Six USD 259 schools will shutter in 2024 if the Wichita school board approves the plan

Takeaways:

• Two Wichita middle schools and four elementary schools would close if the school board approves the plan March 4.
• Students can move to their new neighborhood school or apply for a magnet school.
• Declining enrollment has contributed to the financial shortfalls driving the decision.

Six middle and elementary schools would shutter in the fall, shifting more than 2,200 students, if the Wichita Public Schools board approves a school closure plan next month.

The affected schools are:

• Hadley Middle School
• Jardine STEM and Career Explorations Academy Middle School (a magnet school)
• Payne Elementary School
• Park Elementary School
• Clark Elementary School
• ​​Cleaveland Traditional College and Career Readiness Magnet Elementary School

In making school closure recommendations, administrators focused on schools with low enrollment, bad building conditions and small classrooms, said Susan Willis, the district’s chief financial officer. They also weighed how easily students could move to neighboring schools or similar magnet school programs without adding large numbers of staff.

The buildings slated for closure — if the board approves — include schools at about half their capacity, a school that would cost nearly $11 million to repair, a school that has lost more than a third of its enrollment since 2016 and schools that lack cafeterias and/or secure entrances.

The district plans a public hearing at 6 p.m. Feb. 29 at the Alvin Morris Administrative Center, 903 S. Edgemoor St., and a final board vote March 4.

But the district will start working with staff and families almost immediately, making sure they understand their options before the decision is final.

Students in schools that close would be assigned a new neighborhood school or can apply to the district’s magnet schools. The magnet school application deadline is extended to March 22, and families attending a closing magnet school will get an advantage in the lottery for enrollment slots.

Students could also apply for a special transfer to a different neighborhood school, though the district wouldn’t transport them there.

If the board votes down the plan, “we wouldn’t go back and bring a different school closure proposal,” Willis said. She encouraged the board to take or leave the proposal rather than asking to trade out schools.

Teachers union president Katie Warren challenged the all-or-nothing framing. She said some of the schools targeted for closure fall in high-poverty areas, where families are less likely to have access to cars. That, she said, would force students to walk longer distances in bad weather.

“I just want to remind you that you were elected,” she told the board. “You don’t have to deal in absolutes. You can ask for different different plans, different scenarios. So don’t forget that. Don’t give away your power.”

Superintendent Kelly Bielefeld promised more context on the poverty data, including how the schools compare with others.

“What Katie said is not not exaggerated, that kids will be walking farther to school,” he said. “And that’s extremely, extremely difficult for us as a system. Regardless of which buildings we close, the kids would walk farther to school, right?”

How we got to USD 259 school closings

A drop-off in federal pandemic relief funding, more spending on pay to combat a teacher shortage and a growing backlog of building repairs drive USD 259’s funding crunch. The district expects that school closures will save about $16.2 million, a little more than a third of its $42 million budget gap.

Meanwhile, the district lacks enough students to fill buildings. When enrollment drops, the district gets less state aid. Costs don’t automatically drop at the same pace.

No single factor explains why the district is shrinking, spokesperson Susan Arensman said in an email to The Beacon.

“COVID could have played a part,” she wrote. “The birth rate in Sedgwick County has dropped and projections show it will continue to do so.”

Ahead of the February board meeting, Arensman said district staff who work on demographic projections were too busy preparing to give an interview. She referred The Beacon to Bielefeld’s comments about enrollment at a January press conference.

“We do see students having choices, choosing other things, whether that’s private or public school,” Bielefeld said during the press conference. “There’s a declining birth rate in not only Wichita, but in Kansas. … So there’s just fewer kids under rooftops in the city compared to what there used to be.”

The pandemic’s impact

Wichita Public Schools saw its steepest drop in enrollment during the COVID-19 pandemic. By fall 2020, the district had 2,000 fewer students than in the previous school year, a loss of nearly 5% of its total enrollment.

“I don’t know that I have a good answer for where those kids ended up,” Bielefeld said.

The decline mirrored a nationwide trend. Some students moved into private schools or home schooling while others seemed to disappear from attendance rosters inexplicably.

An Associated Press analysis found at least 50,000 students still missing from public schools nationwide as of fall 2022 and not accounted for by lower numbers of school-age kids in the state or increases in private school or home-school enrollment.

That’s down from 230,000 students unaccounted for in fall 2021, but those estimates don’t include numbers from states like Kansas that didn’t collect enough data for researchers to make the calculations.

In the case of Kansas, the state didn’t have information on the number of home-schooled students. Public school enrollment dropped by about 2.5% and private school enrollment by less than 1%. The school-age population also shrank by less than 1% — not enough to explain the enrollment decline.

Long-term trends

The pandemic dip is just a piece of Wichita’s enrollment trends.

Enrollment was over 70,000 in the 1960s, according to a federal report, Willis said. District documents show enrollment at a bit more than 63,000, the current district capacity, in 1971. Five years later it dropped to about 52,000 students.

In more recent decades, enrollment has fluctuated. But since 2015, the trend has been downward, a loss of about 9% of total students.

“That is what we’re hearing from urban districts all across the nation, very standard,” Bielefeld said. “Actually, our district is doing a lot better than most urban districts.”

Regionally:

• Kansas City (Missouri) Public Schools peaked in the 1960s and had somewhat leveled out from a decadeslong enrollment decline before the pandemic caused a drop. The district closed two schools in 2023 and discussed closing eight more.
• Oklahoma City Public Schools had been on a five-year decline even before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, losing about 13% of its enrollment.
• Tulsa Public Schools lost more than 7,000 students, about 18% of its total enrollment, between the 2012-13 and 2022-23 school years.
• Omaha Public Schools had seen growing enrollment for decades before the pandemic hit and reversed the trend. White students in particular left at high rates .

The district is predicting that its enrollment declines will continue, based on birth rates and patterns of where people live.

The most recent annual report from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment showed the Kansas birth rate reaching an all-time low in 2022, though Sedgwick County births increased by 3% from 2021 to 2022.

The district has received enrollment predictions from multiple sources, Willis said during the February meeting. While the projections disagree on the pace, all predict the number of students will continue to shrink gradually for at least the next 10 years.

“All the data tells us that there’s no change in that trend in the foreseeable future,” she said.

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