20181224.0430

On 19 December 2018, Terrance L. Green's "Districts Should Rethink Closing Schools" appeared in the online San Antonio Express-News. The article reports, in summary, Green's findings about the effects of closing schools. Highlighted are the negative effects school closures have on students' academic outcomes (when the opposite is intended), the community-destabilizing effects of school closures (particularly for majority-minority neighborhoods), and the long-term cost overruns that occur as schools close (despite short-term gains). In the end, Green calls on administrators to keep the welfare of students, particularly those coming from traditionally underserved communities, in mind as they make school closure decisions--and not just the immediate monetary goals.
Some of the same comments I made about Christopher Brown's kindergarten piece apply to Green's piece, as well. While the topic Green treats, or the approach taken to that topic, seems to work better than Brown's in terms of functioning as a survey, I still find myself wanting more detail. (Where Green makes comments about research showing things, I want to see at least a link to that research, for example.) And I understand that decisions are ultimately made by others than have to endure their consequences, especially over longer periods of time; it is not administrators in school district central offices who suffer from others' children being further away from their homes, after all, nor yet is it legislators whose systems of funding and "oversight" contribute to the circumstances in which schools might find themselves facing closure and the communities connected to those schools displacement.
As with the Brown piece, however, Green's piece is spot on. There are times when schools need to be closed, certainly; most of them have to do with the physical facilities being unusable. And, particularly at the elementary level, schools should be where the students are, so relocating campuses based on shifting enrollment makes some sense--but there's a difference between relocation and closure. Shuttering them, consolidating operations and taking away community focal points, does serve to de-identify people and to re-divide communities that have developed more or less organically and are more authentic, potentially more supportive than otherwise would be the case. Doing so for money says to the families that the schools had served that they are less important than lucre--which is not a message most enjoy hearing. In effect, it says to people that the schools do not care about them; is it any wonder that the people will retort that they do not care for the schools? How could they not do so? Yet even that reaction--sensible and natural as it has every indication of being--is one that is decried.
I begin to understand why so many of the students I have had, and at every school where I have taught, have subscribed to conspiracy theories. There are no few instances when it seems that certain groups are, in fact, out to get others, that shadowy cabals orchestrate events to their advantage--and it seems more so for those who more often serve as the sacrificial pawns in the obscure chess game being played...