Seattle names 21 public schools to possibly close

Seattle families now know which elementary schools will likely be on the chopping block in 2025.

Seattle Public Schools leaders on Wednesday unveiled preliminary proposals on its new “well-resourced schools” website. Marni Campbell, the district’s well-resourced schools officer, said both plans will help them ensure schools are the right size and have enough resources.

“At SPS, we want to create a system of schools that are durable and healthy,” she said in a statement. “Our plan for well-resourced schools will allow for all SPS students to receive world-class education that meets their diverse needs in their neighborhood schools.”

The “well-resourced schools” plan, also referred to as “Option A,” would close 21 schools and eliminate option and K-8 schools for $31.5 million in savings. The following schools would close under that proposal:

• Northwest Seattle: Licton Springs K-8, Salmon Bay K-8, Broadview Thompson K-8, and North Beach Elementary.
• Northeast Seattle: Green Lake, Decatur, Sacajawea, Cedar Park, and Laurelhurst elementary schools.
• Central Seattle: Catharine Blaine K-8, TOPS K-8, and John Hay, McGilvra, and Stevens elementary schools.
• Southeast Seattle: Orca K-8 and Graham Hill, Dunlap, and Rainier View elementary schools.
• Southwest Seattle: Boren STEM K-8 and Lafayette and Sanislo elementary schools.

“Option B,” or the “choice” plan, would close 17 schools, saving $25.5 million. The following schools would close:

• Northwest Seattle: Licton Springs K-8, Broadview Thompson K-8, and North Beach Elementary.
• Northeast Seattle: Green Lake, Decatur, Cedar Park, and Laurelhurst elementary schools.
• Central Seattle: Catharine Blaine K-8 and John Hay, McGilvra, Stevens, and Thurgood Marshall elementary schools.
• Southeast Seattle: Orca K-8 and Graham Hill and Rainier View elementary schools.
• Southwest Seattle: Boren Stem K-8 and Sanislo Elementary.

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That plan keeps one option K-8 school open in each region, and would mean the district would have to find another $6-7 million of cuts.

The district also laid out two other alternatives: One to scale the closures to anywhere from zero to 25 schools, or to keep all existing schools open.

But board President Liza Rankin doesn’t think that’s feasible.

For over a year, district leaders have said school consolidations are a necessary step to address an ongoing budget deficit. The district faces an estimated $100 million budget deficit for the 2025-26 school year.

“This is a hard decision,” she said. “But it’s the one that has to be made in order to best serve our students today and sustain our district into the future.”

Rankin stressed that none of these proposals are final. District administrators are expected to bring one final school closure plan to the board next month, and Rankin expects the board will vote on it sometime before winter break.

“I would really like to provide the clarity and stability for families to know going into winter break,” Rankin said. “Maybe they won’t like what’s going to happen … but we need to give people the information they need so they can make the right choices for their families.”

In the meantime, parents and community members will have the opportunity to weigh in during public meetings this month and next. Each school slated for closure will also have its own public hearing, as required by school board policy.

After the closure proposals dropped, some parents compared the moment to when the roster for a team sport or the roles in a play get posted, and everyone rushes to see if they made the list. And they walked away with a whole range of emotions — surprise, relief, disappointment, frustration.

Deby Lieu was still processing the news a couple hours after the announcement. “It’s a lot to digest at the moment,” Lieu said, appearing to hold back tears as she watched her sons run around the school playground Wednesday afternoon.

Lieu knew that school closures were on the horizon, but hadn’t thought Green Lake Elementary would be affected — or that she’d find out it’s slated for closure three days after her son started kindergarten there.

“We were looking forward to going to the school,” she said. “When we toured it, it just seemed like a wonderful group — the parents and the students were just lovely. So we wanted our son to be part of that community.”

Across the playground, Arlyn McCasey said she wasn’t surprised to see Green Lake on the list. McCasey, the mom of a second grader and new kindergartner there, knows the school is on the older side, and there are a lot of other schools with space nearby.

But it’s still sad.

“I’m already mourning the walk to school, the after school program, the community,” McCasey said. “We’ve become part of the community, so it’s a total bummer.”

But, McCasey said, she can also see why the district needs to downsize.

“I feel like they’re trying to make decisions that best work for the community and their students at large,” she said. “To get your heart set on one thing and get torn apart about it, taking it personally, I feel like is not going to help rebuild the communities that are being ruptured.”

