School closings: A solution in need of a solution
Closing schools has become an almost reflexive, corporate solution to a complex fiscal and social problem – a problem to which no one has found a satisfying answer.
Districts shutter, sell or destroy physical properties typically for said fiscal reasons. Districts also terminate contracts of poor-performing service providers to make way for new leaders who most often radically rearrange the organs of a school – making it in essence a new school. In either case for students, alum and family members, closing a school can feel like excommunicating a grandfather to the wilderness to save money.In Michigan, the Saginaw School District must fill a$32.6 million hole by the 2015-2016 school year. Alumni’s tears soaked the plan to close their beloved Saginaw High. The subsequent community pressure stopped the vote to close “Sag High,” and the district found other cost-cutting measures to keep open two schools that it had planned to close. Political pressure forced this district to open their eyes to other possibilities and solutions.
In post-Katrina New Orleans, taking a school offline is more often about ushering out a poor-performing educational service provider of a charter school due to stunted academic growth. The Recovery School District (RSD) recently closed much-publicized John McDonogh High School. The Oprah Television Network dubiously featured “John Mac” in the mini-series Blackboard Wars in what was hoped to narrate an arc of improvement. Instead, within two years the RSD revoked the charter agreement from its provider, Future Is Now, and its CEO Steve Barr, amid poor performance, declining enrollments, large deficits and a media tragedy. Blackboard Wars stopped filming before