KCRag Forum

It's the single biggest issue, bar none, to the regrowth of the city. People feel that they don't have an option for a good high school in the city without paying huge amounts of money. They are making the financial decision to move early across the state line because paying $1000/month/child makes Kansas more affordable. I don't really get the feeling that the school board wants to grow or change the district from what they are currently. They don't want to recruit private and charter school families or partner with them at all.

beautyfromashes wrote: ↑Fri Oct 14, 2022 4:48 pm It's the single biggest issue, bar none, to the regrowth of the city. People feel that they don't have an option for a good high school in the city without paying huge amounts of money. They are making the financial decision to move early across the state line because paying $1000/month/child makes Kansas more affordable. I don't really get the feeling that the school board wants to grow or change the district from what they are currently. They don't want to recruit private and charter school families or partner with them at all.

School board is not supportive of realistic ways to increase revenue or density. Cost per student is well above the suburban districts. Hope this cut can improve quality of education.

US Education report shows 500 at Central.iirc, it’s built for at least 1,000. Same issue with the other high schools. Running empty schools isn’t a good use of funds

normalthings wrote: ↑Fri Oct 14, 2022 5:22 pm School board is not supportive of realistic ways to increase revenue or density. Cost per student is well above the suburban districts. Hope this cut can improve quality of education.

US Education report shows 500 at Central.iirc, it’s built for at least 1,000

They never cut their administration, do they? And they feel they have to pay to maintain all these buildings even after they're closed because they don't want any charters or privates to move into them and "steal" kids. Is there really quality education if you have to cut half the district to get to it?

TheLastGentleman wrote: ↑Fri Oct 14, 2022 2:30 pm Fewer school buildings is bad urbanism. There will be kids who walk to school who won't be able to anymore

but there's few kids nearby to begin with

beautyfromashes wrote: ↑Fri Oct 14, 2022 5:28 pm

normalthings wrote: ↑Fri Oct 14, 2022 5:22 pm School board is not supportive of realistic ways to increase revenue or density. Cost per student is well above the suburban districts. Hope this cut can improve quality of education.

US Education report shows 500 at Central.iirc, it’s built for at least 1,000

They never cut their administration, do they? And they feel they have to pay to maintain all these buildings even after they're closed because they don't want any charters or privates to move into them and "steal" kids. Is there really quality education if you have to cut half the district to get to it?

NCES shows fewer non-teachers to teachers than some of the suburban districts. Also shows KCPS with unbelievably few support staff in some areas (5 counselors for the entire district).

Kansas City school district subject of Wash Post op-ed piece (unfortunately behind paywall):

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... n-lessons/

Highlander wrote: ↑Sat Oct 22, 2022 9:46 am Kansas City school district subject of Wash Post op-ed piece (unfortunately behind paywall):

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... n-lessons/

Unfortunately, desegregation efforts conflated the two projects to arrive at a single goal: making sure Black students go to school with White peers.

Think for a moment about the assumption underlying that priority: Going to school with White kids is inevitably superior to being in class with Black kids — so superior that society will bus children all over town to achieve it, or bribe White students into attending urban schools.

Fountains wrote: ↑Sun Oct 23, 2022 1:48 pm I'm not seeing how the city can continue to grow with issues like these.

There's a very good population that don't want it to grow in the area you probably would suggest. They want the core of the city to be a playground for the young, couples with no children, etc and making it 'family-friendly' kills that vibe. It's a massive mistake. Keeping young families should be the major focus of growth in this city(.)

These problems do resolve over time, but the cycle interval can be decades. Eventually, the residents of the KCMSD will decide that they are paying large school taxes for what? Two lousy, general high schools on the far east side of the core. The voters must first make some kind of change (dissolution; school choice/ vouchers; defunding), and the remaining areas with children (for example, Brookside) will force some new solution locally.

The problem is that the collapse of the existing quality high school serving Brookside started roughly in 1975, so we are almost 50 years into a family neighborhood with limited and expensive quality options (Rockhurst, Pembroke Hill, etc.) Fifty years is a long cycle time, especially when you are talking about a four-year education window. The first ten years of the collapse, many of those kids came to a neighboring catchment (SME) by way of a 1920s interstate tuition option, but that window was closed in the late 1980s. There are now two generations of Brooksiders who have never attended a public school.

herrfrank wrote: ↑Mon Oct 24, 2022 9:40 am The problem is that the collapse of the existing quality high school serving Brookside started roughly in 1975, so we are almost 50 years into a family neighborhood with limited and expensive quality options (Rockhurst, Pembroke Hill, etc.) Fifty years is a long cycle time, especially when you are talking about a four-year education window. The first ten years of the collapse, many of those kids came to a neighboring catchment (SME) by way of a 1920s interstate tuition option, but that window was closed in the late 1980s. There are now two generations of Brooksiders who have never attended a public school.

Yes, but you have to understand the other side as well. The black community experienced everyone leaving their schools starting roughly in the 1975 time frame that you mentioned. The white community left for the suburbs. Now, Brooksiders complain that they don't have a school. But, they abandoned it. Now they want it back and the black community is rightfully upset. They were left behind in a terrible district with little hope of breaking out.

^Are you saying that the perception of being "upset from being left behind" from 1975 should affect the viability or even availability of schools for a large urban area fifty years later? I would count that as a very minor issue if I had to rank issues from important to irrelevant.

Most of those people are long dead. Certainly the students of those days are well past their education years.

Kansas City Public Schools only calling for two schools to close now

BREAKING: ⁦@kcpublicschools proposal drops school closures from 10 to two. ⁦
https://twitter.com/JohnHoltNews/status ... RUIM2cjYrg