Seattle Public Schools may have to close or consolidate locations, district officials say, as thousands of students have defected from the system in recent years.

The school district has seen enrollment numbers decline precipitously in the years following the coronavirus pandemic, the Seattle Times reported.

“The city’s school system has lost more than 3,500 students since the pandemic and expects to lose another 3,000 by the 2025-2026 school year, according to data from the district” Fox News reported. “If that happens, it will mark a 12.5% decrease in enrollment over six years.”

The Seattle Times indicated the school system’s budget, which is determined by the number of students enrolled, is expected to suffer an estimated $131 million budget shortfall for the 2023-2024 school year and a $92 million shortfall in the 2024-2025 year. 

“I really think that what Seattle’s seeing, where those students have gone are either to private schools or they’ve left the school district and have moved elsewhere,” Jen Garrison of the Washington Home School Organizarion told Fox News. 

District officials have argued consolidating some schools could help close this gap. 

Fred Podesta, who serves as assistant superintendent of operations with Seattle Public Schools, appeared on an episode of KUOW’s Soundside podcast to make the case that this approach could help the district better leverage its resources:

“It’s consolidating schools into bigger schools… We feel there’s a size that’s larger for different type schools so they have a broader spectrum of resources so they can better serve students. So nobody is trying to downplay the fact that, well, if you consolidate smaller schools into bigger ones, you may be closing some schools, but the point is not to close schools. It’s to grow schools to a point where they have a better mix of resources.” 

Podesta acknowledged in the interview that budgetary concerns were part of the district’s motivations for pursuing school closures and that students will have to accept some tradeoffs.

“Perhaps a child may need to travel a bit farther to a different school, but the school will offer more resources,” he said. 

In addition to school closures, staffing cuts are on the table as a way to address the district’s budgetary issues, per the Seattle Times.

The Seattle Times noted the district will not immediately move forward with the consolidation plan. 

“None of Seattle’s 106 schools are on the chopping block for next year; the earliest closures could happen in 2024-25.” 

Seattle is not alone in struggling with declining enrollment rates. An analysis of enrollment data in 21 states conducted by the Associated Press in partnership with researchers affiliated with Stanford University found public school enrollment declined by approximately 700,000 students “between the 2019- 2020 and the 2020-2021 school years.” 

The analysis estimated 103,000 of these students switched to private schools, 184,000 began homeschooling, and 230,000 are “unaccounted for in the data.” Additionally, the enrollable population of children declined, by an estimated 183,000 partly driven by families moving to different states and other demographic factors.

You can follow Michael Foster on Twitter at @realmfoster.