The Seattle Public Schools (SPS) School Board has approved a proposal for a mass closure of as many as 20 elementary schools to address a $105 million deficit.
According to Seattle Public Schools, the current system is operating at 65 percent capacity. The consolidation would bring operations up to 85 percent capacity.
Mr. Jones cited under-enrollment, staffing issues, and “inequitable offerings” at schools.
“That’s why, in the 2025–26 school year, we are looking to consolidate more than 70 elementary school sites (many currently under-enrolled) into approximately 50 well-resourced ones,” Mr. Jones said.
“This structural shortfall is caused primarily by insufficient funding from the State of Washington, declines in enrollment, [and] the spending of one-time funding sources,” the report states.
There are currently 104 school buildings and approximately 48,000 students, according to the report.
“From 2019–23, enrollment has decreased by 4,900 students, which has resulted in an $81 million drop in revenue,” the report states.
Closing the schools will save up to $2 million, according to the report.
‘Better Aligned With Student Enrollment’
The new school model will have fewer buildings, but those remaining schools will be “better aligned with student enrollment,” Mr. Jones said.“If we maintain the current system, we will need to reduce services,” he said. “This could mean having more students per teacher, reducing core school staff, scaling back preschool offerings, and suspension of new curriculum adoption. Depending on how much we cut, we might still have to close some schools.”
One of the tenets of the well-resourced school is to offer a curriculum that caters to “equity, inclusivity, and safety.”
During the May school board meeting, Mr. Jones said the school system is at a “crossroads” and that it must prepare for the future.
“This is a vision for getting ready for 2030, and 2030 is the end of our next strategic plan,” he said. “We need to do things now in order to prepare ourselves to complete the task of having a tremendous vision for student outcomes ultimately in 2030.”
‘Path to a Sustainable Future’
In what he called its “path to a sustainable future,” public outreach to the legislature and foundations will be significant.“We’ve heard it a million times: We have to have our legislature come through so we need to make sure that we have a coordinated legislative push so that we can fully fund education in a way that we need at Seattle Public Schools and not just Seattle Public Schools but at other districts that are similarly faced with these challenges,” Mr. Jones said.
“And we also need to be making sure we’re looking at strategic philanthropic requests. There’s so much wealth in this city. There’s a push that we need to make and say, ‘Here are the things that we need to sustain the innovation going forward.’”
Music, physical education, and art classes could be part of a standard curriculum at every school instead of being available at only some of the schools in the system, he said.
“This is an opportunity to consolidate our efforts so that we can be more efficient so that we can have the right adults in buildings doing services that our students need and deserve,” Mr. Jones said.
