School closures

Tough choices ahead

As Colorado growth slows, and long-term demographics play out, many school districts are seeing reduced student enrollments. There is more of this ahead, and more school closures will be necessary as a result. And, it isn’t just public schools, as some private schools, like St. Elizabeth in Denver, are closing.

Enrollment declines raise very big challenges, but like all such situations, perhaps some opportunities, as well.

Note that school closures are generally not front and center in most of the upcoming school board elections. This tends to be a “lose-lose” issue for candidates, if they get specific, so they would rather focus on other topics when they can.

This is not the first time decline have happened in recent US history. After the baby boom ebbed, American schools saw a 3% reduction from 1970-80. Coming reductions are likely to be larger than that. As we have seen in the last few years in Denver, some of future enrollment also depends upon immigration trends, laws and enforcement.

People typically like their neighborhood schools, and in Colorado we also have, and like, a lot of school choices beyond neighborhood schools. It is not surprising that families generally very much oppose closures. Schools are part of the local culture, as well as buildings where important activities take place. Even families without children in a particular school may strongly oppose closing it down.

K12 schools are certainly not the only public facilities that are hard to close. Our national government has had commissions on military base closures, which attempt to use data and neutral expertise to find the closures that make sense. Those decision of course influence local economies in major ways. A commission is an attempt to step aside of the politics, at least somewhat. Congress, in the past, had agreed to “tie their hands” and pre-commit to the findings of independent military base closure commissions. That is the only way they work.

Similarly, some states have taken a parallel approach to discussions about closing prison facilities, branch government offices, and higher ed campuses.

The politics, though, are inevitable. Strategic approaches seem to vary from trying to insulate a commission, on the one hand, to a more explicit and active engagement process, with the involved parties. While the latter is more democratic and seems like it can be made to work, it opens many difficult and prolonged conversations that some school officials might prefer not to have. It will work better in an environment of trust, which is not where many school districts’ politics are today.

Closure of specific schools is usually driven by their size declining, to a level that is not efficient or supportable in a specific school building or campus. This usually happens when fewer school age children live in the catchment zone for that school, or if it is a school of choice, when fewer families choose it.

But, schools can also be closed for low performance. Recent analysis in Denver shows that closing low performing schools led uprooted students to perform significantly better, in other schools with better overall outcomes.

Perhaps the need to close schools, due to fewer students overall, can lead to some creative thinking about closing schools more on a performance basis than due to neighborhood demographics. That would also require some re-thinking of school boundaries, which is also politically fraught. But, if a district faces difficult choices, perhaps this is the time to bring all of these ideas to the table.