I originally wrote this back in February. The KCMSD approved this plan and yesterday was the last day of school for this school year. It also marked the end, the closure of 21 community treasures and havens in Kansas City-its schools. This is a little less than half of the schools in the district. This has become a common event in the US as school districts struggle with increasing debt, decreasing revenues and test scores. What is unique about this is the depth of closures. It particularly hits the inner-city students hard. Since the plan in KCMSD is moving forward the community must not let this event pass with a whisper. We must hold Dr. Covington, the Kansas City School Board, the mayor and the city council accountable for the execution of this plan. If test scores do not rise, the educational quality improves, redevelopment of the closed buildings, and new budget cuts occur within the district this plan would be an unequivocal failure. That should not be allowed to happen. The way to prevent it is for the entire community those with children and those without to be active voices about the future actions and reports of the KCMSD and to take vigorous and unmitigated action if there is any academic performance drops in our children, abandoned school buildings still boarded up, and teachers still being laid off. The future of Kansas City is at stake.

“Public schools that encourage systemic reform and embrace effective approaches to teaching and learning help prepare America’s students to graduate ready for college and a career, and enable them to out-compete any worker, anywhere in the world.” President Barack Obama

“If we keep our school district on its current trajectory, the only thing that we can hope for is that the Mayan calendar is correct. Because it’s coming.” KCMSD Superintendent John Covington

