Seattle Public Schools aims to become top 5 district by 2031

There's a new plan from Seattle Public Schools to become a top five school district in the nation and FOX 13's Sam Campbell is live outside SPS headquarters and Sam you've been reading through the plan so give us some of the details here. Oh that's right Bill. District staff are going to try and thread a needle with the resources that they already have adjusting schedules and curriculums all so that SPS can land in the top five urban school districts by 2031 and here is how the school district plans to do it. The staff are going to focus on three key areas, third grade English scores, eighth grade math scores, and graduation rates. So let's get into the details here. District documents compare standardized test scores to other districts across Washington, Oregon, California, and Nevada. For third grade English and language arts, the district says about 63 percent of its students scored as proficient. Within five years, the goal is to bring that up to 67 percent. Part of the proposed fix is implementing a daily two-hour block of reading and writing. The district is also looking at math scores for eighth graders. Its own data says that SPS ranks seventh among districts in the region there, with only about half its eighth grade students rated proficient in standardized math scores. By 2031, it wants to bring that number up to two-thirds. And for graduation rates, it's all the way down at number 15 in Washington State alone with a graduation rate of 86%. Now, all this is that while the district continues to struggle with a significant budget deficit and now recently agreeing to an amended contract with unionized educators. We're still broke. And the good news is that we didn't kind of get more broke, right? And so what we're going to be doing, which is what we've already done, we've already saved about $50 million. We're looking to save another kind of 50 or 60 this year. So we think that through some efficiencies, we have a lot of bloat in central office. We will be tightening the reins there. We do think that there are some thoughtful ways of not basically having multiple programs that are doing the same things. Now we've reached out to the union for a response on the financial impact of that contract. But we're also aware that last school year there was talk of closing or merging some schools. So we reached back out to the school district to ask for an update on that and they tell us over email that all options are still on the table. In Seattle, Sam Campbell, Fox 13 News.