Besides school closures, officials have said staffing reductions and other belt-tightening measures will be needed. But only “Option B,” which proposes closing fewer schools, acknowledges the need for staffing reductions.

Officials have said staffing reductions and other belt-tightening measures will be needed. The plans shared Wednesday don’t specifically address staff cuts, but officials note maintaining the district’s current 73 elementary and K-8 schools would mean “significant” reductions.

Both of the detailed options unveiled Wednesday also include school reconfigurations. In both proposals, the following option schools would shift to attendance area schools (known as neighborhood schools where students are assigned based on where they live):

• John Stanford International Elementary
• McDonald International Elementary
• Cascadia Elementary
• Thornton Creek Elementary
• Queen Anne Elementary

Under “Option A,” Hazel Wolf K-8, South Shore K-8, and Pathfinder K-8 would become K-5 attendance area schools. “Option B” would keep them all the same.

As part of both options, Sand Point Elementary would be rebuilt, and the current Laurelhurst building would be used as an interim site.

RELATED: Seattle families are bracing for school closures. What can we learn from last time?

The district’s financial woes have been stoked in large part by declining enrollment in Washington state’s largest public school system.

SPS has lost nearly 5,000 students over the last five years, a drop of about 9%.

It’s hard to say what exactly has led to this decline. District leaders have pointed to low birth rates, and say Seattle’s lack of affordable housing and high cost of living has forced some families out of the city and its public school system.

And in the wake of the pandemic, more families are choosing to homeschool their kids, or send them to private school.

RELATED: 1 in 6 Seattle kids go to private school. Is that a factor in public school struggles?

Whatever the cause, state school funding is largely based on enrollment, and district officials say the dip has resulted in a loss of about $81 million in revenue. They’ve also long blamed chronic underfunding at the state level.

For example, because of the state’s cap on special education funding, the district anticipated spending $125 million more this year to provide required services to students with disabilities than it receives in revenue from the state.

Federal Covid relief funding has allowed the district to mask these budget issues — at least somewhat — over the last several years.

But most of that funding has already expired, or will by the end of this month — and school finance experts say that’s led to this pivotal moment in Seattle Public Schools and other districts across the nation.

RELATED: How Seattle Public Schools’ budget woes got so bad

When making the case for school closures, administrators have said downsizing the district’s footprint to a “system of well-resourced schools” will allow them to more effectively and equitably distribute resources.

They say state funding is based on the cost to run a 400-student elementary school. Twenty-nine of the district’s 104 school buildings have fewer than 300 students.

The district can’t afford to give smaller schools additional staff members — like nurses, counselors, librarians, art teachers, social workers, and special education support workers — full-time. Those employees are likely shared across several schools.

On average, the district anticipates saving about $1.5 million per closed school building, and estimates the overall well-resourced schools plan would save about $30 million.

If the district doesn’t consolidate schools, leaders have said they'll have to make other painful cuts and changes — such as increasing class sizes, adjusting the labor contracts, and reducing or eliminating preschool, school specialists, and athletics.

And depending on whether the district gets more state funding during the 2025-26 legislative session, those reductions may still be necessary.

Since the district announced the proposal to close more than a quarter of its elementary schools in May, community backlash has been swift — and loud. Some parents and community members have questioned whether closing schools will actually solve Seattle’s budget problems, and have criticized what they say is a lack of communication and clarity from the district.

RELATED: Will closing schools really balance the budget for Seattle Public Schools? Parents have their doubts

RELATED: Tensions flare at Seattle school closure meeting

Seattle’s last wave of public school closures occurred in 2007 and 2008. The move was met with parent and community outcry and it led to lawsuits, security and safety concerns at district events, the attempted recall of some school board members, and the departure of the superintendent.

By October 2009, the district was seeing a turnaround in enrollment, and officials had to spend millions of dollars to reopen many of the schools they had just shut down.

District officials have said they’re confident in the data they’re using to project enrollment and consolidate schools this time around.

“We’ve been very mindful,” Campbell, the district’s well-resourced schools officer, told KUOW in a recent interview. “We’ve consulted with two external agencies to check our projection numbers, to make sure we’re doing this in a way that really hopefully recognizes the absolute challenge of the now, but is also building more towards that future.”