Mass school closures approved in Kansas City, Mo.

[MadHound]

"KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Facing potential bankruptcy, the board that governs the once flush-with-cash Kansas City school district is taking the unusual and contentious step of shuttering almost half its schools.

Administrators say the closures are necessary to keep the district from plowing through what little is left of the $2 billion it received as part of a groundbreaking desegregation case. The Kansas City school board narrowly approved the plan to close 29 out of 61 schools Wednesday night at a meeting packed with angry parents. The schools will close before the fall."

This is a sad statement about what is going on in our urban school districts. It's also another cautionary tale about basing our school funding model on property taxes. Doing so almost guarantees that the both urban and rural school districts are going to decline, while suburbs garner all the money.

Oh, and guess where many of these students are fleeing to? Yep, charter schools, paid for with public school funds.

[LeftHander]

1. Conservatives have long wanted public schools privatized...

To keep minorities uneducated and poor.

[MadHound]

2. Oh, this is also a great example of what white flight does as well

Kansas City, like other large cities, is becoming a hollowed out shell of itself. Thus as whites flee the city for the 'burbs, funding for schools goes down and down as property values go down and ownership goes down.

This is a perfect example of why we need to take schools off of the property tax model of generating revenue. It just leads to problems that increase exponentially. It not only keeps minorities uneducated and poor in urban areas, it also keeps whites poor and uneducated out in rural schools.

The only ones who benefit are the 'burbs. And even then they're so demonized that many kids go to charter schools on our dime, along with private schools.

[DrDan]

4. the couldn't care less about minority education

it's all about the money.

There is huge money at stake.

[cbdo2007]

6. KC school district had all the money in the world 15 years ago and they pissed it all away

actually busing in white kids from the suburbs in taxis and their own private small buses during the magnet school years.

They could have $50 Billion to work with and still would mess it up because it's fools running it and it's been fools there for 20+ years. And they've been through how many superintendants in the past 15 years as well? I don't know...lots.

The school officials are fools, the kids don't care, and the parents are a hinderance to any sort of progress. Privatization may be the only thing that CAN help them because we know the city can't do it themselves, they've been trying miserably for too damn long already.

[cbdo2007]

7. Right....and the KCMO school district has proven they can do so much better *sarcasm*

[hlthe2b]

3. Oh.. how devastating...

My early years were spent in the area (Lees Summit--which is probably out of the KC District per se)... And your point is on target in Missouri. No where is there going to be more hurt among rural and urban communities versus the wealthy suburbs. In 'What's the Matter with Kansas," Thomas Frank really demonstrated how these states have come to vote against their own best interests... Many decades of RETHUGLICAN domination has cinched it... Depressing--given KC had every opportunity, given that settlement money. Truly.

[Javaman]

5. coming to a county near you, the corporatization of our schools.

Save us, corporations! Save us! only you can brain wash us into using your crap!