OPINION | Research Shows Adequately Funding Education Is the Best Way To Reduce Crime

In recent months, jarring reports have spread about the possibility of as many as 21 elementary and K–8 school closures in the Seattle public school district due to budget restraints. Meanwhile, Seattle City Council is reportedly poised to authorize up to $50,000 hiring bonuses for new, experienced police officers — a number that is unprecedented in this region.

The school closures are meant to address Seattle Public Schools’ (SPS) nearly $100 million budget deficit, and the district would still require over $60 million in additional cuts to education to balance the budget. This year, our city’s police were given raises and back pay, which represented over $96 million in compensation for police, in addition to their already increased 2024 budget.

The irony is that the justification for increased police spending is rooted in the desired outcome of increased public safety — but these drastic cuts to education ultimately make our communities less safe and less prosperous.

Research shows that increased spending on education raises graduation rates and boosts adult income, which leads to a lower likelihood of adult poverty. The data also finds, consistently, that policies that reduce poverty also lead to a reduction in crime. These cuts to education also mean inevitable cuts to arts and after-school programming, which have been proven to provide academic support, increase school participation, and decrease the likelihood of young people engaging in risky behaviors — like crime.

This summer, our City Council once again voted against restoring the $20 million in funding for student mental health services that was promised to youth organizers last year. This ubiquitous underfunding of mental health resources in our schools, both locally and nationwide, continues even as we’ve seen increases in rates of youth depression and suicide in recent years, and as youth gun assaults become more prevalent.

When you carefully consider the research and data, the obvious conclusion is that these continued cuts to education are disastrous for our communities, and for society as a whole.

Beyond the ways that we’ll collectively suffer as a result of the systematic defunding of education, I find myself personally impacted by the possibility of these closures. My nephew’s elementary school, McGilvra, is slated to be closed under both recent proposals from the district. This is a school with a staff that has gone above and beyond to nurture and support him on his academic journey. I’ve seen proponents of the closures suggest that the schools that would be closed are poorly run and underperforming schools. But that’s not the case for McGilvra, which boasts strong academic outcomes and the teachers have more collective years of experience than the district-wide average.

McGilvra students have access to individualized support through a full-time academic intervention teacher and a well-established early-intervention reading support program. In recent years, according to information provided by McGilvra’s Advocacy Committee, a subcommittee of the school’s PTA, the school “has received the largest number of choice applications compared to other neighborhood schools that feed into Meany.” This means that, like my nephew and our family, lots of children and families are having positive experiences at McGilvra. Needless to say, the thought of the school closing is incredibly troubling.

While I’m unsure of the performance data of the other schools on the chopping block, I believe it’s reasonable to conclude that closing so many schools in our city, at once, will be detrimental to Seattle’s youth. If it’s a matter of low enrollment, why is more not being done to address that specific issue? Why are we allowing the consistent chipping away at the strength and quality of our public schools?

As a community, we must stay engaged and push back. If our collective goal is an overall increased quality of life for the people of our city, we’re doing things wrong—and this isn’t simply based on a desire to go the more humane and more compassionate route, but on what data and research has told us about education, poverty, and crime reduction. If you’ve been following my work, you may notice that this is a recurring theme in my writing but these are still dots that are not being regularly connected.

Therefore, it bears repeating: Every glaring, shameful example of our city’s leaders overinvesting in police under the guise of increasing public safety, while underfunding the community programs that are proven to reduce crime, must be highlighted again and again until people come to understand that so many of the shortcomings we experience in our communities are a result of our patterns of intentional systematic failures.

In response to the outcry from the community, the district has backed off of the closure talks, for now. SPS Superintendent Brent Jones plans to announce a new proposal, with five school closures, later this month.

Rather than allowing this delay tactic to deter us from staying engaged, we should take it as a sign to push harder. We owe it to the children to continue the fight to keep our city’s schools open and funded.

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