Call it school consolidation or call it school mergers, the language doesn’t matter: Seattle Public Schools is pursuing a plan to close up to 10 under-enrolled buildings next year.
This is not a new discussion for SPS, where many of the schools under consideration enroll fewer than 200 students. But the person leading these talks, Superintendent Ben Shuldiner, is proceeding in a manner so different from his predecessor there’s reason to hope for a better outcome. For the financial health of the district, and Shuldiner’s future here, that’s imperative.
While the likely savings could help with SPS’ $87 million budget deficit, Shuldiner is framing this conversation as one driven primarily by educational goals, rather than dollars.
In typically blunt style, Shuldiner laid out the situation in his weekly email to parents on Oct. 25, describing his visits to all 105 of Seattle’s schools.
“What I saw shocked me,” he wrote.
Some buildings had fewer than 100 students. Some kids were trying to learn in buildings without classroom walls, “traipsing through poorly lit hallways and hearing the scurry of much smaller beings in the rafters.” Meanwhile, other students got their lessons in “bright, airy buildings and light-filled classrooms.”
This is not equity, despite years of School Board rhetoric on that score.
Shuldiner didn’t merely criticize. He exhorted families, staff and the wider community to work with him on this problem, laying out a clear timetable for collecting the views of building principals, teachers and families with a final decision to be made by the School Board early in 2027.
Generally, school closures are viewed as bad news. But with savvy stewardship, it’s possible for Shuldiner to turn this process into a much-needed win for SPS. For instance, on the question of how vacated buildings might be used going forward.
Presently, the district allows more than 60 outside organizations — including the Seattle Preschool Program — to occupy its buildings, rent-free. At the same time, SPS is paying $183,750 in rent to the city each year to house The Center School at Seattle Center.
A lopsided relationship, at the very least.
Board members say they have no intention of selling off SPS properties. But that discussion shouldn’t be entirely off the table. Couldn’t central office staff move into some of those empty buildings, freeing the district to sell its John Stanford Center in Sodo?
For so long, problems in SPS have been presented as structural and insurmountable. This superintendent approaches them as a puzzle, a math problem that’s solvable.
“We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now,” he wrote, quoting Martin Luther King Jr. “This is the time for vigorous and positive action.”
We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.
