The Kansas City school board narrowly approved a plan Wednesday night to close nearly half the district’s schools in a desperate bid to avoid a potential bankruptcy.
The board voted 5-4 after parents and community leaders made final pleas to spare the schools even as the beleaguered district seeks to erase a projected $50 million budget shortfall. The approved plan calls for shuttering 29 of 61 schools – a striking amount even as public school closures rise nationwide while the recession eats away at academic budgets.
“The urban core has suffered white flight post-the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision Brown v. the Board of Education, blockbusting by the real estate industry, redlining by banks and other financial institutions, retail and grocery store abandonment,” Kansas City Councilwoman Sharon Sanders Brooks said to applause from a standing-room-only crowd of more than 200 people.
“And now the public education system is aiding and abetting in the economic demise of our school district,” she said. “It is shameful and sinful.”
Many school board members said the vote was difficult. An emotional Duane Kelly called it “the most painful vote” he has cast in 10 years on the board.
Under the approved plan, buildings will be shuttered before the next school year. Teachers at six other low-performing schools will be required to reapply for their jobs, and the district will sell its downtown central office. About 700 of the district’s 3,000 jobs – including 285 teachers – also are expected to be cut.
“My analogy is we took a meat ax to the district,” said board member Joel Pelofsky, who voted for the closures. “Now we have to figure out how to sandpaper it into place.”
Some parents called for Superintendent John Covington’s departure after the vote, shouting, “He has to go.”
Covington, one in a long line of superintendents, has spent the past month making the case to sometimes angry groups of parents and students that the closures are necessary. He declined to discuss the closures after the meeting but planned to talk at a news conference Thursday. Click to continue »
