Kansas City School Closings: David Loftus

There can be no positive outcome from this massive change . . . other than the fact that the school district will survive, a few students who were destined to succeed anyway will do so, and many others will have to scramble at little harder to find a future. Which is not to say it mustn’t be done. The district got itself into this mess and it is taking some hard choices -- and will probably take a good long while -- to get it out again.

School districts all across the country have been suffering due to economic changes, demographic shifts, and the recent recession. But the Kansas City School District appears to have distinguished itself from the rest of the nation (and not in a good way!) through decades of political infighting, racism and reverse racism (if one may coin a term for the insistence of African-American activists on putting racial identity ahead of “mere” basic education), personal attacks between rival factions on the board and in the administration, and so on. All these factors, not just “natural” population shifts and economics, contributed to the shrinkage of the district from 77,000 students in the mid 1960s to a mere 17,000 in half-empty schools today.

Now apparent go-getter superintendent John Covington has proposed a leaner, more efficient district, with the closing of 26 of the current 61 schools, and the elimination of 700 jobs, including 300 teaching positions. The Kansas City Star reported that 40 civic and religious organizations, businesses, and individuals signed an ad that supported Covington’s plan. That’s important, because those players will need to help the district carry on in the years to come, rather than wait for it to perform miracles. It’s my personal opinion that much of the decline in education in this country, real or imagined, reflects a decline in parenting; that is to say, too many parents are not preparing their children for school and the outside world, they don’t monitor or participate in the operation of the schools to which they relegate their kids, and they expect teachers to make up for everything they failed to do. Change in the Kansas City School District is not going to be pretty or painless, but it probably needs doing.