Before Closures: Where is the Improved Resourcing?
This post is part of a series focused on evaluating SPS closure proposals.
Both current Superintendent Ben Shuldiner and former Superintendent Brent Jones frame(d) closures as actions that improve resourcing, rather than actions that cut costs.
That’s savvy of them, since closures have been proven not to save money.
It’s also disingenuous of them, since closure proposals are always justified in the context of a budget in crisis.
Just last week, KOMO aired a segment about the SPS budget crisis that begins, “[Superintendent Shuldiner] says looming financial concerns could lead to tough choices, including potential school consolidations.” A same-day segment from King5 reports that Shuldiner said, “Closures are still on the table, because the district is basically broke.”
That sure makes closures smell like a cost-savings measure to me!
Let me frame my skepticism another way. I can imagine infinite options for increasing the resourcing at my local elementary school. We could add teachers to reduce class sizes. We could hire more tutors. We could double the number of books in the library, or fill in the potholes on the playground.
Shuldiner is not proposing any of these versions of increased resourcing. That makes sense, because they all cost money. SPS is nearly bankrupt.
So why is it that this one, specific, closure-based version of better resourcing is being floated right now? It’s because leadership believes that closures will save money.
Regardless of the messaging, it’s really about the money. That’s why it will be so important to return to the actual assumptions behind any estimated savings.
The “resourcing” narrative rings utterly false.
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Leadership’s use of the phrase “improved resourcing” is deliberately vague. What are the resources? How are they being improved?
Let’s look at the example that Shuldiner repeats most frequently, including last week to King5. It’s the example of the full-time art teacher vs. the part-time one. Sometimes it’s a librarian, or PE teacher, or music teacher, but the story always goes like this:
By merging two schools that each have a half-time art teacher, we are able to place all students in a school with a full-time art teacher. Full-time art for everyone! Hooray!
What that narrative omits is the fact that the full-time art teacher is now serving double the number of students that each half-time art teacher did. The amount of art teacher time available to each student has not increased.
This is not better resourcing!
Similar logic applies to administrative roles like principals and office staff. Eliminating a principal role via a closure saves money, but it’s certainly not better resourcing. The affected populations are getting a principal whose attention is spread across twice as many families and staff as before.
If resourcing is the story SPS is going to lead with, the public deserves better examples than the net-zero shuffling of art teachers or the elimination of principal jobs. What increased resources is an SPS student going to encounter in an average week? Even more to the point, how will their educational experience improve?
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There is one scenario I can think of where closures can improve student resources. My family is living it right now at Sacajawea Elementary.
Sac is small: 200 students last year, and closer to 170 this year. Our families and staff are accustomed to split-grade classes. When your school has 17 first graders and 32 second graders, and you’re given only two teachers to serve them, the only answer is to create two first/second grade classes of 24-25 kids each.
It is true that closing Sac and absorbing our students into larger schools would reduce or even eliminate the split-grade problem. That would genuinely be better resourcing for these kids. Split grades are not best practice, which is why we only see these classes created when there is no alternative.
It’s also true that this version of improvement-via-closure is possible only because Sac is under-resourced today. We are not allocated enough teachers to serve our student population without split grades. (Staffing to avoids splits is more expensive at small schools, so SPS has chosen not to do this.)
Put another way: Sac’s split-grade problem could be solved by allocating one more homeroom teacher to the school. That solution is even better for the students since it would result in smaller class sizes.
Of course, that extra teacher would cost money. Both solutions—the additional teacher and the closure—improve the teaching resources for current Sac students. But only the closure version does so in a budget-neutral way.
Note that a budget-neutral solution doesn’t generate savings. Since the district is not currently paying for that extra homeroom teacher, solving Sac’s split-grade problem with a closure doesn’t save the district any money.
That extra resourcing certainly provides value! And that value can even be quantified as the cost of the homeroom teacher that wasn’t allocated and is no longer needed. But in the account books, that value does not show up as savings. The value accrues to the students, not to the deficit.
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I’m not sure what the average SPS parent imagines today when they hear “better resourcing” from district staff.
When Marni Campbell led her well-resourced schools tour back in 2024, there was talk of beautiful buildings, smaller class sizes, flexible learning spaces, expanded arts and STEM options, libraries overflowing with new books, and highly capable (HC) services in every school.
Few of those dreams made it into the district’s final definition of well-resourced in 2024, and even fewer of them are on the table in 2026. What “better resourcing” seems to mean in today’s context is the provision of baseline teaching resources to pockets of the population who currently aren’t getting even that.
I’d like the public and the board to be clear-eyed about today’s definition of “well resourced.”
Again, it’s not really about resourcing. The opportunities for closures to improve resourcing (without incurring new costs) are small. Shuffling art and music teachers around doesn’t make a difference, and there is a limit to the number of split-grade classes that can be merged.
If closures aren’t going to provide meaningful increases in resourcing—and I await the proof that they would—then we must make sure that they will make a meaningful dent in the deficit.
If I’m missing something about how closures could improve resourcing, I’d love to know. hello@julieletchner.com.
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This post is part of a series focused on evaluating SPS closure proposals. The entire series includes: