Downsizing a district

The Kansas City, Mo., school district is closing 29 of its 61 schools by next fall, and cutting 700 of its 3,000 jobs.

As can be imagined, many students will have to move to a different school.

Superintendent John Covington explained at a news conference Thursday that the district would be bankrupt in 18 months if jobs and schools were not eliminated. It faces a $50 million deficit in its $300 million budget.

The city's school board approved the general plan last week, 5-4. But neither the superintendent nor the board said how the drastic changes would be achieved. Details will emerge this week, the superintendent said.

Counselors are to be deployed to help students deal with the changes. Buildings will be sold, others "repurposed," the superintendent said.

Enrollment in the district has been declining for years. Some 18,000 students have left for suburban districts or charter schools in the last decade, the New York Times reported.

Achievement levels at the Kansas City schools are very low, even though state taxpayers have financed the district at levels well above the national average. More than two dozen superintendents in the last 30 years have failed to solve its problems. The school board delayed tough choices for years. Needed changes were not made.

The district hired Mr. Covington from Pueblo, Colo., in April to downsize the district. He is the first educator who has proposed a plan to do so, and is receiving praise from education experts, although the decision is controversial.

Wanda J. Blanchett, dean of the school of education at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, said that Mr. Covington's plan is doable and "critically important. And the reason I say that is because the district is still operating as far as its infrastructure is concerned as though it's serving 75,000 students. But in reality, it's serving slightly under 17,000 students."

"Not only is it feasible, but it's the right thing to do," she said.

Many lessons are drawn from this, such as more money does not solve all education woes. But the failure to make needed changes in a timely fashion can lead to a day of reckoning which Kansas City is facing, with major disruptions.