OKC district may close some schools to cut costs

Superintendent says schools with 300 or fewer students will be considered

Oklahoma City Public Schools could close schools and reconfigure grades at other schools in order to cut as much as $10 million from the district’s budget, Superintendent Aurora Lora said Wednesday.

“We’re starting to prepare scenarios,” Lora told

The Oklahoman. “We can’t keep cutting teachers and and supplies, so at this point we are looking at possible closures and changes to grade configurations at some schools to save money.”

Last spring, the district cut $30 million in salaries, programs, services and supplies to counter the state’s projected budget deficit.

This spring, the district is preparing to cut between $4 million and $10 million in anticipation of a nearly $900 million shortfall the state is projecting for the 2018 fiscal year.

Schools with enrollments of 300 students or less are being considered for possible closure, Lora said. The district could save as much as $250,000 for every school it shutters, she said.

“Part of what we have to do is look at what schools

are under-enrolled and what schools are nearby,” Lora said. “But we are looking at every school that is really small.”

Twelve district schools currently enroll 300 students or less, including 10 elementary schools. Five of those elementary schools — Edwards, Green Pastures, Thelma Parks, Spencer and Telstar — are located on the city’s northeast side, and serve predominantly black students from lowincome families.

So, too, are Rogers Middle School (296 students) and Northeast Academy of Health Sciences and Engineering Enterprise School, which has an enrollment of 264 students in grades six through 12, according to data provided by the state Education Department.

“I don’t have a problem with consolidation because I know it is a necessary evil,” said Nichell Garcia, whose children attend Martin Luther King Elementary. “However, shifting kids is probably going to cause a ruckus on the east side. It is going to cause a problem because people are going to think this is racial.”

Other schools with enrollments of 300 or less are Edgemere, Gatewood, Johnson, Oakridge and Pierce elementary schools.

Middle school move?

Lora, meanwhile, is also considering a plan to move sixth-grade classes with small enrollments from elementary schools back to middle schools in order to save money.

“One of things that we have discovered is when the district made a decision to move sixth grade back to elementary school it didn’t work out as well as they thought it would,” she said.

Currently, 22 elementary schools have just one sixth-grade class and 19 schools have two classes, according to information provided by the school district.

Twenty-one elementary schools have 25 children or fewer enrolled in the sixth grade while 10 schools have 20 or fewer children enrolled in that grade. Two schools, Gatewood and Nichols Hills, have 10 or fewer students enrolled, data shows.

Schools that feed into Taft Middle School, 2901 NW 23, are among the most susceptible to the changes, Lora said.

Nine schools that feed into Taft — Buchanan, Cleveland, Eugene Field, Gatewood, Hawthorne, Linwood, Monroe, Putnam Heights and Sequoyah — have 34 or fewer sixth-graders.

“We’ve got quite a few schools where we have really small enrollments,” she said. “So in those situations we would move sixth grade back to middle school where there’s space.”

Cleveland Elementary parent Julia Kirt, who is active in the school’s PTA, said parents are supportive of “sixth grade moving out.”

“With more kids participating in magnet schools and charter schools, a big chunk of kids leave after fifth grade,” she said. “Then you’re left with a much smaller number of students who are interested in or have parents who are able to explore those options. It becomes fragmented.”