26 Kansas City schools will close

This story was published March 11, 2010.

A divided Kansas City school board voted Wednesday night (March 10, 2010) to move ahead with a historic plan to close 26 schools.

Hundreds of people in an overflow crowd — sometimes shouting out in dismay — watched with national media as the board ushered in Superintendent John Covington’s “Right Sizing Plan.”

While the nation may be watching to see whether Covington can carry out his sweeping plan, the superintendent and his board will tend to the task of working together in the weighty days ahead, board President Marilyn Simmons said.

“I do not think this is something for celebration,” she said after the 5-4 vote. “This is a somber moment.”

The school closings will reduce the number of district buildings by more than 40 percent and underpin Covington’s drive to cut $50 million from the shrunken district’s budget.

The board members who voted for the plan were Arthur Benson II, Duane Kelly, Joel Pelofsky, Derek Richey and Airick Leonard West.

Voting no were Simmons, Cokethea Hill, Helen Ragsdale and Ray Wilson.

The vote came after the board rejected a motion by Wilson to approve an amended plan that would have removed 10 schools and the district’s central office from the closing list.

That amendment failed on a 5-4 vote that mirrored the overall vote.

Most of the board members called on the public to rally behind the district, rebuking occasional scattered outcries from a mostly orderly crowd.

Simmons noted that the vote split largely along racial lines, with all four of the board’s white members supporting the plan, along with West, who is black. She urged people to resist making race an issue.

Kelly’s voice shook with tears as he explained his intentions to vote for the plan.

“Everyone had a chance to speak,” he said. “To change it now would create problems, not solve them.

“This is the most painful vote I ever cast.”

Covington looked on without comment throughout the meeting.

The plan will leave the district operating 33 schools, the fewest in 120 years. The district’s enrollment in 1889 was less than 18,000 — the same as its current enrollment. At its peak in the late 1960s, Kansas City was using more than 100 buildings and serving some 75,000 students.

Covington’s administration spent nearly six months developing its plan, saying the district must be more fiscally efficient if education reform in the struggling district is to have a chance to succeed.

Covington aimed wide, proposing closings and consolidations across the district, including cuts in all the district’s “signature” programs.

The plan consolidates the three-building African Centered Collegium Campus into one building and takes the Montessori program from three schools to two. Lincoln College Preparatory Academy and Paseo Academy are absorbing their accompanying middle schools into the high school buildings.

And Southwest Early College Campus will absorb the closing Westport High School.

The plan also calls for the district to sell its downtown headquarters at 1211 McGee St.

City Councilwoman Sharon Sanders Brooks, speaking to the board, lamented that the school closures will hurt the city’s central core.

“Continuing the blighting of the urban core,” she said, “is scandalous and shameful.”

But others acknowledged a financial reality that the district has to take care of now.

Teachers union president Andrea Flinders said the long-term health of the district won’t be determined by buildings, but by the success of students.

“It’s not buildings that count,” she said. “It’s what happens in those buildings.”

Wednesday night’s proposal included some concessions made last week from Covington’s original plan of 30 closures, unveiled in February.

Northeast High School was taken off the closing list — while Northeast Elementary was added. The district also took Carver, James, Wheatley and Whittier schools off the closing list.

While most of the district’s high schools will be reconfigured to serve grades seven to 12, the combined Lincoln high school and middle school will continue to include sixth grade.

And the elementary school language immersion programs from Longan and Foreign Language Academy, which will be sharing the academy’s building, will both retain seventh and eighth grades.

Covington did not back off his consolidation plans in some situations where program advocates’ opposition to the plan had been strongest — including the African-centered program and Faxon Montessori.

Hill criticized Covington, saying he did not involve the board as much as he should have in developing his plan. She also said he should have presented more plans to improve student achievement before the closings plan.

“It pains me to my heart that the nine members of the board have not met with the superintendent — our employee — on the largest (closing plan) that affects 18,000 kids.”

Benson replied that Covington has said all along that the district must move ahead with closings to build its financial strength so that it can make “transformational” changes to come.

Like the vote of the board, the audience was split, with many applauding the board’s decision.

But many were left distraught, like Faxon Montessori teacher Nancy Haynes, who remained in her seat crying as the room emptied.

Ossco Bolton, the leader of an anti-gang program in the district and a parent with students in the African-centered program and at Pinkerton, was disturbed by the racial division in the vote.

“How many kids in the district look like those four white males you see there (who voted for the plan)?” he said. “...You can’t speak for my children if you haven’t been through what they’ve been through.”

The size of the cuts, unmitigated by the board’s vote, remained astonishing to others.

“I think it’s an atrocity to cut education this badly,” said Cris Mann, a special education teacher from Longfellow. “The idea that you have to destroy something in order to build it up — that’s like saying that you are going to go into Iraq, tear it down and expect peace.”

Lincoln parent Fred Hudgins took heart in the passion of the audience, which came on the heels of public forums last month that were attended by hundreds of parents and community members. The district will be stronger, he said, if the passion carries back into the homes and schools.

“We want to know these parents are fired up,” he said. “...But you have to channel that energy toward student achievement.”

It was a sad day, Ragsdale said. She pleaded with the audience to keep faith in the district and its superintendent.

“Don’t take your children out of the district,” she said. “I have confidence Covington will live up to his word. ... Please stay with us. Stay with us and walk this road together.”

This story was originally published March 31, 2016 at 11:13 AM with the headline "26 Kansas City schools will close."