While Seattle Public Schools’ announcement that the district will move forward with closing five schools instead of up to 20 next year is welcome, make no mistake: This is not a retreat, it’s a slowdown.

Without a vote, students, parents and teachers should still expect board leadership to continue pushing Superintendent Brent Jones to move the well-resourced schools plan forward. The list of potential school closures will likely look similar after a longer process.

As a newer school board member, I have concerns about information missing from the plan. I am also not convinced that there aren’t other options to balance the district’s 2025-26 budget. To continue the well-resourced schools plan at this point, after so many failures and vocal dissent from the community, would be disastrous for students and the district’s future.

At this week’s school board meeting, we must forge a new path. First, end the district’s pursuit of closing 20 schools. Second, direct the superintendent to bring the board more options to solve the current budget deficit. Third, direct Jones to bring the board options to close the budget gap permanently, including a plan to increase enrollment. We also must formalize family engagement in this process and learn from mistakes that got SPS to this point.

In the tsunami of news coverage, what’s been missing is that last year was the first year the board attempted to implement student outcome-focused governance, which has informed this process. Implementation has also consolidated power with board leadership, changed board operations, set impossible “goals” for Jones or any superintendent to meet and is driving most of the board’s decisions since the adoption, including closing schools. 

Originally, board members were told that the well-resourced schools plan was about solving our budget deficit as well as improving student outcomes and promoting equity for students of color. Jones was directed to include this information in his well-resourced schools proposal. I’ve looked, and there is no data to show any link between closing schools and increasing student outcomes where equity is the outcome of consolidation.

We need to pivot from posturing to amending, apologize to the community for a yearlong, emotional process with no outcome and do a total reset. Board leaders must accept the failure of the well-resourced schools plan, move forward and change our approach to implementing our governance model.

At the same time, these issues still need to be addressed:

● We need a multiyear plan to permanently close our operating deficit, including revenues, not just cuts, and a plan to address our serious public safety issues.

● We need to address the long-standing intersectional equity and inclusion issues that underpin the disparities in student outcomes for our children of color and disabled youth.

● We need to give parents clarity on how we will provide highly capable cohort programming, analyze the unintended consequences of universal learning and engage people in developing recommendations for SPS to improve student outcomes over the next five years, including rethinking our special education approach.

We’ve already improved student outcomes in SPS on a smaller scale, at West Seattle, Rising Star, Olympic Hills and View Ridge elementary schools — surely if we work together, we can bring educational equity to scale while drawing more students to the district instead of giving families reasons to leave our schools.

Jones cannot make all these changes and increase student outcomes exponentially in one school year; he needs time and help. As public servants, however, we should not be making wholesale changes to the system without bringing our community along with us, no matter how justified it may seem.

As a district, we have a lot to be hopeful for — we live in an area where people are passionate about education, SPS has many community partners, a vision from former schools chief John Stanford for a world-class secondary education system, and a commitment from the school board and the superintendent to put student outcomes first. Let’s get to work on a new plan that actually achieves that.

Sarah Clark: serves on the Seattle School Board representing District 2, which includes Ballard, Magnolia, Phinney Ridge and Green Lake.