The SPS
Papers.

The usual argument

SPS should prioritize the students who depend most on public schools, especially those furthest from educational justice. With limited resources, meeting their needs must come before winning back families who have other options.

Why it’s wrong

Yes, put those children first. They need funding and people with power willing to fight for their schools. That fight gets harder when our leaders choose private schools for their own kids.

Public schools can stay open to everyone while becoming less shared. When families with the most resources buy alternatives, the system risks becoming a service for those with fewer choices. Fewer families have a daily stake in defending it.

Families who leave can still care about public education. But support in principle carries less urgency than a direct stake in whether a school succeeds. When the departing families have money, access and political connections, that loss can matter beyond enrollment.

Seattle’s private-school sector is substantial: our analysis of 2024 Census estimates puts its share at 25.8% of resident K–12 enrollment.

The resources outside the public system matter, too. Among Seattle’s ten largest private schools, four with available financial statements average about $47,400 in annual expenses per matching pupil, compared with SPS’s $24,300 General Fund figure. Five report endowments totaling about $87,500 per pupil. Endowment income can support aid, programs and long-term development.

Sources and calculation

Private expenses: $175,277,404 / 3,695 matching pupils. Endowment: $409,936,698 / 4,683. Lakeside includes Downtown to match the nonprofit's scope. SPS: $1,195,855,065.08 in 2024–25 General Fund expenditures / 49,240 fall pupils; Capital Projects spending is excluded. Neither private quotient estimates the average across all ten schools. School records, source links and methods.

We like Governor Bob Ferguson and want him to succeed. His family’s private-school choice, reported by Washington Policy Center in 2024, illustrates the problem: even leaders we support can be insulated from the public system’s failures. The same distance matters for school-board directors who choose private education. Sincere support does not erase the loss of a direct stake.

Research on the politics of opting out examines how private education and support for public spending affect each other. Research on unequal political influence gives us another reason to worry about whose daily stake disappears. Together, they help explain why losing a family with political influence can cost more than one enrollment count suggests.

Seattle still votes strongly for education levies. Build on that commitment. The answer is to keep families invested, give families with less influence a stronger voice and make public schools worth choosing across income groups.

Olympia must deliver adequate state funding. The board must demand a credible plan to retain and win back families. Closing schools is no substitute for either.

Washington calls education the state’s “paramount duty.” A constitutional promise needs people with power to make the state deliver.

The usual argument

Keeping too many buildings open ties up money in utilities, maintenance and administration. Combining schools can reduce those overhead costs and put more of a limited budget into teaching and student support.

Why it’s wrong

The children still need teachers, even after their school closes. A school’s budget is not the amount the district saves by shutting its doors.

Teachers, disability services and other obligations follow children. Closures can increase transportation costs and add bills for moving equipment, adapting receiving schools and supporting transitions. Families who leave can take revenue with them.

Mothballing is not free. Seattle Public Schools must secure buildings, protect them from the weather, maintain grounds and make repairs. After earlier Seattle closures, reporting documented ongoing upkeep and costly damage at vacant schools. Closing the doors does not close the bills.

Seattle residents bear those public costs while losing an active school. If vacant sites deteriorate, neighborhoods can face blight and public-safety burdens—risks Seattle’s own building department warns about. A cost shifted onto the city or its residents is still a public cost.

The promised net savings may never arrive. A 2026 California study of districts in 2011–2019 found no average improvement in fiscal standing after closures. Pew’s six-city review found small short-term savings and substantial ongoing costs to maintain vacant schools.

Prove the savings with a complete ledger: costs that disappear, transportation and transition expenses, annual mothballing costs, revenue at risk and effects on the surrounding community. Publish the net recurring savings, the break-even year and a funded plan for each closed building. Compare that result with keeping the school open.

Our financial evidence lays out the problem. Families need not solve SPS’s entire deficit to reject an unproven closure.

The usual argument

Larger schools can support fuller teaching teams, reliable access to specialists and better-equipped classrooms. A more consistent set of school models can make staffing and scheduling easier. Seattle Public Schools’ October 2024 closure analysis argued that these benefits could justify moving children.

Why it’s wrong

A tidier organization chart is no reason to uproot a child. If the move is better for children, show their families what improves—and what they lose to get it.

Name the gains in instruction, class size, disability support and access to specialists. Put funded commitments alongside the effects on friendships, program continuity, travel and childcare. Who answers if the district does not deliver?

