School Board to set criteria for closures

The public will get its first peek today at proposed criteria that the Seattle School Board could use if it decides to close schools.

Superintendent Raj Manhas has proposed about a dozen criteria for sparing a school from closure. The possibility of closing schools is part of a broader review of operations aimed at heading off a $20 million budget shortfall in two years.

On Monday, the district staff plans to ask board members for guidance on how to rank the criteria. On March 16, the board will vote on them. If the board approves the standards for retaining schools, over the next month the district staff expects to compile a list of specific schools that fall short of those criteria and might be closed. The board is scheduled to decide July 13 whether to close any of those schools in 2006-07.

Manhas has said that closing schools would allow the district to shift spending from school administrators, utilities and maintenance to teaching and learning.

The list of suggested criteria for keeping a school open is a mix of the objective and subjective. For example:

• Objective: The school has a high proportion of neighborhood school-age residents and neighborhood students ranking it as their first choice in the district's assignment process. The school offers a diversity of staff and students.

• Subjective: The school building's size is large enough "to operate efficiently" and its enrollment high enough "to serve students effectively." The school exhibits nine traits of "high-performing schools."

District spokesman Peter Daniels said the proposal reflects the preference of parents, who have told the district they strongly oppose using only a school's test scores as an academic-performance indicator. The district could also look at a school's attendance and truancy rates, he said.

It is difficult to draw any conclusions from the proposal about which schools are most at risk for being closed. That's because the criteria aren't ranked. A school that's in a well-maintained building would meet one of the recommended criteria for keeping it open, but that same school would fall short if it doesn't have space for future expansion. A school with an attached clinic or community center would gain points, but it would lose points if its neighborhood school-age population is projected to decline sharply.

The district staff removed some criteria from its proposed list; building age was one of those dropped. Because so many buildings have been renovated since 1988, a building's age doesn't accurately reflect its condition. Desegregation also isn't a reason to keep a school building open because of changes to the student-assignment plan, according to the proposal.

There will be a School Board work session on the assignment plan at 4 p.m. today at the district's headquarters, 2445 Third Ave. S.

Sanjay Bhatt: 206-464-3103 or sbhatt@seattletimes.com