Seattle’s schools are in trouble, and the vultures are circling.
Sure, there are the usual chronic problems: low test scores, “disproportionality,” high dropout rates, aging physical plants, white flight—the sorts of problems that plague every large urban school district. But the source of the Seattle School District’s biggest headache is a $20 million budget deficit for the 2006–07 school year. The shortfall will be the result of past recklessness and stunningly sloppy accounting—fiscal policies largely pursued before the current superintendent and School Board took office last year.
But it has those current officials considering unpopular options to bridge the deficit. Two options have district parents up in arms, and that, in turn, has opportunistic politicians and business leaders, including City Council member Jan Drago, making serious noises about the possibility of the city of Seattle taking over Seattle Public Schools and administering it as an independent entity similar to City Light. The City Council has already gotten involved, loaning two staff members to the school district to help analyze possible budget cutbacks.
Having the city government run the schools is a radical solution with, at best, mixed results in cities where it’s been tried: Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, New York, and Washington, D.C. But each of those cities has slums and funding disparity far more severe than genteel Seattle. That’s not to say Seattle’s demographics aren’t difficult: The combination of white flight to private schools, housing costs that are prohibitive for many younger parents, and an influx of immigrants has left public schools here with a 60 percent nonwhite population, with 40 percent of students poor enough to qualify for free or low-cost school lunches. A problem, to be sure, but not nearly as severe as what’s faced by those older Eastern cities. Overall, Seattle schools have had adequate funding; the problem is that the district has misspent and miscounted its money in recent years.
In that context, it’s hard to see how a city takeover would benefit beleaguered students. But it’s easy to see who else it might benefit: Mayor Greg Nickels, up for re-election this year. He’s probably going to win comfortably, there being no serious challenger, but what better crowning achievement in his first term than to take charge and give the boot to the district’s unpopular bureaucrats?
The problem is that the same budget deficit and the unsavory options to try to solve it won’t go away, no matter who runs the school district. Staff and their unions are alarmed by a proposal, backed by School Board member Dick Lilly, to reduce teaching and administrative positions through attrition. Parents were furious at public meetings last month over proposals to close underutilized schools and to reduce enrollment options by ending the “choice” system, curtailing crosstown busing costs. With a steadily declining enrollment over the years, Seattle has the lowest number of students per school building of any large district in the state.
Those are among the only options on the table that would save significant amounts of money, but even those wouldn’t put much of a dent in the $20 million budget shortfall. The busing costs saved by eliminating enrollment choice would be as little as $4 million, once state-mandated requirements for special needs and other students are factored in. That doesn’t count the lost money if students transfer out of the district or switch to private schools. (Schools get state money based on the number of students.) Similarly, savings from the closure of up to 20 of the district’s elementary and middle schools, a proposal put forward by Superintendent Raj Manhas, would not bridge the budget gap before factoring in lost enrollment. (And a majority of School Board members opposes the closures.) Staffing levels can and surely will be allowed to dwindle, but that won’t be enough, either. The hard cuts have already been made in past years, and not much is left for administrators to do. So heck, why not hand over the mess to bureaucrats who have no education experience, who don’t have the first clue about how to run a school district?
Having the city take over Seattle’s schools is a short-term fix that might make the mayor and his City Council cronies look and feel good for a little while, but for the city’s schoolchildren it’s a bad idea. Manhas and the board majority deserve credit for trying to fix the mess left to them by others. They don’t need political meddling. Seattle should leave its schools to the people who have at least some experience, however flawed, running them.
