Twenty-six Kansas City, Mo., School District schools will close this year, including four in Historic Northeast.
The school board members passed the “Right-sizing the District” plan Wednesday by a vote of 5-4, with Marilyn Simmons, Cokethea Hill, Helen Ragsdale and Ray Wilson in the negative. Schools including Woodland, McCoy and Northeast elementary schools and Scarritt Early Learning Center in Northeast will close, along with the central office at 1211 McGee St.
“I have serious concerns that this plan does too much at once and may drive … more families outside of our district,” Simmons said. “I sincerely hope I’m wrong.”
She called for a moratorium on any future school closings.
Ragsdale echoed Simmons’ fears, predicting a “massive exodus” from the district.
“Don’t take your children out of the district,” she pleaded. “I have con--fidence [Superintendent John] Covington will live up to his word.”
Covington is slated to roll out a transition plan in the coming months. Cutting about 700 employees, including 285 teaching positions, comes along with the Right-sizing plan. The district also will reconfigure buildings such that high schools will include the middle school grades and elementary schools will either be kindergarten-second-grade centers or third-fifth-grade centers in order to focus on early literacy.
“None of us have seen a transformation plan,” Hill said. “I believe it will be a quality one, but I haven’t seen it. I’m not saying I don’t have confidence in the superintendent.”
Simmons noted — along with a few jeering members of the overflowing crowd of residents — that the vote was along racial lines. The four white members of the board — Arthur Benson II, Duane Kelly, Joel Pelofsky and Derek Richey — voted in favor of the initiative, along with Airick Leonard West, who is black. The four dissenters were all black people.
Prior to the approval of the Right-sizing plan, Wilson motioned for an amendment, which would have removed Westport, ACE Sixth grade and Lower Campus, Lincoln Middle, Franklin, Longan, McCoy, Woodland, Carver and the central office from the chopping block. The vote on the amendment failed along the same voting lines.
There was a short period of public comment before the board members considered the plan for a vote. Perhaps the most impassioned voice was that of 3rd District City Councilwoman Sharon Sanders-Brooks, who noted the development impacts of these closures in her district. She said a town home developer planning a project across from Woodland may be reconsidering the investment. She also mentioned the city funds that have gone to playgrounds at Woodland and Askew elementary schools.
“Once again we [the 3rd District] bear the brunt of the closings,” Sanders-Brooks said. “The blighting of the urban core is scandalous and shameful.”
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