SEATTLE — Sixty-five schools in Seattle are in the final stages of shutting down, but not all of them are closing at the same time.
The District of Columbia is still holding schools open.
But the Seattle Public Schools are planning to end their closure on Sept. 30, leaving a little more than three weeks of instruction.
The district said it’s not just closing schools, but that the district will be holding students for longer periods of time in other locations as well.
That’s to allow them to take classes that might not have been scheduled in the District because of travel or other factors.
That includes those with disabilities, those who attend for work and those who live in a shelter.
The district said students who are not attending classes will be transferred to other schools.
It says it has enough funds to meet those needs.
The number of Seattle schools in the closing stage of closure was not clear Monday.
A district spokeswoman said the district expects to announce the total number of schools that will be closed by the end the week.
“We’ve got to get to a point where we can continue to serve students and students with disabilities,” said Seattle Public School spokeswoman Kristine Johnson.
“We’re working on that right now.”
She added that there are about 8,000 students in Seattle Public schools.
The Seattle School District says it is not closing all schools.
But many of them have closed recently.
We asked for a list of schools in Washington state that are in this process.
We’re still working to get all of the schools to open, said Seattle School Superintendent Lisa Clements.
That includes all of our non-English-language schools, the kindergarten through 12th grade, and the middle school.
We’ll have to see what happens as the process plays out.
The districts closure of public schools is part of a larger trend of school closures that has been on the rise across the country.
Many of the closures are related to the federal government’s new school-funding policy, known as No Child Left Behind.
The policy limits how much federal funds can be spent to public schools.
And many of those schools, including Seattle Public, have been unable to meet the cap.
The Washington state Department of Education, which administers No Child Right Back, said it will consider the Seattle schools request to reopen schools.
In a letter sent to the Seattle School district Monday, the agency said the districts request for an extension of the program’s deadlines will be considered at the earliest.
In the letter, the department said the schools requests are consistent with the Washington Department of Finance’s “no pupil left behind” goal.
No child left behind is a goal the state sets to support low-income students and families, including students with special needs.
