100 days into his tenure, Seattle superintendent wades into school closure debate 7%
By Sami West0%
5/15/2026, 2:08:45 AM
Topics: Education
BS Summary: This article contains 29 faulty reasoning types, including Framing Effect, Availability Heuristic, and Fundamental Attribution Error, with Recency Bias as the most egregious example at 14.8% saturation with 99 hits. Analysis detected 1,176 faulty-reasoning hits from 669 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 23.4% and a BS Rank of 7% (20,401 of 21,887 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 93.20% of the article peer group.
Seattle Public Schools has faced myriad controversies over the years — but it’s hard to top the fiery public outcry the district’s proposal to close over 20 schools provoked last academic year.
District officials later scaled the number of schools targeted for closure down to four before ultimately abandoning closures entirely, once it became clear the plan did not have enough support from the community or school board to move forward.
Now, 100 days into his tenure leading Washington’s largest public school district, Superintendent Ben Shuldiner says school closures may be worth another look — and he’s apparently not alone in that thinking.
“To be honest, I get emails from parents all the time that say, ‘Ben, don’t tell anybody, but I actually think you might want to merge our school with somebody else,’” Shuldiner said Thursday, during a wide-ranging interview with KUOW’s Soundside.
“Like, OK, thanks for being honest.
I appreciate that.”
Since Shuldiner was hired to lead Seattle schools, his message about the district's ongoing financial woes has been clear: “Everything is on the table” — and that includes school closures.
(Though Shuldiner has promised all schools are safe next school year.)
“We are in a budget crisis, and we have to be thoughtful about every dollar that we spend,” he said.
“You wouldn’t want a superintendent to say, ‘Oh yeah, we need to save a bunch of money, but we’re not going to do this thing.’”
Pointing to other major urban school districts across the U.S. who already have or are considering closing schools, Shuldiner said “there are some real reasons” to make such changes.
But that’s not to say Shuldiner wouldn't do things differently from the last time Seattle explored closures.
In his view, the district made two critical mistakes back then.
Top of the list: The dreaded “closure list.”
Shuldiner said that list appeared to be made “by fiat,” in a process that didn’t include the community, and he apologized the district was not “open, transparent, or even collaborative around these things.”
“We have to be really thoughtful about how we’re making decisions with the community,” he said, “not without the community.”
Second, he took issue with the way officials framed school closures as a cost-cutting measure first and foremost.
“It’s not really about budget,” he said.
“It’s about what’s best for kids and teachers.”
To Shuldiner, it’s more of a resource issue — something he believes more than ever that Seattle could benefit from evaluating, now that he’s visited all 106 of the district’s schools.
He said many of those schools had split-level classes, where it’s maybe half second-graders and half third-graders.
Or, in a couple of schools, Shuldiner said there were single classrooms that held three grade levels.
“That’s not particularly good unless you’re doing it really thoughtfully,” he said.
“You don’t do it just because you're forced to do it.”
Small, underutilized school buildings also lead to less robust music and art programs for students, Shuldiner said.
“If you have a school that doesn’t have full-time art, full-time music, that’s difficult for students,” he said.
“I was at a school where they have a music teacher that comes one day a week.
Well, it’s because there’s not that many students there.”
He also pointed out that educators working at smaller schools are at a disadvantage if they’re the only teacher for one grade level, because they can’t share lesson plans or collaborate with their peers in the same way.
Still, Shuldiner reiterated Thursday that he’s not completely sold that the district needs to close schools.
“I’m not saying we’re doing this,” he said.
“I’m saying that it’s got to be on the table, because we have to have these conversations.”
Check out Shuldiner’s full conversation with Soundside to hear more about his first 100 days on the job and how he plans to tackle major issues like the district’s budget deficit, technology in schools, student safety, and academic performance.
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