School downtown?

[chrizow]

i cannot imagine anyone living in a loft or condo downtown having a teenager they send to any school, private or not. 

downtown kansas city isn't manhattan, where people are willing to raise families because it is so incredible and convenient to work and the best of everything that it's worth it. 

i think many people who would choose to live downtown or in the Crossroads right now would move to a single-family house somewhere when kids came along or become school-age before they would stick it out in a loft...they'd go to Hyde Park, Brookside, etc. (if not Overland Park.)  and why not?

[ShowMeKC]

Which is why we need to start changing things Chrizow.

[tompendergast]

This makes sense - but none of the good private schools are real handy to the DT neighborhoods.  If there was a good private school somewhat reasonably handy to the area than I would agree that the market is at least somewhat adequately served - but it is a pretty long haul to get your kids out to Pembroke or Rockhurst if you live and work DT.  The charter schools are at least giving some option in the imediate area. 

Actually, parents transport their kids from as far as Liberty, Olathe, and even Lawrence to go to Pembroke, Rockhurst, and Barstow; it really depends where the parents work, more than where they live, seeing as those private schools have no bussing.  Downtown's is a veritable stone's throw compared to those places.  I live on Quality Hill, and there are families with children here.  Bottom line: the sort of people who live or will live in the new buildings downtown aren't the sort who would send their children to public school in the KCMO School District, so a school downtown makes no sense whatsoever, at least for the purposes of the new downtown residents.

i cannot imagine anyone living in a loft or condo downtown having a teenager they send to any school, private or not. 

downtown kansas city isn't manhattan, where people are willing to raise families because it is so incredible and convenient to work and the best of everything that it's worth it. 

i think many people who would choose to live downtown or in the Crossroads right now would move to a single-family house somewhere when kids came along or become school-age before they would stick it out in a loft...they'd go to Hyde Park, Brookside, etc. (if not Overland Park.)  and why not?

Actually, at the small private school in KCMO I went to, several kids lived with their families in apartments in the Plaza and the Crown Center/Union Hill area.  Your observation seems more a stereotype than anything else.  There are people who are more than willing to live in the city.  Now that downtown has/will have the same amenities as the Plaza and Crown Center, I have no doubt that more people will choose to raise their kids here.  They'll still send their kids to private school, though, because only an extreme minority of people in similar neighborhoods send their kids to public school in the KCMO School District.  It doesn't make sense to put a school here for them.

[Tosspot]

I spent nearly all of my primary and secondary education living in multi-family housing in one of KC's most dense neighborhoods.

[aknowledgeableperson]

I think that's the opinion of unwilling and ignorant people. No amount of improvement downtown will change their opinions. But these people are not the ones that will make downtown great again. For them, it doesn't get any better than a two story, a yard, a 30-minute commute, and a game of golf once a week. I see no reason to try to attract these people anyway.

He is just afraid of people walking with baby strollers on the sidewalks and kids outside playing jacks by his building.
Singles will only take you so far but having families with kids make the dt experience more complete.
I may be a "suburb guy" but I also realize that this world and city are made up of many different types of people.  If you don't have families then what happens to the singles who get married and have kids.  They will move. And maybe, just maybe, the next generation of kids are different than the current 20/30 somebodys, they just might say "forget downtown, there is nothing for me".  Then you have a dying neighborhood - people moving out and nobody moving in.

[Tosspot]

They will move. And maybe, just maybe, the next generation of kids are different than the current 20/30 somebodys, they just might say "forget downtown, there is nothing for me".  Then you have a dying neighborhood - people moving out and nobody moving in.

As usual you're reciting things that have already happened, and not bothering to consider anything beyond the dismal urban American situation from the past sixty years.

[aknowledgeableperson]

All that I am saying is that society is dynamic and not static.  People's, as individuals and as a group, opinions change over time.  To assume "how it is now will forever be" does not acknowledge how things change, whether we like it or not.
Those who are now preteen or early teen may just, not will, be different than the 20/30 something's now when they are that age.  Even those who are in their 20's and single now, who preach how great urban living is now, may feel different 10/15 years from now when married and they have children.  Afterall, some empty nesters who lived the suburban life have changed and now embrace urban living.
If you know how people are going to feel 10/15/20 years from now you must be able to see into the future.  If so, let us know exactly how you will be in those time frames.   

