South Seattle School Closures Raise Concerns for Marginalized Students and Education Quality

by Nimra Ahmad

In the South End, parents, students, and educators are coming to grips with proposed massive school closures and their effects on children — especially marginalized and vulnerable students.

After several months of trepidation about school closures from parents and educators, Seattle Public Schools (SPS) announced two proposals for the shuttering of 17 or 21 elementary and K–8 schools.

In Southeast Seattle, both plans would shut down Orca K–8 ​School, Graham Hill Elementary​, and Rainier View​ Elementary. The fate of Dunlap Elementary hangs in the balance; Option A would keep it open, while Option B would close it. Option A would also convert South Shore PreK–8 into an attendance area K–5 school, eliminating K-8 and option elementary schools altogether. 

“Maybe this is being a bit idealistic, but … this is a very rich city in the richest country that has ever existed. Surely, there are other ways to fulfill Washington’s paramount duty to educate its citizens, but apparently, when the school districts are in trouble, we’re not going to get bailed out by anybody,” said Orca K–8 kindergarten teacher Tyler Dupuis. “I guess it’ll have to be our youngest and most vulnerable learners who are going to bear the brunt of all this.” 

Dupuis and others also brought up the fact that closing schools will not solve the district’s budget deficit. School closures would save the district between $25.5 million and $31.5 million, but the district’s deficit is $94 million. 

“To take such a drastic change for something that isn’t even really going to move the needle that much, I just feel like there has to be a better plan,” said Kholysoh Cashatt, a mother of two students at Graham Hill Elementary.

Why Are School Closures Happening?

The school closures are arriving after SPS has faced a decline in enrollment. Over five years, enrollment has dropped by 4,000 students, according to the district. Additionally, federal pandemic relief funds have dried up.

The school district has said that it is too expensive to maintain and run elementary schools with enrollments of fewer than 400 students. There are currently 58 elementary schools within SPS with less than 400 students. The district is also pushing a framework of creating “well-resourced schools” — through consolidation, it can avoid making cuts at small schools and instead focus resources on fewer, bigger schools.

“[SPS is] not alone in the challenge of trying to operate well-resourced schools that are really low enrollment,” said David Knight, an associate professor of education at the University of Washington. “If you have enrollment above a certain threshold, then you’re better able to equip that school with things like counselors and nurses, elective courses, the arts. Anything that fewer students are going to need are sometimes resources that you can provide when you have a larger number of students.”

Concern for Students

At the core of most emotional responses from parents and educators is a fear of how closing schools will affect students. 

Dustin Cole is a special education teacher at Graham Hill Elementary and has questions about resources for students with disabilities. He and other special ed teachers at Graham worked to create guidelines and procedures for their students that he said weren’t standardized across the district.

“The questions that aren’t being asked are how many special education programs, specifically those for students with moderate to severe learning disabilities, how many of those programs currently do not have [certified] special education teachers? I know many schools that do not have special ed teachers in them, and if they can’t even hire teachers now, how are they going to hire more?” Cole asked. “Graham Hill, for example, has a really great and growing collaborative, inclusive program for all of our students … What happens if they go to a school that does not have that program, that does not have that culture? That they will be set back years or not even be included?” 

Looking at Southeast Seattle in particular, the schools also have a high number of students of color and students who have been historically underserved.

According to enrollment data from last school year, Rainier View Elementary and Dunlap Elementary hosted over 90% students of color, while Graham Hill Elementary had about 74% and Orca K-8 School had 65%.

The district’s 2022–23 equity tiers — a process that SPS developed to identify priority schools for protection during poor fiscal cycles — identified Dunlap Elementary as a Tier 1 school, and Graham Hill Elementary as a Tier 2 school. The higher the tier, the more prioritized the school is for support and protection.

The tiers are based on factors such as the number of Black/African American male students, students of color furthest from educational justice, students who qualify for free/reduced meal programs, students who are multilingual learners, students born outside the United States, and students experiencing homelessness. The school district did not release equity tiers for the 2024–25 school year.

The school district is cutting about the same number of schools across each of the five regions it has delineated, but some say the impact would be felt more intensely in the South End.

“Some of the research we’ve done, particularly during the Great Recession, showed that when states are not adequately funding education, the higher-poverty school districts end up having to make cuts first — those that are more dependent on state aid,” Knight said. “And then within school districts, the individual schools that serve higher percentages of students of color and low-income students, those schools often take the brunt of budget cuts too, because if they’re going to conduct teacher layoffs, they’re usually done by seniority, and the most inexperienced teachers are often clustered in higher poverty schools.”

Other concerns include large class sizes and the inability to provide individualized attention to students; how these closures will affect elementary school students mentally, after also experiencing school during the pandemic quarantine; and more logistical matters such as transportation, now that some students will be zoned for schools outside their neighborhoods. 

The key to reducing harm to students, Knight said, is making a smooth transition.

“Some of the things that schools have done is provide extra resources for students who are going through a transition, make sure you’re having one-on-one meetings, involving any communities that are affected, all of that sort of extra investment in students,” Knight said.

But many — people like Dupuis and Cashatt — aren’t ready to accept the fate of school closures. They want to fight back.

What’s Next?

Knight noted that in education, the majority of the budget — roughly 80% — goes to people and staff, while the remaining 20% goes to capital. Most of the savings will come from a reduction in personnel rather than a reduction in capital.

That being said, a staff reduction wouldn’t have to be conducted all at once — it could be done through hiring freezes or natural turnover and reducing the rate of hiring slowly over time. But Knight said that given the size of the budget shortfall, SPS would have to reduce the number of staff.

The community also has concerns and questions about how the shortfall happened, and where the money has gone. Cashatt said it’s “head scratching” to see the deficit as school levies continue to get passed.

“I feel like there’s such a disconnect between the leadership and the schools … Are the leaders of our district being good stewards of our funds, or is money being wasted, not on underfilled schools, but in failed projects or measures that haven’t been prevented?” Cole asked. “Maybe that’s a bigger question, but I think just closing schools and reshuffling the deck isn’t going to save money unless they start to fire staff.”

A school board meeting is taking place at 4:15 p.m. today at John Stanford Center. There are plans for a rally to be held outside in opposition of the school closures.

Nimra Ahmad is a news writer for the South Seattle Emerald. She has bylines in Crosscut, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Oglethorpe Echo, and The Red & Black. You can find her on Twitter at @nimra_ahmad22 or email her at Nimra.Ahmad@SeattleEmerald.org.