The allusion Mr. Covington makes is to the end of the world in 2012; the end of the Kansas City, Missouri School District (KCMSD) if his proposal is not accepted. He has proposed closing about half of the 61 schools in the district and the elimination of staff by 700 positions, including 285 teachers. He went on to explain that the district needs to cut $40-$50 million dollars from next year’s budget.
Is this an example of the “systemic reform” that will lead KCMSD children to be fully prepared for college, a career, and have the ability to “out-compete any worker, anywhere in the world?”
I am not a native to Kansas City. I was born and raised in New York City. Yet, even though President Gerald Ford told New York City to “Drop Dead” during the city’s financial crisis in the 1970’s there was never a sweeping round of school closures. Nor were there any in the 1980’s or 1990’s. I am not saying that there were not any closures by the New York Board of Education from the 1970’s-1990’s the closures however, were never on a magnitude close to what was announced by Dr. Covington in the Kansas City School District.
The Kansas City School District serves the urban core of the city. It stretches east from the state line with Kansas to the western edges of the cities of Independence (birthplace of President Harry Truman) and Raytown, Missouri. From the north the boundary is from the Missouri River to Hickman Mills. By comparison, this is comparable to a geographic area from 125th street in Manhattan to the Bronx/Westchester county border. This area in New York would include: Harlem, Washington Heights, the South Bronx, Tremont, West Farms, Riverdale, and Eastchester. In scope if the same announcement occurred in New York, the result would be approximately 1 in 3 schools being shuttered.
The KCMSD student body based on 2009 demographic data serves:
• 64.4% African-American
• 19.3% Hispanic
• 1.9% Asian/Pacific Islander
• .03% American Indian/Alaskan Native
• 14% White
These children live in some of the most economically depressed and disadvantaged areas in Kansas City. Coming from the projects in the South Bronx I uniquely understand the challenges they face and will need to overcome. Schools and education is essential element to successfully facing the challenges and overcoming them.
I took an inordinate amount of time to write this post because I really wanted to understand and inform myself on this issue. I read all of the 112 page report, “Right Sizing the Kansas City, Missouri School District” in addition to doing some other independent research. I really must commend the KCMSD for such a data-driven analysis of their buildings, customers, and the district at large.
However, there are some points that did disturb me about the report itself and my analysis of it.
Item One: There was only one parent, one student, and three teachers (two of which are retired and one of those was a retired principal, also). Where was the robust sampling from the District’s stakeholders? Is it due to low membership and participation in Parent-Teacher Associations in KCSMD (this is a trend not just in Kansas City but across the nation). There’s a current enrollment of 17,000 in KCSMD and they could not include a few more seats for front-line active teachers (non-administrators), parents, and above all the students of the KCMSD?
Item Two: The report provides U.S. census population estimates for school age children in the KCMSD and live births per zip code in the KCMSD retroactive to 2002. The Kansas City Planning and Development Department provided economic status breakdowns of the KCMSD based on Household Income, Unemployment Rate, Foreclosure Rate, Crime rate, USPS Vacancy Rate, Home Values, and the Percentage of single family occupied homes. All of this data and analysis was performed yet the report and subsequent closure plan announcement did not take into account that the state of Missouri has the second highest Black homicide victimization rate in the United States. As I pointed out earlier in a previous commentary 9% of those homicide victims nationally were less than 18 years of age. Professor James Alan Fox of Northeastern University recently completed a study that determined from 2002-2007 male black youth homicide victims increased by 31%, the rate of black youth killed by guns rose by 54% nationally. The Mission Statement of the KCMSD states “…provide a safe, nurturing environment for each student to learn every day…” How will the closure plan provide that and affect the homicide victimization rate in our community?
Item Three: Is this something that needed to be addressed maybe 10 years ago? From 1980- 2005 (this excludes the Independence annexation that occurred in 2008) there were only 12 school closures. They were:
1. West High School
2. West Junior High School
3. The Switzer School and Annex
4. Southwest High School
5. Greenwood High School
6. Frances Willard School
7. Bingham Junior High School
8. Paul Robeson Middle School
9. Bancroft Elementary School
10. Norman School
11. Seven Oaks Elementary
12. Pitcher (C.R. Anderson) School
The trending in decreased births, the downward spiral of the community, the economic pressures had already begun by 1980. The trending cycle would have been noticeable by data analysis. Overall the KCMSD has closed more than 40 schools over 40 years. Why all of a sudden is the KCMSD announcing they are approaching an impending apocalypse? Are we to believe the KCMSD does not have any competent persons who can do trend and data analysis? Why were there no measures taken earlier? This leads me to….
Item Four: The lack of political will and decision-making in a vacuüm. Instead of decision-making with a full analysis of the impacts to the overall community. This plan will have economic development effects on the urban core of Kansas City. For example, the options outlined on what will happen to the buildings closed are: to sell them for commercial development, tear them down, make them into parks or “green” spaces, and leave them shuttered in case of increase enrollment. Those are not very pragmatic options. For one there are many abandoned schools throughout the district that have become dumping grounds of various sorts, the “Loretto” apartments on 39th street is an example of converted school with atrociously small dwellings, why create a park when such as Westport High (one of the schools targeted) is next to Gilliam Park. There are now 15 abandoned schools on the KCMSD books, one of them West Junior High which has been closed for 20 years. The closure of schools without a redevelopment plan that is in lock-step with a greater Kansas City economic redevelopment plan is lunacy. The KCMSD, the Kansas City City Council, Dr. Covington, and the mayor all must reconcile any closures to a master plan of growth and economic development that was completed by then-mayor, now U.S. Representative Emmanuel Cleaver. To answer the question posed in Item Three, the lack of political will and leadership prevented closures that may have been needed long ago. The appalling negligence and incompetence of the school board and the city government has helped create this plan. Some schools that have been targeted to be closed have had extensive remodels performed on them costing us, the taxpayers millions of dollars. The “not in my neighborhood” disease stymied previous school administrators from making hard decisions then and nefarious school boards redirected monies for newer school computers and other equipment into their own pockets or was parlayed into luxurious vacations. The KCMSD, city, and state are all intertwined and linked with each other yet incompetence, lack of decision-making in a homogenous measure taking into account the effect on all stakeholders is seriously lacking.
Schools are magnets. They should be their own economic stimulus to a community, especially in what are considered economically disadvantaged ones. They serve as anchors to development cultural and economic. A growing school system is an indicator of a vibrant growing city. Successful business corridors are developed around schools and are linked together by schools. Those corridors provide jobs and help to maintain and increase property values. The availability of jobs and employment help to drive down crime in communities and schools along with churches and hopefully parents, give children a moral and ethical grounding that leads to increased self-respect, higher educational achievement, lower underage pregnancy, STD and violence rates.
Is the fact that 10 candidates are vying for five seats in April’s school board election denotes a possible rethinking of this proposal? (Ultimately, it did not.) Of course, each of these candidates must be critically evaluated and intensively and repeatedly questioned by all of us in the community before the election. (Was this done adequately?) Is that why Dr. Covington has this plan on the fast track? Where is the plan after the plan? The plan that will answer the issues of improved curriculums, abandoned buildings, and all other questions the currently proposed plan does not address.
The Kansas City School Board has five core beliefs. The five beliefs are:
• We believe that every person must be treated with dignity and respect.
• We believe it is our duty to create a supportive community where every person can achieve excellence and is expected to do so.
• We believe that, as a community, we must aggressively invest in life-long education to equip all people with the skills and knowledge to effectively participate and compete in a global society.
• We believe it is our duty as a community to actively participate in developing and implementing solutions to address our challenges.
• We believe we are all responsible for the protection, care and wellbeing of children and youth, and must be equipped to do so.
Until a plan is presented that comprehensively lives up to these beliefs and can be integrated into a larger plan that addresses our community as a whole I am profoundly adamantly against it in its present form. What say you?