Stephen’s Thoughts On… School Closures
EDITOR’S NOTE: Over the next few months I plan to write about topics important to Atlanta Public Schools. The first of this “Stephen’s Thoughts” series is on a recent article in ProPublica and what our district can learn from it.
Within the last week several people have mentioned this ProPublica article to me and asked for my thoughts. It’s a well-researched look into the cost and cause of small, under-enrolled schools in Chicago. As someone who has grown used to the idea that education news rarely breaks through to popular culture, I’ve taken these conversations as a sign that this piece has touched on something that is worth exploring in more detail. I shouldn’t be surprised as Atlanta Public Schools is in the middle of a school facilities discussion that may lead to dozens of schools closing.
Let me begin by restating a position I’ve taken that is part of the reason I’m running for school board in Atlanta: the cost of losing a school plus the history of divestment from Black and Brown communities makes a high bar for any district looking to pursue closures—I do not believe APS has reached that bar and will fight to make sure my neighbors get their voices heard.
If you’ll indulge me, I’d like to look at the article in more detail and provide you some commentary based on my expertise as an education budget and policy analyst. Excerpts from the article are in italics. Early in the piece, the authors help identify why Chicago has so many schools:
“Amid a national infatuation with smaller high schools 20 years ago, Chicago Public Schools conducted a grant-funded experiment to chop DuSable into three separate schools sharing a campus.”
I am going to set my hair on fire. “National infatuation?” Public school districts were no more infatuated with smaller schools than I was infatuated with going to work washing dishes in high school. The main reason that public school systems embraced the small school movement was because the Gates Foundation offered hundreds of millions of dollars across the country to do it. After 10+ years of loudly declaring small schools as the way to improving low-performing urban schools, the foundation recognized their failure and shifted to other priorities. “National infatuation…”
“What remains today, after that grant money ran out, is an enormous building and, inside, two tiny schools clinging to life.”
Listen, Bill and Melinda Gates spent some of their own money to try and improve schools. That is worth a tip of the cap. The fact that their foundation is a way to avoid paying taxes and afforded them the chance to buy goodwill while they ignored experts in and outside the classroom to rush in a reform that would cost districts millions in the future is worth… whatever the opposite of a “tip of the cap” is.
Focusing anger on a couple of billionaires will not help the remaining issue, however. Chicago has several small schools that are very expensive to keep open. Each school has certain fixed costs (e.g., a principal or media center). The ProPublica piece goes on to explain the burden of maintaining several under-enrolled schools:
“The costs are not only financial. Students in the city’s smallest schools have fewer courses to choose from and often miss out on clubs, extracurricular activities and sports.”
The journalists make a great point here, and one I do not want to ignore. When schools are small underneath a certain threshold the students miss out on opportunities provided at schools that benefit from the economies of scale.
“Chicago’s underenrolled high schools are more likely to have lower graduation and college enrollment rates. They tend to struggle with chronic truancy and higher dropout rates, a ProPublica and Chalkbeat analysis found.”
Here’s where my education research spidey sense is tingling. A neighborhood school with declining enrollment and poor student outcomes sounds to me like it’s serving a neighborhood in poverty. Later, the article justifies my suspicion:
“Many of the district’s small schools serve Chicago’s highest-needs students.”\
I want to tie the last three quotes together. These small schools are serving higher-need students but are unable to provide a robust curriculum and extracurriculars. Let me ask you this: how does closing these schools help these students? If they lose their local school and join a larger one, how is the district ensuring that they have access to IB courses, for example? Just putting kids in a building with college coursework does not mean that low-income kids have access to them. You cannot magically enroll in AP Calculus just because it’s offered at your school. Many of those decisions are made years earlier in middle school (who gets to be in the honors-track).
Atlanta Public Schools is in the middle of discussions that it sounds like Chicago is afraid of. Anyone who tells me that we must close schools to give better services to students WITHOUT explaining how the district will support students in these new schools is just shuffling students around. Related, the article goes on to explain:
“Chicago ‘doesn’t seem to be having an honest conversation about the challenges it’s facing.’”
The question I kept thinking: is Atlanta having an honest conversation about the challenges? I went looking for news stories from the last time APS closed schools, and found that in 2012 the APS leadership held more than 70 meetings to hear public concerns. For comparison, currently the district has convened a task force that has planned to meet three times. Our leaders are talking about closing schools, but just because they’re willing to entertain unpopular opinions does not mean they’re having a conversation. If the public school district isn’t held accountable to the people, then what’s the point of public schools at all?
If we DO ever end up having an honest conversation, then our leaders will have to grapple with some uncomfortable truths:
“Closing schools can also carry steep costs. In 2013, the district spent big to add staff at schools that took in students, spruce up those schools and move furniture out of the closed buildings. Then there’s what to do with vacant buildings. The district is still trying to sell 20 vacant schools from the 2013 closures, which it pays to maintain.”
You’d be forgiven for missing this part, as it can only be found at the end of the article. School closures are not the financial windfall that they are being sold as. When Philadelphia closed schools 12 years ago they realized less than one percent of the savings projected.
In summary: Chicago has several under-enrolled schools that are both expensive to close and keep open. Philanthropy, collective bargaining and local concerns have led the district to a place where people are afraid to act. I have qualms with how this article is structured but on the whole it’s a compelling, well-researched piece. It has very little to say about Atlanta, however.
The issue in Chicago does not help the discussion in Atlanta for several reasons (like the fact that APS does not have a strong union to deal with and our superintendent has been outspoken about his goals here) and this article has shown that there is not some clear path from closing schools to a healthy budget that serves students fairly.
Let me close with a surprise: I’m not fully against the idea of school closures. My study of the data and research leads me to believe that they can be used as an undesirable tool for improving student performance. To do that, however, the district leadership must be willing to do the hard work of talking with communities to draft a plan that recognizes historical harms done. If APS does go down this path it will take courage and drafting a budget that represents our community morals. If I am made your school board member, I commit to both.
-Stephen