The primary weeks of fall at Arlie Boggs Elementary College in rural Eolie, Kentucky, are often stuffed with back-to-school routines. New names line the cubbies, and the hallways gleam with a contemporary coat of wax. The sounds of a brand new faculty 12 months fill the lecture rooms.
However not this 12 months. Immediately, Arlie Boggs sits empty. The varsity, positioned deep in coal nation, was going through enrollment declines, and, in April, its faculty board voted to shutter it.
Arlie Boggs will not be alone. Earlier than the pandemic, about two thousand U.S. public faculties have been closed yearly. Now, we’re more likely to surpass that fee. This 12 months, officers in communities massive and small—Eolie, Denver, El Paso, Texas, and Fairbanks, Alaska—shuttered faculties. And extra closures are coming. College districts are going through unprecedented funds crises, exacerbated by threats to federal funding. Populations are dropping in lots of locations, and insurance policies that broaden voucher applications are siphoning off public faculty college students.
So, the St. Louis College Board is contemplating closing greater than half of its 68 public faculties in 2026-27. In Texas, the Austin Unbiased College District recommends closing 13 faculties. Norfolk, Virginia, is contemplating 9 closures. In West Virginia, the place 53 faculties have closed previously 5 years, one other seven are slated for closure within the coming years. Vermont simply handed laws that would shut dozens of faculties.
As a researcher finding out faculty closures, I do know they are often tough to oppose. Amid declining enrollments and tight budgets, reducing prices and shuttering buildings appears logical—even accountable.
However not all the time—and maybe not even often.
There’s a wealth of defective assumptions about what occurs after faculties shut. Analysis suggests that closing faculties doesn’t save a lot cash. It usually doesn’t cut back personnel—a district’s largest line merchandise—and many colleges require renovation to accommodate college students leaving shuttered services. Transportation prices improve, and promoting the old fashioned constructing may be onerous. In reality, the president of a rural New England faculty board that just lately determined to close one in all its faculties—on account of considerations about the price of its operation—instructed me that, in the long run, the closure would save the district nothing. However the assumed logic of closure was too highly effective to counter.
Closing faculties additionally negatively impacts college students. Many spend extra time commuting—typically over 4 hours every day—lowering time for extracurricular actions or household dinners. This journey may be harmful, particularly by means of neighborhoods with increased crime charges or over dangerous mountain passes. Absenteeism and behavioral issues are inclined to rise. Research point out short-term declines in achievement take a look at scores. Within the lengthy run, faculty closures can hurt school completion, job prospects, and earnings.
Closures harm communities, too. When a faculty closes, native jobs are misplaced, and companies that rely upon a close-by faculty—corresponding to native diners, banks, and gasoline stations—may shut. Households transfer to be nearer to their kids’s faculty. Colleges are additionally locations the place individuals collect, have interaction politically, and make recollections. It’s no surprise that college closures typically face fierce resistance—even starvation strikes.
After which there’s this: faculty closures can typically be discriminatory. Researchers Rachel Greene-Bell and Francis Pearman discovered that, from 2000 to 2018, majority Black faculties have been greater than thrice as more likely to shut as majority non-Black faculties. Different research present that low-income college students and communities are disproportionately affected by closures. The closures could also be significantly damaging for rural communities, the place shedding a faculty requires dad and mom to decide on between lengthy commutes and homeschooling. The burden of faculty closure, then, will not be felt equally.
Regardless of officers’ rhetoric, faculty closures aren’t about enrollment, budgets, or tutorial high quality. These closures are the so-called “answer” to issues that policymakers helped create, typically over a long time: white flight, the privatization of schooling, and the neglect of our public establishments. And this “answer” solely perpetuates the injustice.
Now we discover ourselves in a disaster, with budgets that may’t move and enrollments that gained’t recuperate. At this level, some districts might now have few choices however closure. However we are able to take a fairer, extra measured strategy. First, we should always query the assumptions about closure. Projections of financial savings have to be thorough, sincere, and rigorously examined. All prices related to closure, together with these for the encompassing communities, should be included. Guarantees relating to lecturers or extracurriculars—corresponding to improved take a look at scores or expanded alternatives—should be supported by proof, and have clear strategies of accountability. Instructional high quality ought to be the objective, not arbitrary enrollment minimums.
College boards and different municipal authorities ought to have interaction college students and households in complicated discussions in regards to the destiny of their faculties from the beginning, not after rendering a choice. They need to acknowledge the essential financial and social roles that faculties play in communities and preserve them within the locations that want them most. If closure should occur, the burden ought to be shared equally, no matter race or earnings.
Closure isn’t a handy answer—it’s a nuclear possibility. It ought to be the final resort.
Notice: For analysis backing up most claims about closure’s results, see: https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1233167. Analysis supporting remaining claims is linked above.
