by MICAH WILKINS
The school board voted Wednesday night, 5-4, to close 26 public schools in the city, in hopes to cut $50 million from the district’s budget. Read the Kansas City Star article here.
This move is superintendent John Covington’s “Right Sizing Plan.” This morning, Covington spoke to the media, stating that the district is ready to “rise from the ashes.” Read this Star article here.
An entire list of all school closings, including other changes can be found here. Most of the schools that will be closing are grade schools and middle schools, like Lincoln College Prep, which will move into Lincoln Prep High. Westport High School will move into Southwest High School. All high schools in the district will begin including 7th and 8th graders.
Now only 33 schools are in the district, with attendance lower than ever; today, less than 18,000 students are enrolled in Kansas City public schools– the same amount of students enrolled in 1889.
City Councilwoman Sharon Sanders Brooks spoke to the board and argued that “continuing the blighting of the urban core is scandalous and shameful.” In addition, President of the board, Marilyn Simmons, noted that the vote split along racial lines. Four of the board’s white members supported the plan, along with Airick Leonard West, who is black.
It took me a while to convince myself that this is a good idea. I, unlike most other STA girls, went to public school, and I had the best teachers and the best education that I could have hoped for. However, I have to realize that Academie Lafayette is not like other public schools. For starters, it’s a charter school, meaning that it is controlled in large part by the parents. Charter schools also do not have contracts for their teachers. That means that, if they are unsatisfied with a teachers’ work, they are free to fire that employee. At public schools, however, firing a teacher is much more difficult.
Even though my grade school was awesome, that is not true for every other public school in the Kansas City, Missouri school district. One of the biggest reasons Covington is initiating this drastic change is to better the educations of the 17,000 students in the district. This means getting rid of inefficient and ineffective teachers.
But eliminating schools in general just sounds like a bad idea, right? However, most of these schools were serving less than a hundred students, who were not even receiving a good education. In addition, though it is difficult for young people to wrap our minds around it, the district was in big financial trouble. If the issue went unaddressed, we would be worse off. Covington and the school board had virtually no choice but to cut the schools.
What do you think? Should the school board have voted to cut these schools? Were there any other areas that could have been cut, rather than education? What do you think of the current state of public education in Kansas City?
