Seattle Public Schools have been coming to an outcome of possibly closing some schools. This has been due to the declining enrollment, less money, and rising labor costs. They may close some schools as soon as the 2024-2025 school year. A lot of students and parents will be impacted by this. Catharine Blaine might be one of the schools impacted too.

Since 2013, enrollment in Seattle Public Schools have been declining. Because of this they have less resources at school. The more students you have the more money you get, so if you don’t have many students being enrolled, that means less money is going to be given to you.

Seattle Public Schools are having to layoff more staff and teachers. Seattle Public Schools “slashed” 74 office positions for the next school year to help with the problem. Doing this saves more money but negatively impacts the person. A factor on why this is happening is rising labor costs, teachers have been striking because of not having enough pay, so Seattle Public Schools have been attending to those needs. They also have less money due to less enrollment so attending to those needs have been a struggle.

What does this mean for our school? There have been rumors of a possible transition to Catharine Blaine being a middle school instead of K-8. There are already other elementary schools like Lawton and Magnolia Elementary so if Catharine Blaine were to transition it wouldn’t be dramatic. It would be beneficial to be an all-middle school because some of the middle schoolers from very packed middle schools could transfer to Catharine Blaine. There also will be teachers leaving the school sadly. In conclusion, Seattle Public Schools have been dealing with lots of financial and enrollment problems and one way you could help is to donate more to the school so that way your school wont have to be facing these problems. Keeping schools should be top priority as it sets up a person for their life.