Kansas City Found an Effective Approach to Transforming Closed Schools

Responding to Vacant Schools

In this Solution of the Week, we look to Kansas Urban center, which involved the community in decisions virtually closed school buildings—with great success

Responding to Vacant Schools

In this Solution of the Week, nosotros expect to Kansas City, which involved the customs in decisions about closed school buildings—with dandy success

February. 28, 2017

Kansas Urban center, Missouri and Chicago accept similar schoolhouse districts, with similar problems like underfunding and a history of racial segregation. Both cities have found ways of repurposing their airtight school buildings to strengthen their districts. At beginning, Chicago turned the reuse process over to aldermen, but  later took it back when the aldermen refused to involve the public in their plans. The school buildings are now up for sale. Meanwhile, Kansas City hired urban planners to manage schoolhouse reuse, an approach which has received accolades for "prioritizing community engagement, transparency and giving nonprofits with limited access to capital letter the chance to buy a school," according to The Chicago Reporter.

Finding new uses for abased schoolhouse buildings has become a national event. Cities beyond the country, especially in the Midwest and Northeast, take closed hundreds of schools and that trend is expected to continue. A 2022 Pew Charitable Trusts report analyzing Kansas City, Chicago and four other school districts that had recently airtight over 20 schools found that the 3 virtually mutual forces backside school closures were falling enrollment, deteriorating facilities and tight budgets.

Kansas City's solution to school closures was met with little community resistance considering the community's members were involved from the beginning. The Kansas City community members were invited to public tours of each vacant school before it went upwards for sale and there were boondocks hall meetings every fourth dimension there was a serious proposal for the edifice'due south purchase.

Chicago recently sold nine schools for $24 million and used the profits to build new schools and expand new ones. But it wasn't perfect. The schools on the receiving end of this money tended to be white and heart class—far from the neighborhoods whose kids felt the effect of school closures. Chicago community members interviewed said they would be open to school closures if they had a say in the affair the mode Kansas Metropolis residents did. Information technology's their belief that zip will change unless city officials are willing to restore the customs's trust.

Read the full story here (via The Chicago Reporter)

Here'southward what else we're reading:

China's Trash-Burning Troubles

More than than 520,000 tons of garbage is generated in Red china every solar day. The Chinese regime concluded that the best style to eliminate it would exist to burn down it in EU-approved incinerators for harmful emissions, and have since pledged to burn forty percent of its garbage past 2020.  (Read more via NPR)

A call for improve testing of tainted water

Later on the Flint, Michigan water crisis, parents and school administrations nationwide are calling for thorough, transparent water tests in school facilities. Schools in Massachusetts, Illinois and New York are testing their water and posting results online and several states have passed legislation making this a priority. Only as pipes corrode, particles of lead could testify fifty-fifty in taps that previously tested clean. Many districts are responding by supplying bottled water rather than going through the cycle of testing and remediation for water in their schools. (Read more via Christian Science Monitor)

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Source: https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/kansas-city-abandoned-schools/