[voltopt]

Actually, parents transport their kids from as far as Liberty, Olathe, and even Lawrence to go to Pembroke, Rockhurst, and Barstow; it really depends where the parents work, more than where they live, seeing as those private schools have no bussing.  Downtown's is a veritable stone's throw compared to those places.  I live on Quality Hill, and there are families with children here.  Bottom line: the sort of people who live or will live in the new buildings downtown aren't the sort who would send their children to public school in the KCMO School District, so a school downtown makes no sense whatsoever, at least for the purposes of the new downtown residents.
Actually, at the small private school in KCMO I went to, several kids lived with their families in apartments in the Plaza and the Crown Center/Union Hill area.  Your observation seems more a stereotype than anything else.  There are people who are more than willing to live in the city.  Now that downtown has/will have the same amenities as the Plaza and Crown Center, I have no doubt that more people will choose to raise their kids here.  They'll still send their kids to private school, though, because only an extreme minority of people in similar neighborhoods send their kids to public school in the KCMO School District.  It doesn't make sense to put a school here for them.

Most of the kids I knew that lived in midtown KC and in Northeast went to public school when i was growing up.  Of course the limited, catholic golden coast of brookside/waldo produced mainly private school kids, but many of my friends from Hyde Park, Union Hill, Northeast, the West Side, and Gilham went to either Lincoln, Paseo, or Northeast and Central.

**edit** i live downtown, and I fully intend, once I have children, to send them to a public school in Kansas City, MO.

[ShowMeKC]

Well it isn't going to shift back to the suburbs again if we do things right. It might across the country, but we need to do everything possible to keep them Downtown.
There are reasons people are in the suburbs, especially in Kansas City, but none really have to do with society's trends as you suggest. People don't just naturally go from suburbs to the city and city to the suburbs because of trends.

It has to do with the quality of life and neighborhoods, education, crime, vibrancy, diversity, life, etc... Of the area... People won't leave a perfectly good neighborhood for another neighborhood unless they have a good reason. However people will leave a slum for a good neighborhood, which is what happened to the inner city. Whites were the ones that moved in mass because slums started to form, as well as the race riots were going on. They had the money to move out, whereas the majority of blacks didn't have the money to move out of the forming slums. Now we are in a situation where we are improving the slums that formed. Luckily, now we know a lot of the causes and reasons slums form, and we can do a good job of preventing it from happening again.

This was just a one time thing, and I believe it's being reversed. There will be a day that not only Downtown is successful, but also the rest of our urban area, and a time when schools will be needed in certain areas, especially Downtown. We were able to have over 400,000 people in our city limits (60 square miles) before the whole mess started, the buildings are still there, we just need to add the 220,000 other people back, and then keep adding more, and make sure it doesn't happen again.

[tompendergast]

Most of the kids I knew that lived in midtown KC and in Northeast went to public school when i was growing up.  Of course the limited, catholic golden coast of brookside/waldo produced mainly private school kids, but many of my friends from Hyde Park, Union Hill, Northeast, the West Side, and Gilham went to either Lincoln, Paseo, or Northeast and Central.

**edit** i live downtown, and I fully intend, once I have children, to send them to a public school in Kansas City, MO.

The relative affluence of downtown dwellers and cost of downtown housing, however, is not analogous to midtown or the Northeast.  The demographics of the downtown loop are much more analogous to neighborhoods like the Plaza, Brookside, and the Country Club District, in terms of economics and ethnicity.  This even increasingly is true given the quality and state of the ongoing development.  Today, because of the perceived low quality of the KCMO Public School District, only an extreme minority of parents in these areas send their children to public school.  The overwhelmingly vast majority attend private schools.  Unless the KCMO Public School District undergoes a radical shift in public perception, that won't change.  Thus, a public school downtown is about as useful as a public school in the Country Club District (where there aren't any public schools, either).

