The case for Kenny
A K-5 neighborhood school with test results and attendance far above district and state averages, in a building MPS itself rates as efficiently used. Here's what the record shows, where the real risk is, and what we're asking the board to do.
By the numbers
Facts only. Every figure links to its source.
Kenny by grade, and every cohort held
Official Oct 1, 2025 state count. Kenny grew from 295 to 312, up 5.8%.
Cohort retention, Oct 2024 to Oct 2025
How many students in each grade came back one grade higher. Not one cohort lost a child.
The kindergarten class also grew, from 45 to 52. 2025-26 counts are MDE; 2024-25 grade counts are federal (NCES). Both come from the same Oct 1 collection. [MDE]
Kenny is not the smallest school in the neighborhood, or the district
Southwest-area elementary enrollment, Oct 1, 2025. Red bars close in all three options.
Hale has 314 students and stays open in all three options. Kenny has 312 and closes in all three. Two students apart.
Of 37 MPS elementary schools in the same state file, 13 are smaller than Kenny. Most of them stay open. [MDE]
Programs include autism spectrum programming, EL services, telescoped math, 5th grade band and Minneapolis Kids care. [ExploreMPS]
The real risk: a size rule the district won't put a number on
Kenny isn't threatened because its building is empty. It isn't. The risk comes from Parameter 2, which asks the board to set a minimum number of students every school must have to offer the full "MPS student experience."
On Sept 15, Director Norvell asked staff for each school's current enrollment against that number, "how close are they, or how far away are they." No one answered. The same night, the deputy superintendent said closures are "not something that's like a huge cost savings." So the two stated reasons for closing schools, size and money, are a number nobody will publish and a saving the district says isn't the point. What the board heard.
The board hasn't picked a number. The only elementary-grade figure in any district document we reviewed comes from an April 21, 2026 slide about K-8 schools. It says the K-5 part of a school with under 70% free/reduced lunch needs 485 to 795 students. [Apr 21, 2026, slide 29]
Kenny's building was designed for about 389. If a number like 485 were applied to standalone K-5 schools, Kenny could not meet it even if every seat were filled. An April 7 example would also require every building to meet the minimum by 2030-31. [Apr 7, 2026, slide 38]
The superintendent's Sept 15, 2026 presentation shows Kenny closing in Option 1, Option 2 and Option 3. On the Southwest Pathway diagrams (slides 71-73) Kenny appears only on the "current" side, never on the "future" side. Slide 82 lists Kenny by name as an unprogrammed building in every option.
Kenny is not being closed for being too small. On slide 6 of the same deck, MPS codes Kenny orange, "large enough for MPS student experience, approaching optimal enrollment." Nine buildings are coded red for being too small. Kenny is not one of them.
What separates Kenny is that its 389-seat building is too small to absorb another school, so in a consolidation it is always the school that moves, never the school that receives. The deck states no minimum enrollment number anywhere in its 118 slides.
At the Sept 15 work session the presenter said it three times: "By home address, Kenny students would join Armatage or Windom." No vote was taken and there was no public comment. In 92 minutes of questions, no board member asked about Kenny, Lake Harriet, Armatage or Windom. The district did say the board can combine pieces of options and that it wants to hear "things that maybe we hadn't thought of." That is the opening for a fourth option.
Read what the board asked and what the district said, including every question and answer.
How Kenny got smaller
Kenny enrolled roughly 470-480 students in the years before 2020, more than its design capacity. Enrollment fell as the pandemic hit and as the district's 2020 boundary redesign took effect in fall 2021. See the full timeline.
Why Kenny should stay
It already meets the district's own efficiency standard.
MPS's building report calls Kenny's use of space "efficient." When the November 2024 space study named underused Southwest schools, Kenny wasn't one of them. [MPS] [Mpls Schools Voices]
Closing a top-performing school doesn't help its students.
Students displaced by closures do better only when they move to a stronger school. After Chicago closed 50 schools in 2013, displaced students' math scores were still about two months behind four years later, with the biggest hit in grades 3-5. Studies in Philadelphia and Michigan found schools receiving displaced students also declined. Kenny students have little room to move up. [UChicago 2018] [Fordham review]
The savings are smaller than they look.
Pew's study of six big-city districts found closure savings were "under a million dollars per school." MPS's own operations chief says an empty elementary costs $50,000-$80,000 a year to maintain and a sale takes two years or more. A district slide notes sale proceeds "largely" go to paying down existing debt. [Pew / EdWeek] [Star Tribune] [Research for Action]
Kenny is a campus, not just a building.
Kenny Elementary, Kenny Park and Anthony Middle School were planned together in the 1950s as a shared school and park site. Kenny is about a quarter mile from Anthony, on a clean pathway to Southwest High. Families built and maintain its water and perennial gardens and help fund its playground. [MPRB] [ExploreMPS] [MPS]
Distance changes how kids get to school.
The nearest other MPS elementary schools are Windom and Armatage, each about three-quarters of a mile away in a straight line. Walking routes are longer. National research finds longer distances explain nearly half of the decline in children walking to school. [McDonald, 2007]
Closed schools become empty buildings, and neighborhoods feel it.
MPS closed Tuttle in 2007 and was still trying to sell it in 2026. An empty elementary costs the district $50,000-$80,000 a year to maintain. Across 12 big cities, Pew found more closed school buildings sitting unused than sold or reused. Research has also found associations between closures and lower home values and weaker neighborhood cohesion, though cause and effect is hard to prove. [Star Tribune] [Pew 2013] [Research for Action]
Size alone is a poor rule.
A review of 57 studies on school size found the evidence generally favors smaller schools, recommending elementary schools of no more than about 300 students for largely disadvantaged populations and about 500 for others. A minimum size should reflect results, not just headcount. [Leithwood & Jantzi, 2009]
- 1Don't apply a K-8 sizing table to K-5 community schools.Set any K-5 minimum separately and publish the reasoning.
- 2Count results, not just headcount.Allow exceptions for schools with strong outcomes at efficient utilization.
- 3Publish the cost/benefit analysis first.Resolution 2025-0045 requires one. Director Callahan asked for per-school savings on Sept 15 and got no answer. Show net savings school by school before any vote.
- 4Put a fourth option on the table.The district said on Sept 15 that options can be combined and it wants to hear what it missed. An option that keeps Kenny open is what it missed.
- 5Release Kenny's updated building assessment.It was promised for 2025. Decisions shouldn't rely on a 2017 rating.
- 6Grow enrollment before shrinking schools.Parameter 1 names winning back families as the goal.
The strongest arguments against us, and our answers
If you're going to make the case for Kenny, know the counterarguments. Tap each one.