Other districts have tested the promise. A University of Chicago study of the city’s 2013 closures documented difficult mergers, disrupted relationships and negative math effects for displaced students throughout four years of follow-up. An available seat is not proof of a better education.

Seattle can draw on a different tradition. In his 1998 interview, John Stanford described schools controlling their staffing and money, answering for student learning and drawing the whole community into education. John Stanford International School grew around a distinctive language-immersion model shaped by community input.

Build on that vision with immersion, K–8 programs, arts and strong neighborhood schools. Give children fair access and judge these programs by what students learn. Making schools more alike is not a measure of success.

Take the educational case to affected and receiving communities before the board decides. Provide translated information, answer specific objections and show what changed because families spoke. A listening session should improve the proposal, not just offer a microphone after the important decisions.

Before dismantling a successful school, explain why the promised improvements require losing what already works. If the benefits remain vague or unfunded, the board should reject the proposal.

Do not invoke children’s interests and then treat their families as an obstacle to overcome.

The usual argument

The budget must balance on a deadline. Recruitment, additional state funding and program changes are uncertain and may not deliver money in time. If they cannot close the immediate gap, consolidation may be necessary even while the district pursues longer-term solutions.

Why it’s wrong

A deadline does not prove closure is the only option. If this is the last resort, show what else you tried. Families deserve more than a countdown.

Where is Seattle Public Schools’ sustained recruitment and retention campaign? Who owns it? What is its budget? Which prospective families did it reach? How many enrolled, and what did the district learn?

Enrollment events and assistance matter. So do school-run tours. But a district strategy must reach families who do not already know which school website to visit. That means coordinated outreach, preschool partnerships, multilingual materials, direct contact and follow-up through registration.

A school should not have to build its own marketing operation to prove it deserves to exist.

Give families a reason to enroll. The district’s family survey, conducted in 2024, identifies educational quality, curriculum and better alternatives among reasons former families left. Back the recruitment campaign with improvements families can see.

Apply the same test to program changes, childcare, enrollment access and shared building use. Name what the district tried, what happened and why it rejected the remaining options.

Proponents must show the district gave alternatives a serious chance.

The usual argument

The district’s first responsibility is to the children enrolled now, especially those who need the most support. A school with only a handful of children in a grade may struggle to offer enough peers, stable teaching teams and reliable services. Keeping it open can consume resources other children need. Recruitment costs money and may not rebuild enrollment in time.

Why it’s wrong

A class with only a handful of children can be a real problem. SPS owes those children a better education—and their families an account of how the school got so small. Low enrollment should trigger help before it becomes a closure notice.

Enrollment reflects years of decisions. Unstable leadership, shifting programs and repeated uncertainty can wear down trust and push families away. Research on principal turnover links frequent leadership changes to lower teacher retention and weaker student achievement gains. Before giving up on a school, SPS should show what it did to stabilize leadership, improve teaching and bring families back.

John Stanford’s vision paired authority over staffing and budgets with accountability for children’s learning. Start there: support strong principals, replace persistently ineffective leadership and hold the central office responsible for helping schools succeed. Children should not lose their school because adults failed to manage it.

Then show the actual costs. A child who needs an aide or adapted transportation does not become cheaper to educate because another family leaves SPS. Meeting that child’s needs takes money—and people with the power to secure it.

Children need different levels of support. Some need speech or occupational therapy, additional staff or adapted transportation. Others need fewer additional services. Special-education funding comes on top of the basic allocation; count both the added funding and the services it must pay for.

Average spending per student is not the price of educating the next child. A student joining a classroom with room may add little immediate cost. Crossing a staffing threshold can require another teacher. Washington’s funding system responds to enrollment and program needs. Publish the additional revenue, service costs and staffing thresholds by school, using children’s actual needs.

Who leaves matters. When a departure removes more revenue than SPS can save, the remaining budget has less room for shared services and children who need greater support. Keeping families need not erase the deficit to preserve funding and sustain programs.

The political stakes reach beyond next year’s budget. Medicare reaches older Americans across incomes. People with money and political access rely on it alongside people with far less. A politician who threatens it faces a broad group of voters with a direct stake in pushing back.

Compare that with cash welfare for poor families. Congress has left TANF’s main grant without an inflation adjustment. When the check stays the same while rents, food and wages rise, it buys less help. Funding shrinks in practice while the program keeps its name.

