. " We don't see this as something
we want to do. We are forced to do it. "
Both charter schools will be governed
by the Billings school board and
receive state funding through Montana's
new charter school mechanism.
One will serve as the first early college
high school in the entire state, and the
other will serve students who have
dropped out of high school.
Districts facing acute pressure to
close schools likely have more options
at their disposal than many might assume,
Tieken said, with some helping
districts save enough money that
building closures are no longer needed.
School buildings near each other
might be able to share resources, like a
special education teacher who covers
two campuses, or a course offering in
one building could be made available
to students from multiple schools.
Dual enrollment programs that
allow students to take college courses
during high school can open up costsharing
opportunities between schools
and institutions of higher education.
Even offering a high-quality virtual
education option could lead to
cost savings if enough students enroll,
she said.
The primary thing to avoid, by contrast,
is forcing students to spend two
hours on a bus to get to school each
day.
" We need to be thinking about education
and schooling in these more
holistic ways, " Tieken said.
3. Think long-term
A school district in California recently
sought Pearman's advice on
what to do about the pressing financial
need to close a school building in
a low-income neighborhood.
Pearman advised the district to
take the long view. Could converting
that facility to a new high school
geared toward performing arts help
draw new students from within and
outside the district?
There would be upfront costs and
lots of logistical challenges. But years
from now, the effects could be transformative
for the neighborhood.
" Those kind of subtle changes can
do incredible work for reshaping the
future of a school that moves it away
from the trajectory of closure to a trajectory
of livelihood, " Pearman said.
District leaders can approach the
prospect of closure with a spirit of creativity.
Garcia's effort to create new
charter schools and reap the benefits
of a new revenue stream represents
one approach.
In Oneida, the plan to close one of
four K-5 elementary schools isn't happening
in isolation. The district is also
preparing to divide students in the
three remaining elementary buildings
by grade level: pre-K, kindergarten,
and 1st grade in one building; grades 2
and 3 in another; and grades 4 and 5 in
the third.
Right now, for instance, 4th graders
might have different access to educational
opportunities depending on
which building they're in. Under the
new model, all services for 4th graders
would be aligned, as they'll all be
housed under one roof.
Carpenter sees a similar benefit for
special education. For the last few
years, elementary students with disabilities
went to one of two school
buildings based on the services they
needed. Now, they'll be able to attend
school in a building with all the
students from their own grade level,
with more opportunities to receive
instruction alongside their peers in
traditional classrooms.
The plan has drawn ire from some
community members, including a
local group planning to petition the
state department of education to intervene.
Carpenter said his team has
labored to help the community understand
the proposal at as many as
25 public meetings.
" Not everybody in the community
was at all the meetings or had access
to all the data points, " Carpenter said.
" It's a very challenging situation. "
Illustration by Liz Yap/Education Week (Images: iStock/Getty)
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Education Week - February 7, 2024

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