School closings? Program choices? KCPS asking its community, "How far do we go?"

The Kansas City Public Schools is holding community-wide gatherings to help plan significant changes in planning the future for its schools and children like these at Gladstone Elementary School.

Hard decisions are bearing down on the Kansas City Public Schools.

It needs to close some of its buildings, gather its students into equitable schools, take advantage of the rising technology, seize on its community’s passion for diversity and inclusion and deliver sustainable, fully-accredited and dynamic education into the next decade.

If the district and its community can answer these questions right, says Superintendent Mark Bedell, then better days are coming for everyone.

Join the conversation

Blueprint 2030 public engagement schedule

Monday, Oct. 18

12-1 p.m. Facebook Live with KCPS Superintendent Mark Bedell

4:30-6:30 p.m. Blueprint 2030 open house at Phillips Elementary, 2400 Prospect Ave.

Tuesday, Oct. 19

5:30-6:30 p.m. Spanish language virtual meeting via Zoom / Reunión virtual en español a través de Zoom

Wednesday, Oct. 20

5-7 p.m. Blueprint 2030 open house at Central Middle School, 3611 Linwood Blvd.

Thursday, Oct. 21

5:30-6:30 p.m. English language virtual meeting via Zoom

Friday, Oct. 22

9-10:30 a.m. Blueprint 2030 open house at Hale Cook Elementary, 7302 Pennsylvania Ave.

Bedell is calling on everyone with a stake in the city’s future to join in a week of public forums to help answering the over-arching question:

“How do we come out on the right side of history?”

The meetings, between Oct. 18 and Oct. 22, are the next step — an essential step — in the district’s Blueprint 2030 project to shape the future of the district and its community.

Right now, too many under-enrolled school buildings are hampering the district’s ability to provide the extra instruction, emotional supports, sports, band, clubs and other important pieces of a complete school experience to all of its students.

As part of the Blueprint 2030 project, the district has already conducted surveys of stakeholder groups, from students to community partners. An advisory committee has been meeting to help shape the issues that lie ahead.

Now the planning work aims to engage and hear as many voices as possible to help build the proposals to come in the next year.

The district has demonstrated it can provide strong academic programming with the essential social and emotional education that enables students to thrive. There are successful sports programs and bands, debate teams and other clubs.

“But it can’t be in pockets,” Bedell said. The district’s future “has to be framed through student experience and outcomes,” he said, and that requires an efficient school district that delivers its best opportunities to all students.

Blueprint 2030 is seeking everyone’s input — including parents, students, teachers, staff, community partners and leaders — in setting priorities in future programs and services, establishing essential values and making the hard choices in closings and other cuts to create the sustainable efficiency to get there.

“The community’s got tell us how far they want us to go,” said Bedell, who has a daughter enrolled in the district. “I’ve got to make a business decision and a parent’s decision, but it has to be in concert.”

The past year-and-a-half with the pandemic has been exhausting for families, Bedell acknowledged. And although there is excitement in the opportunities and visions seen in Blueprint 2030, it comes with inherent difficulties.

But know this, he said in encouraging the community to join the work: “There is some discomfort ,” he said. But that’s how you “get to a better day.”

By Joe Robertson/LINC Writer