Help can also disappear behind work rules and paperwork. A Congressional Budget Office review found that even modest extra hurdles in proving eligibility can sharply reduce participation. Families can lose help because they cannot get through the reporting system.

Programs left to people with the least political power are easier targets for cuts and restrictions. Research on broadly shared programs explains how a wider public stake can sustain bigger budgets and more help for people with greater needs.

That is the danger Article 1 identifies for public schools. If families with money, connections and alternatives stop using SPS, the families who remain have fewer allies in the fight for adequate funding. Children with the greatest needs deserve allies with political power.

Give each school a credible path forward: stable leadership, funded services, recruitment and clear expectations within a ten-year district plan. Judge a recovery effort against public milestones. If a merger would serve children better, make that case openly to families in both communities. A smaller headcount alone cannot tell you which children need more support or what a move would improve.

Make public schools worth choosing across incomes and needs. Give families with less influence more voice. A legally universal system can still become a last resort if too few people choose it.

The usual argument

Every school needs staffing, maintenance and administration, however many children attend. Operating too far below capacity spreads those costs across fewer students. Consolidation can make the system more sustainable and protect classroom resources.

Why it’s wrong

An empty classroom is not a teacher on the payroll. A utilization chart can count unused space without showing a dollar SPS can actually save.

District-owned classrooms do not create a new rent bill because they sit empty. In a big-box school that stays open, spare rooms can add little to the costs already required to heat, secure and maintain the building.

In SPS’s 2026–27 budget, about 81% of General Fund spending pays salaries and benefits. Building operations, maintenance and utilities total about 6%, including staff working in those functions.

School-level accounting can also make a small school look more expensive to keep open than it really is. SPS’s own resource review separates spending reported at schools from shared services and centrally budgeted staff who work in schools. Where the district records a cost does not tell us whether closing a school removes it.

If a school carries a share of a districtwide service, that bill may simply move to the remaining schools. If a specialist serves several campuses, charging the whole position to one site can make its per-student figure look inflated. Divide assigned costs by a small enrollment and the apparent penalty grows. Treating an allocated cost as an avoidable cost inflates the promised savings.

Show the allocation rules, who actually uses each shared resource and which bills would disappear. If staff or services move with the children, their costs move too.

If the savings depend on cutting positions or combining classes, name those changes and explain what children lose or gain. Filling a room is not a saving by itself.

Then ask why enrollment is low. Smaller cohorts, housing costs, assignment rules, program placement and families choosing alternatives call for different responses. Seattle Public Schools’ own enrollment research examines those forces. A capacity chart cannot replace that work.

Examine the capacity figure itself. Which rooms count? Which serve disability programs, small-group instruction or other needs? What would those services cost elsewhere? A formula calling space surplus does not make it dispensable.

Ask what the school does well. Could stronger programs, better enrollment access or shared use improve its economics? What would closure destroy that a receiving school cannot replace?

Proponents need a school-specific comparison of educational quality, costs that actually disappear and credible alternatives. A fuller building is not automatically a better school.

The usual argument

Closing a building does not have to mean losing its students. If receiving schools offer strong teaching, comparable programs and a well-supported transition, the district should be able to retain families while operating fewer sites.

Why it’s wrong

A reassignment letter is not a retention strategy.

Families chose a school for reasons the district cannot simply transfer: trusted teachers, a distinctive program, nearby childcare, a walkable route or a community where their child belongs. Seattle Public Schools’ 2024 family survey identifies belonging, proximity and teaching among reasons families stay.

Take those reasons away and some families will leave. A 2026 California study found closure-induced enrollment losses that limited the savings. A plan that counts every reassigned child as retained ignores what closures have already done elsewhere.

Before a vote, ask affected and receiving families what would make the proposal work—and what would cause them to leave. Fund the services, transportation and transition arrangements the plan depends on.

Publish the financial result under plausible retention scenarios. Show the revenue at risk, the costs that remain and whether the savings survive. Report actual retention afterward.

Closing a school to address falling enrollment can drive still more families away. The board must demand evidence that the plan will avoid that cycle.

The usual argument

SPS’s job is to serve the children enrolled now. Families who want a different model can choose something else. Seattle’s strong support for public education will sustain the district even if fewer families use it.

Why it’s wrong

A blue electorate is no substitute for schools families want to choose. Seattle cannot count on its politics to protect SPS while pushing families out.

Deep-blue Massachusetts and Maryland both have charter-school systems. Washington already has charters, too.

