The front doors of McCoy Elementary School in Kansas City, Mo., are seen Friday. McCoy is one of nearly half the schools in the Kansas City district expected to close before classes resume next fall. Residents are fearful that the neighborhood could worsen, attracting drug dealers and vandals when the children are gone.

Kansas City, Mo. ? In a neighborhood dotted with boarded up homes, trash and gang graffiti, McCoy Elementary has been an oasis.

Now that the 94-year-old school is closing, residents are fearful that the neighborhood could become even worse, attracting drug dealers and vandals when the children are gone. McCoy is among the roughly half of Kansas City district schools expected to shut down before class resumes next fall, part of a wave of school closures across the country.

“When it does close, it’s going to get bad around here,” said Virginia Stanley, standing outside her home with her husband, her 22-year-old granddaughter and her two young great-grandchildren, who live with them.

Superintendents of struggling districts are winning praise for confronting budget woes by shuttering half-empty and underperforming schools, a move often blocked by local politics in the past. In many cases, the schools have been declining for years but were never closed because residents and local advocacy groups fought to keep them. Now school leaders have an argument that trumps any parent outrage: The struggling economy makes these schools a luxury that districts can no longer afford.

About 6 percent of districts closed or consolidated schools this year, compared with about 3 percent in 2008-09, according to a survey conducted by the American Association of School Administrators. About 11 percent are expected to consider similar moves in 2010-11.

“It’s going to continue because we don’t see any short-term turnaround in the economy that would improve the situation for schools,” said Dan Domenech, executive director of the American Association of School Administrators.

Kansas City’s move earlier this month created waves because of how many of its schools will close. Detroit followed suit last week by moving to close nearly a quarter of its schools in a desperate bid to erase a $219 million budget deficit.

Before the Kansas City vote, civic leaders placed a full-page ad in the Kansas City Star to show support for the plan. Meanwhile, budget-balancing efforts in Detroit have won praise from Mayor Dave Bing and various parents’ rights groups.

But residents in both cities say the cost-cutting has a price, robbing residents of a community resource, a meeting space for civic groups and a point of pride in otherwise blighted neighborhoods.

Kansas City residents complain that schools closed in years past have sat vacant, attracting vagrants. This time around, officials have vowed to do better finding suitable uses for closed buildings, but residents are wary.

Already, McCoy Elementary attracts drug users in the summer when classes aren’t in session, Stanley’s husband, James, says.

“Your property, I don’t think it’s going to be worth anything when you close the school,” he said.

Closing schools is an unpopular business. Most have prominent local alumni to battle closures, along with sympathetic teachers, parents and kids to offer heartfelt pleas for survival. Often, many districts put it off even though operating underused buildings soaks up money that could be spent on teachers and other vital resources.