Plan to reopen KC’s Southwest High dies as district ends talks with community group
After a year of discussions over whether Kansas City Public Schools should hand over the closed Southwest High School building to a community group wanting to open its own school there, the district has said no. And it sounds final.
“KCPS does not believe the (Uniting at Southwest) proposal meets the standards and outcomes required to move forward, particularly in regards to financial sustainability,” the district said in a press release Thursday afternoon. “In alignment with the Education Collaboration process, the KCPS administration is indefinitely suspending negotiations with USW.”
Uniting at Southwest called the news “disappointing,” saying the district failed to be transparent and was slow to involve the community in the decision.
“In a phone call last Friday, Dr. Bedell, the Superintendent of Kansas City Public Schools, informed us that he does not want to work together to form a rigorous, innovative and welcoming middle and high school at Southwest High School,” the group’s leaders said in a statement to parents who, they said, had pledged to send as many as 2,000 children to the school if it were approved.
“While we have attempted to co-facilitate a community-driven, open, and transparent process to start having the tough conversations required for an ambitious opportunity like USW for all Kansas City kids, we have been unable to come to an agreement with KCPS regarding the timing and scope of a community engagement process.”
Uniting at Southwest had made its proposal last May, just after the district created a mechanism to collaborate with community groups and area businesses.
The group wanted to reopen Southwest as a middle and high school that would incorporate “diversity by design” in the student body makeup and “project-based learning” as a teaching method.
At the time, some district officials called the proposal a “budding partnership.” But Superintendent Mark Bedell was quick to interject, “This doesn’t mean that we have entered into any type of agreement.”
Before the group made its proposal, it had been haggling with the district for almost two years over what should be done with the Southwest building, at 6512 Wornall Road. School officials were reluctant to hand it over to the group for fear that it might serve only a small segment of the district.
While district officials did not outline details about where the proposal had failed financially, the release did say that the process requires that proposals “contribute to a more coordinated system that provides for the educational needs of all children within KCPS boundaries.” And it said that proposals “shall not compromise the financial sustainability of the overall system, nor contribute to inefficiency or redundancy.”
Instead, school officials said, the district will “devote its attention and resources to continued conversations with the entire community about solutions that will promote equitable educational outcomes for all our children.”
Uniting at Southwest became a grassroots movement that started among residents living in and around Brookside, the neighborhood south of Brush Creek populated mostly with middle- and upper-middle income families, many of whom have enrolled their children in private high schools rather than the city’s public schools.
But in its statement Thursday, the group said, “We understood that to make USW successful, it needs to be welcoming and successful for all KCMO students. Partnering with the Kansas City Public Schools appeared to be the best way to do this.”
The group also said that while the district won’t partner on this venture, the group is “open to re-engaging” with “any entity that has a dedicated commitment to Kansas City kids.”
This story was originally published April 4, 2019 at 5:53 PM with the headline "Plan to reopen KC’s Southwest High dies as district ends talks with community group."