Drastic school closures in Kansas City, Missouri leave 700 staff facing job losses

A school district in Missouri has found a way to deal with the long-standing problem of its sink schools: close them down more or less overnight, explaining that if they don't the district will go bankrupt.

Kansas City, Missouri, which forms one giant metropolitan area with its adjacent twin, Kansas City, Kansas, has announced that it is shutting down almost half the schools in its inner city district – 29 out of 61 state schools – by the summer.

Almost 300 teachers and 400 other staff who will lose their jobs as a result were left wondering where they will find alternative work in this economic climate, while angry parents repeatedly disrupted the vote at the school board meeting on Wednesday night demanding to know where their children will go.

Proportionately it is by far the most radical school closure and related job loss tally announced in the United States since the start of the so-called Great Recession.

But schools chief John Covington has defended the decision. He portrayed the projected $50 million budget deficit and looming bankruptcy for the district as the final straw for a bunch of schools in a high-poverty area that have been falling apart for years.

School enrolment has halved in the last decade to 18,000 as working and middle class families continued their flight from the inner city to the suburbs, and wealth plummeted.

Now in 75% of the schools earmarked for closure fewer than a quarter of pupils attain basic national education standards.

Covington said the school system was crying out for restructuring and would "rise from the ashes".

Many parents disagreed, and called for his resignation.

Other struggling school districts across the US are watching to see if Convington can push his plan through without causing riots. If he succeeds, many may try to copy the idea.