There have been a wave of school closures across the valley of late.
The Roosevelt Elementary School District closed five schools earlier this year. Isaacs School District closed three. Just last week, the Scottsdale Unified School District made headlines when it announced it would close two of its schools. Gilbert is considering closures. And the Kyrene school board is considering closing up to eight schools.
Let's talk about why this is happening and how far back this history goes.
Some longtime Phoenicians may remember in the early 1980s, Phoenix Union High School, North High School, East High School, West High School and Scottsdale High School all closed due to declining enrollment.
Julie Bowe was a sophomore at Scottsdale High when the school closed in 1983.
"I was really, really sad. I think I only knew two or three people that went to the new school with me. So it felt just very disillusioning," said Bowe.
Bowe transferred to Arcadia High School.
In the months leading up to the closure, there had been an intense public debate over which school should close — Arcadia or Scottsdale.
"There was a lot of news coverage and people kind of on different teams and one against the other and pitting each other," said Bowe. "And so it definitely was kind of a community thing where Arcadia was against Scottsdale High. So then when I went to Arcadia, it's kind of like I went to then the rival, because they won and we lost. So that didn't help either."
That wasn't the last time we'd see school closures across the Valley, but Sherman Dorn says what we're seeing now is different. Dorn is a professor at Arizona State University's Mary Lou Fulton College of Teaching and Learning Innovation.
He researches the history of education policies since 1945. He told The Show what we're seeing now is the second time in modern Arizona history when we have seen so many debates about school closures.
The last time this happened: after the Great Recession.
Full conversation
SHERMAN DORN: In 2011, 2012, Tucson School Board voted to close 12 schools. Between 2009 and 2013, the Mesa Unified School District closed a couple of schools. In 2010, the Flagstaff Unified closed elementary school, a middle school and high school. As we've seen today, anytime that there has been a debate over closing schools, it causes a lot of angst.
People come to the school boards because they associate their schools or the schools that their children attend with their family's well being, their family's routines. And in many cases, schools are resources for the communities beyond just academics.
GILGER: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And I want to talk more about the impact in a moment. But you talked about the last time we saw a big wave of school closures, about what we're seeing right now. Like, is this bigger? Is this more impactful?
DORN: We're seeing a combination of three different factors. One is declining birth rates over the last 10 to 15 years. That's the second time since World War II that we've seen that. So after the baby boom, Gen X, and I'm a member of Gen X, was much smaller than the baby boom. ...
So my local school district in Orange County, California, closed my elementary school a few years after I left. They closed my middle school a couple years after I graduated from high school. They sold my elementary school to developers. And it's now a condo development. ...
And then with the baby boom echo, which we now call the millennial generation, they reopened what had been my middle school.
GILGER: Very interesting. OK, so this has happened before in U.S. history. When you're looking at declining birth rates, changing demographics. Is this more extreme, though?
DORN: It's more extreme because a couple of things are contributing to it, at least in the Arizona. One are the policy changes in Arizona over the last 30 years, the development of open enrollment, which puts local school boards in competition with each other.
GILGER: Right. You can register for any school you feel like, and you don't have to go to your neighborhood school. Yeah.
DORN: And charter schools and then the various voucher programs that have existed, including the creation of the universal ESA program in 2022.
GILGER: So, school choice, basically.
DORN: Yes. And. And there's a third factor, which is the pandemic. And families experiences of schooling during the pandemic raised questions about their relationship with schools. ...
The fourth factor, and this is something that's very specific to this year, is in Arizona and in some cities like Chicago and elsewhere, I and others wonder whether or not the ICE raids in various communities are driving a lot of families to withhold their children from school. Either for a long-term basis or even for a short-term basis, because they fear those raids. And because a lot of families around the country are mixed immigration status.
Some members, including children, are citizens. Some members, adults, might be undocumented immigrants.
GILGER: I had a superintendent of one of the school districts in the Valley on who said we were expecting a bump in enrollment this year. We saw a decline, he thinks, because of ICE. He said some families told me, you know, they left the country.
DORN: And that has consequences for local school districts.
GILGER: So, a lot still to come on this, but with what we're seeing right now, let me ask you about the implications. Because as you mentioned at the beginning, like, this is a moment in which lots of schools are closing. It raises lots of concern, debate, ire, lots of anger at these school board meetings when they're kind of debating whether or not a school should close.
Why is that? Like, why do communities care so much about this?
DORN: For a few reasons. One, families depend on schools to run their entire lives, in many cases — setting their schedules, figuring out how they're going to do aftercare. And the second factor is that in many communities, schools are important resources. And over time, they become keystones for communities in some places for identity, for leadership.
So, when a school closes down, as sociologist Eve Ewing wrote about in "Ghosts in the Schoolyard," it affects the entire neighborhood.
GILGER: I have to ask though, is this really true anymore? Because we've got so many charter schools, people do not go to their neighborhood school. Certain school districts are kind of empty and others are packed. And so many other choices for families, whether it's homeschooling, micro-schooling, like, you know, they can go to private school with public money from the ESA program, as you mentioned.
Like, I feel like the options are so massive now. Is it still true that a local school really does impact its neighborhood?
DORN: That depends on the individual school and the individual neighborhood. But I can tell you, because ... I live in Kyrene, and one of the elementary schools is a 10-minute walk from my house. And I know that my neighbors, the ones who live right around that school, would be concerned if the school closed.
And if it were empty for a while, what would happen to local property values?
GILGER: Let me ask you about ... the societal aspect of this. As you look at this in history and you've seen schools close before, we've seen the impacts of that. I wonder how different it is today. Because like I mentioned, I think about the splintering of education kind of echoing the splintering of our communities today, in which everything feels very fractured or niche.
You can go to a specific school for a specific group of people or for a specific interest or a specific demographic. I mean, I wonder if it's, in your mind, a signal of what's to come in the future or a loss of something that was really important.
DORN: Well, that fragmentation worries me, because for almost 200 years we have relied on schools to be one of the major civil institutions that contribute to the way that we see ourselves as a society. And to the extent that the variety of education options that exist there continue to serve the public interest, that's great. But I also worry that a lot of the ways in which we are fragmented educationally mirrors the fragmentation of our lives and our civil communities.
GILGER: When we think about the idea ... of empty playgrounds, like, this happens — my sister is in a suburb of Denver and they close the school right across from her house, right across the street. The playground's open, but it's mostly empty when we go visit, which is odd and feels a little odd, I think.
But as you mentioned, we've been seeing declining birth rates in this country for a long time. Are we just going to have fewer kids?
DORN: We don't have to. We can be much more open to immigration of families than the current federal government would like there to be. And that would contribute to the future of the United States in a way that I think would be productive. That's not the current administration set of policies. And that points in some ways to a declining future, unless that's reversed. In the last 40 to 50 years,
immigration has been a substantial source of children who have been educated in the United States and then contribute as young adults. We need people to contribute to the United States in the future.
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