Close distinctive programs, erase neighborhood schools and offer fewer ways to belong, and families will look elsewhere. Parents who cannot afford private tuition still want choices. Their frustration creates an audience for charter expansion and private-school vouchers.

Charters are public schools; vouchers subsidize private education. A separate system can pull families, funding and political support away from SPS while shared costs remain. The children still in district schools bear the consequences.

We believe charter expansion would make SPS weaker. We also believe it becomes inevitable if the district keeps narrowing its appeal and treating departing families as somebody else’s problem. Shrinking the public-school community builds the demand for an alternative to it.

The answer is to offer real choices inside SPS: strong neighborhood schools, immersion, K–8 programs, arts and other models that give different families reasons to stay. Listen to families, preserve what works and make better offers where the district falls short.

Give families a reason to defend SPS before asking them to oppose the alternatives.

The usual argument

The new leadership deserves time and public confidence to deliver. Ben Shuldiner communicates well and has made encouraging progress. Seattle Public Schools and its educators reached a September labor agreement that kept school opening on schedule. Fred Podesta deserves credit for his operational leadership and steady stewardship. We want this team to succeed.

Why it’s wrong

Good leaders can still back bad plans. Supporting a leader does not mean accepting every proposal. Families deserve answers, even from people we like.

A new superintendent inherits the district’s assumptions, formulas and plans. What the district measures shapes what it does. Spending and building use matter. So do learning, reliable support, stable classrooms, family confidence and retention.

A proposal can improve one measure while making another worse. Respect for a leader does not resolve that tradeoff. Leaders need evidence and honest dialogue to decide whether the gains justify the losses.

Families who question a closure know what their children stand to lose. Their questions can improve a plan or show why the district should drop it. That is an investment in the district’s success.

We can credit progress, listen seriously and push back when the case falls short. That scrutiny can come from love for our schools and the people doing the work.

The usual argument

A class with only a few children may offer too few friendships, peers and opportunities to learn together. A larger school can support fuller teaching teams, reliable specialists and broader arts and academic programs. For some children, a merger could mean a better school day. Keeping every small school open may stand in their way.

Why it’s wrong

A tiny class can be a real concern. A merger that families understand and welcome can be a good answer. But SPS cannot create a better school by announcing that everyone must move.

Some parents may be ready—even excited—for a larger community, more classmates or stronger programs. Listen to them. Others may prize teachers who know their child, friendships built over years and a school close to home. The district’s family survey, conducted in 2024, identifies community, belonging, proximity and teaching among reasons families stay. Both groups deserve a serious hearing.

Ask how a school became so small. Years of changing leaders, shifting programs and closure uncertainty can weaken a community’s ability to attract families. SPS should account for its own decisions before treating low enrollment as a verdict on the school. Article 5 makes the first obligation clear: manage and support school leadership, improve the offer and give recovery a fair chance.

John Stanford put school leadership, authority and accountability for learning at the heart of improvement. Apply that standard before closing a school. Give effective leaders the support to build a school families want; replace persistently ineffective leadership. Another round of upheaval is no substitute for that work.

Where a merger offers a better future, brief families in both communities before the decision. Show the receiving school’s class sizes, funded staffing and programs, disability services, travel and childcare arrangements. Explain what happens to friendships, school identity and the staff children trust. Let families visit, ask questions in their own language and compare a concrete offer with what they have now.

Publish the proposal, alternatives, timetable and decision rules. Report support and objections, who the district heard from and how the plan changed in response. Make clear what families can influence and who makes the final decision. A merger should come through an open process, not arrive as a fait accompli. Imposing a move can turn families willing to consider it into families who no longer trust the district.

The district should stop asking families to plan their children’s education around the next emergency. Build a ten-year plan with broad support from families, educators and neighborhoods. Set out which school models and services SPS intends to sustain, realistic enrollment ranges, recruitment goals and building investments. Give every school clear expectations and a public commitment to the support it will receive.

Then work backward. Set the leadership, staffing, program and enrollment milestones needed each year. Publish when the district will review progress and what would trigger a change. Families should be able to see a future for their school and understand the conditions for a proposed merger well before a closure deadline.

Build the promised programs in larger schools while preserving viable smaller schools and distinctive models. Make choice accessible; the district’s existing process depends on capacity and service availability. Count applications, waitlists, actual enrollment and retention. Track what children learn. A full building created by reassignment does not demonstrate demand for its model.