[FangKC]

I'm happy to hear that a school is opening in downtown Kansas City. I see it as a healthy sign of a growing and revitalized downtown residential district.  In no way is it bad.

There are already children living downtown. I live on Quality Hill and there are a few small children in my apartment complex. The woman across the hall from me has a baby, and she babysits during the day for a relative.

There is absolutely no reason that downtown Kansas City should be off limits to families and children if the parents decide they want to live a different lifestyle than most do in KC.

If KCMO is to undergo a real rebirth as a living city (instead of a slowly dying one), the KCPSD absolutely must improve. It's vital to rebuilding the population of the central city, and increasing tax revenue that is needed to pay for everything that has been happening. If our leaders don't take seriously the need to repopulate the existing urban areas now, our future will be one of much higher taxes.  A city cannot remain financially healthy with ever increasing low densities over a larger area and still maintain services and infastructure.

Providing good public schools is essential to our economy, as well as a moral and public duty.  It's unacceptable to sideline a whole generation of youth because of where they were raised as kids.

Young people with growing families are needed to reclaim neighborhoods and help force out negative influences in our city.  Responsible parents call the cops; report drug activity and crime.  We cannot have a central core where only people who can afford private schools stay here.  It has to be a place where all income groups live.  Central Kansas City has some of the most affordable housing in the country, and the primary thing holding back repopulation efforts is the bad school district. There is so much untapped potential in Kansas City.

Having a charter school downtown is a start.  Providing a good school here removes one more reason people might not choose downtown. All of these barriers need addressing individually (i.e. there isn't a grocery store; retail; a good school; good mass transit; a movie theater).

When I first moved to New York City, I couldn't imagine raising a child in Manhattan.  But I changed my mind about that.

With the rise of China and India as competitors, the US must take steps to fix its' education system once and for all. Our country just cannot afford sub-standard education for large segments of our citizenry. Otherwise, we will have permanent uneducated class that cannot compete in a global marketplace. In addition, taxpayers will have the additional financial strain of having to subsidize low-skilled people, and build more prisons.

We also have the added pressure of the baby-boomer generation on our Social Security and Medicare systems. We cannot afford to have a significant number of our future work-force in low-paying jobs paying little or no taxes. Especially in light of the fact that we will have one of the lowest ratios of worker-to-retiree funding levels since these programs were established.

If our country doesn't place a priority on education now, we are all going to regret it in about 25 years.

I would love to see future city leaders educating local residents about the need for, and advantages of, increasing population density in our existing built core. A leader who will explain how this approach pays for healthy schools, improved infastructure, and helps keep taxes down.

Someone who can break it down on a per-capita-basis of what our infastructure costs per resident.  Someone who can make people understand that it's better to have 100 people living on a block instead of 50. That it's important that a decent percentage of residents on each block be working, and not low-income poor or retired people who require public resources. 

What is needed are leaders who can explain that if you want good streets on your block, you need more people living on your block to pay the taxes to fund them.  That abandoned and sparsely-populated neighborhoods in the central cities eventually result in higher taxes paid by people living the suburbs.  You cannot escape these costs by leaving because the federal and state goverments must increase taxes to fund highways, keep schools open, and lure business back to cities through tax-incentives.  Even if you live in the suburbs, the Feds collect taxes and redistribute them back to cities through block grants and federal poverty programs.

Leaders often decry the problems of sprawl, but they never explain to everyone what sprawls costs each of us because it's inefficient and expensive to maintain so much infastructure.  That it results in ever growing expansion of our energy consumption, and fuel costs, to pay for all these cars to travel so far to go anywhere.

No one seems to ever connect all the dots.

Our citizenry must start behaving responsibly and logically and be made to realize these things.  While our lifestyle and standard-of-living is good now, it may not always be if we continue on this path.

[nota]

Well it isn't going to shift back to the suburbs again if we do things right. It might across the country, but we need to do everything possible to keep them Downtown.
There are reasons people are in the suburbs, especially in Kansas City, but none really have to do with society's trends as you suggest. People don't just naturally go from suburbs to the city and city to the suburbs because of trends.

