Half of Kansas City public schools to close

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KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The Kansas City school board is closing nearly half of the district's schools in a desperate bid to stay afloat.
The board's 5-4 decision Wednesday night means 29 out of 61 schools will shut down at the end of the school year. The district is seeking to erase a projected $50 million budget shortfall.

Teachers at six other low-performing schools will have to reapply for their jobs, and the district will sell its downtown central office. The plan, proposed by Superintendent John Covington, also will eliminate about 700 of 3,000 jobs, including 285 teachers.

"The bottom line is the quality of education we're offering children in Kansas City is not good enough," Covington said. "One reason it's not good enough is that we've tried to spread our resources over far too many schools."


SUPERINTENDENT: Kansas City considers closing 31 of 61 schools

Covington's move comes after decades of dropping enrollment but few efforts to reduce buildings or staff. Over the past 40 years, enrollment has dropped from more than 75,000 students to about 17,500.

The superintendent has spent the past month making the case to sometimes angry groups of parents and students that the closures are necessary. He has stressed that the district's buildings are only half-full as its population has plummeted amid political squabbling and chronically abysmal test scores.

Covington arrived last July after three years leading the Pueblo, Colo., schools and said he knew almost immediately that he'd have to make major cuts: "I'm running twice the number of schools for less students than I had in Pueblo, so I knew that was a problem." While many urban districts have spent years gradually downsizing, Covington said, "we don't have that luxury."

Fewer students mean less money from the state. For the past few years, the district has been plowing through the large reserves it built up when money from a $2 billion court-ordered desegregation plan was flooding its coffers.

School administrators have said that without radical cuts, the district could be in the red by 2011.

Further stressing the budget, the district will lose $23.5 million in the upcoming academic year that it had received from the state for educating students who attended seven schools that have switched to a better-performing, neighboring district.

Although there has been a national rise in the closing of public schools as districts cope with a recession that has eaten away at academic budgets, the potential closures in Kansas City are striking in scope.

Many big districts are closing one or two schools.