Downsizing the district
Neighborhood schools to be shuttered, superintendent's ‘priority schools' spared
By Cosmo Garvin
cosmog@newsreview.com
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The Sacramento City Unified School District board will meet on Thursday, February 21, to consider the closure of 11 neighborhood elementary schools. They are Bret Harte, Clayton B. Wire, C.P. Huntington, Fruit Ridge, James W. Marshall, Joseph Bonnheim, Maple, Mark Hopkins, Susan B. Anthony, Tahoe and Washington elementary schools. Related stories: Plagiarists, white supremacists and me Bites schools Yolo County district attorney Jeff Reisig on plagiarism, and the Sacramento City Unified School District will experiment with notnaming its schools after white supremacists. SN&R, 08.09.12. Fail Test scores are mixed, costs are high and teachers are pissed. Why critics say Sacramento city school reform could … SN&R, 11.17.11. |
Deficits in the Sacramento City Unified School District are expected to ease somewhat—to a mere $10 million or less in 2013-2014—but the school board is preparing to close 11 public elementary schools next month. District people are calling this “rightsizing” the school system, if that sort of corporate mumbo jumbo makes you feel any better.
Each closure is estimated to save about $200,000 to $250,000 a year. That’s about $2.5 million in total annual savings, mostly from shedding the salaries of principals, maintenance and office staff at each site.
The district says the closure list is strictly based on enrollment, and that the process treats all schools equally. But some schools are more equal than others.
Some underenrolled schools are being spared because district officials assume those will see student populations rise when other nearby schools are shuttered. But three of the most underenrolled schools—Oak Ridge, Leataata Floyd and Father Keith B. Kenny—are also being protected because they are among those in Superintendent Jonathan Raymond’s Priority Schools program.
These are schools with low test scor