It has to do with the quality of life and neighborhoods, education, crime, vibrancy, diversity, life, etc... Of the area... People won't leave a perfectly good neighborhood for another neighborhood unless they have a good reason. However people will leave a slum for a good neighborhood, which is what happened to the inner city. Whites were the ones that moved in mass because slums started to form, as well as the race riots were going on. They had the money to move out, whereas the majority of blacks didn't have the money to move out of the forming slums. Now we are in a situation where we are improving the slums that formed. Luckily, now we know a lot of the causes and reasons slums form, and we can do a good job of preventing it from happening again.

This was just a one time thing, and I believe it's being reversed. There will be a day that not only Downtown is successful, but also the rest of our urban area, and a time when schools will be needed in certain areas, especially Downtown. We were able to have over 400,000 people in our city limits (60 square miles) before the whole mess started, the buildings are still there, we just need to add the 220,000 other people back, and then keep adding more, and make sure it doesn't happen again.

OK, where is the REAL Devin and what have you done with him?

I find myself agreeing with so many of your posts of late.

Much more maturity in them than there once was.

[catfish1812]

I live on Quality Hill, and there are families with children here.

Hell, I'm surprised bahua hasn't killed and eaten them.

[voltopt]

The relative affluence of downtown dwellers and cost of downtown housing, however, is not analogous to midtown or the Northeast.  The demographics of the downtown loop are much more analogous to neighborhoods like the Plaza, Brookside, and the Country Club District, in terms of economics and ethnicity.  This even increasingly is true given the quality and state of the ongoing development.  Today, because of the perceived low quality of the KCMO Public School District, only an extreme minority of parents in these areas send their children to public school.  The overwhelmingly vast majority attend private schools.  Unless the KCMO Public School District undergoes a radical shift in public perception, that won't change.  Thus, a public school downtown is about as useful as a public school in the Country Club District (where there aren't any public schools, either).

I agree with you for the most part.  However, there are always exceptions to the rule.  My mother teaches in the KCMOSD, at the foreign language academy. Many of the students and that used to attend the catholic school she taught at in waldo have transferred to this particular school, which seems to include a good economic and sociological cross section.  Many of the kids are from the worst neighborhoods of the east side, some are from the midtown families that have been fixing up houses throughout the Main/Broadway/Gillham corridor for a couple decades, some are from Brookside/Waldo, some are from Downtown, many from the Westside. 
The general demographics from downtown are much more diverse than the Country Club District.  There are many affordable housing options downtown, and there are low income housing options as well. 
I agree with the sentiment that public education is dead in the Southwest Corridor from the Plaza on south, however, downtown is a different story.  And it sounds like this particular education initiative will NOT involve the KCMOSD, which can only bode well for its success. The best thing for the KCMOSD would be for the board of education to unanimously retire and take the teacher's union with them.  Then maybe we can start teaching children again.
 

[bahua]

Hell, I'm surprised bahua hasn't killed and eaten them.

Every day at about 6am, our upstairs neighbors are running back and forth, yelling at each other, and moving furniture in preparation for catching the bus to go to school. At times like that, I certainly wish death.

However, I have no problem with someone trying to make it work. I just don't think we need to push a family atmosphere in a neighborhood that people pay a lot more money to live in, in an attempt to live the young, single urban life. A lot of us would like to be left with our pitiful delusions of happiness that center entirely around drinking and promiscuity. Or perhaps the suburban folks don't quite have the picture right.

[LenexatoKCMO]

A lot of us would like to be left with our pitiful delusions of happiness that center entirely around drinking and promiscuity.

Yeah but that drunken promiscuity sometimes leads to unintended consequences. 

[bahua]

Yeah but that drunken promiscuity sometimes leads to unintended consequences. 

Yeah, like having to change your phone number.

[LenexatoKCMO]

Yeah, like having to change your phone number.

That free and single urban lifestyle may not be quite as enjoyable when all of the DT barmaids are on the lookout for that "deadbeat bahua" and all his back-owed child support. 

[bahua]

"You are not the father!"

[FangKC]

Voltopt, since your mother teaches in the KCPSD, it would be interesting to hear what she thinks the major problems are with it.