Two large districts recently scrapped controversial plans for shutting down schools, with the fallout costing one California superintendent their job.
Before examining the larger national trends around school closures, let’s quickly recap these aborted attempts to shut down schools. In early October, then-San Francisco Unified School District Superintendent Matt Wayne revealed plans to close or merge more than a dozen schools due to declining enrollment.
A few weeks later, San Francisco USD’s school board parted ways with Wayne, shelved the school closure plan and named a new superintendent, Maria Su.
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The board halted all closures for the 2025-26 school year but added that closing buildings must be considered if the district continues to lose students in the future.
This spring, under-enrollment had Seattle Public Schools considering consolidating its 70 elementary schools into 50 during the 2025-26 school year. Calling their plan a “System of Well-Resourced Schools,” leaders listed goals such as multiple teachers per grade, stable budgets, extensive social-emotional learning support and space for preschool.
Just before Thanksgiving, Superintendent Brent Jones and the Seattle school board halted the plan. “While the $5.5 million in potential savings under the plan is not insignificant, it would not solely resolve SPS’s $94 million budget shortfall and has been a source of community division,” the district said in a statement.
School closures: The bigger picture
Though many other districts moved forward with school closures this year, the number of buildings shut down has declined substantially over the last decade.
More than 1,700 public schools closed in 2010-11 compared to only 755 in 2020-21, the most recent year for which the National Center for Education Statistics has provided data.
