KCMO to shut down nearly half of schools

The two issues are definitely not mutually exclusive. The district is on its third Superintendent in the last 7-8 years, I believe.

 

Kansas City spent years dealing with an extraordinarily expensive desegregation order, which could have very well led to the excess capacity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missouri_v._Jenkins

 

Haven't lived in the Kansas City area for 11 years now, but when I did live there, "nobody" went to KCMO schools. I went to a Catholic high school on the Kansas side. Several KCMO kids went there. Heck, pretty much every girl I dated lived in KCMO. I'm sure several others in KCMO that had the means ended up going to other private schools in Kansas, or suburban schools in Missouri, such as Lee's Summit, Blue Springs, Raytown, etc., and continue to do so today.

The schools in KCK seem to be in decent shape. I can honestly say that I knew very few people that went to a KCMO school, but I knew several that went to KCK schools.

 

18,000 students in public school in a city the size of Kansas City does seem exceptionally low.

 

I wondered that, too. Turns out KC is served by 16 different school districts, the result of annexed areas getting to keep their independent schools. So the KC school district serves the poorest urban core, similar to Indianapolis, where the center city district serves the same purpose, surrounded by eight districts in areas it annexed.

http://online.wSportsJournalists.com/article/SB20001424052748704349304575116102677062556.html

Looks like KC's enrollment drop also comes because some schools were allowed to secede into other districts, and students were lost to private charter schools. Interesting, too, that the board member pushing for the closings was the same person who in the past had sued to keep funding up.

 

You'd still have to live in the correct district to go to any of the Lee's Summit or Blue Springs schools - neither of those areas can reasonably be considered KCMO. Technically, our house was in the Kansas City city limits, but we were in the Raytown district. I assume you went to either Aquinas or Miege?

 

Not Aquinas.

I don't know what transferring to other districts is like there, but based on my neck of the woods, if you want to go to another district that you don't live in, it's not tough. I would guess a lot of families who live in KCMO districts do not go to KCMO schools.