School Closures

Have you seen the school facilities report that APS published? I’ve been following this issue for years now, having attended several community engagement sessions to try and get a sense of what’s happening and what the board plans to do. Let me tell you what we know, and then what I suspect. I’ll finish with some facts about school closures that do not fit the current school board’s narrative.

What we know

Atlanta Public Schools was slowly gaining enrollment every year until the pandemic, when they lost ~2,500 students and now project to have stagnating numbers for the next few years. Even before the pandemic, however, the board has said that several buildings are “underutilized” and has asked the public what should be done. One major cause for this “underutilization” is the expansion of charter schools. Nearly 9,000 students attend a charter school—a publicly funded but privately owned school without a traditional enrollment zone (or, often, services for students such as transportation).

Next year APS is projected to have a $100 million budget deficit, and blames school sizes as one of the “cost drivers.” The budget report put out by the district suggests that APS should have between 16 and 49 fewer schools (p. 5). It recommends a “hard review of number of schools” along with other suggestions (p. 27).

Four of the five schools in the Washington Cluster are “<65% Utilization” and therefore could face “possible action starting in 2025-26 SY.” Seven of the nine schools in the Douglass Cluster are the same. School board members have openly talked about the problem of “small, underperforming schools.” While board members have outwardly declared that schools such as Washington High School (alma mater of Dr. Martin Luther King) are safe, the community has not heard any concrete steps of what the board plans to do to invest in these schools.

I suspect we are not being told the full story

I think, and have told board members such, that the APS school board is taking steps to shut down several school buildings in the next few years without being clear to the public. The maps they have provided in reports (see map attached) show that these closures would overwhelmingly affect poorer, Blacker parts of the city. Any school closures are painful, but the loss of schools such as Washington High School would be a wound so deep that it is difficult to even imagine. The first Black high school opened in the state of Georgia is being treated like an unnecessary burden that the APS board has to bear. I believe that the people who care about schools like Washington need to start building up a defense now, and I plan to work with and for them as a member of the board.

The facts about school closures

I’ve spent my professional life advocating for politicians to follow good research to support students equitably. Anyone who says that APS needs to start closing buildings to save money must reckon with the research that shows that they will almost certainly not see the savings they are hoping for. Sally Nuamah, a professor at Northwestern University and author of the 2022 book, Closed for Democracy: How Mass School Closure Undermines the Citizenship of Black Americans (Cambridge University Press), was recently asked about school closures and finances. She said:

While school closings are often initiated and justified as a means to address budget deficits, there is very little national-level evidence supporting their effectiveness in achieving this goal.

She went on to explain that districts struggle to sell the buildings, the true cost drivers are salaries and benefits, and closures don’t address underlying issues. You can read the whole interview here.

What I will do on the Board

I have yet to see any compelling evidence that APS needs to close schools, and believe the research that shows how closures are targeted at Black communities. I want to work with neighborhoods to push back against this closure narrative, and will co-create a plan to make the most of these schools that serve the entire community. So far the school board has hidden this issue from the public, or kicked the can down the road so future generations of stakeholders have to deal with it. I promise you that I will bring full transparency to this discussion and will fight to keep our schools serving our communities. In short: a vote for Owens is a vote to Save Our Schools!