A dream for MLK
I recently heard about this meeting:
I know the neighborhood is eager to convert the building to a community center, which would certainly better than other options. (I hope to never hear an advertisement for the "MLK Elementary Condominiums, featuring original chalkboards.") But before the city moves forward on this idea, are we sure we don't need more elementary school space in the central cluster?
I understand how SPS could argue the need to close the school given the dwindling enrollment. And yet, there’s a huge growing issue about elementary school capacity not keeping up with demand (look what's happening in the north right now with kindergarten overcrowding). In the central cluster, Montlake, McGilvra, and Stevens are all above capacity and still there is more demand. The district has had poor luck trying to assign the excess capacity to other schools (losing many to alternative or private schools), but that doesn't mean they should give up -- the demand has not gone away. And once we give up school buildings, they are not easy to get back.
A Seattle public schools alum and fellow board member of Community & Parents for Public Schools, Kim Gould, suggested to me the following idea which I think SPS should strongly consider:
There’s always talk about “replicating” programs, but we all know that is easier said than done. What if we made MLK an feeder school for an existing program (or multiple programs)? For instance, what if using MLK allowed McGilvra to admit another 150 kids? McGilvra would be the SAME program – same principal, same PTA, same curriculum, etc… but maybe 4th and 5th graders all move together to MLK (almost like an "annex"), so everyone would still have everything great there is about McGilvra. I haven't worked out the numbers, but perhaps we could even do it for more than one school – e.g. Montlake 4-5 graders go there also, and there’s a shared vice principal, more kids to bond with, ability to offer some pre-middle school honors courses, etc. There are issues around transportation, but I believe the benefits all outweigh the costs, and it would be a way to get more families back into SPS (e.g. all those north capitol hill folks who live near TOPS and can’t get into Montlake).
Back when my wife went through Seattle public schools, the district used to do things like this to manage crowding. When she went to Montlake, the school only went to 4th grade, they used Madrona for 5th & 6th grade, and Meany Middle School was only 7th & 8th. Why not try out creative solutions like this again?
Unfortunately, this idea has yet to gain any traction. I'm unable to attend the MLK meeting on Thursday, and this could be the last chance to make the case for SPS to retain use of MLK. Anybody else think this is an idea worth pursuing?
Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary School
School Use Advisory Committee Third Meeting
Date: Thursday, September 11, 2008
Time:7 PM - 9:00 PM
Location: Madrona Elementary School, Cafeteria (1121 33rd Avenue)
Here is your chance to provide public comment to the advisory committee which will identify uses and recommend criteria for the establishment of non-school uses for Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary School, 3201 East Republican Street, to the Director of the Department of Neighborhoods. Seattle Public Schools wants to consider MLK Schools for possible non-school uses that are consistent with the underlying zoning (SF 5000).
The Committee will gather and evaluate public comment to establish criteria of non-school uses of the building and grounds, which are compatible with the surrounding community, zoned Single Family 5000. The Land Use Code requires a minimum of
three public meetings. The committee can recommend any relevant conditions for permitted uses to be applied for granting these changes to minimize its impacts on the surrounding neighborhood. Should you have any questions please contact Thao Tran at the Department of Neighborhoods at 206-684-0209 or at thao.tran@seattle.gov.
Accommodations for person with disabilities will be provided upon request. Please contact Thao Tran immediately upon receipt of this agenda to make arrangements.
I know the neighborhood is eager to convert the building to a community center, which would certainly better than other options. (I hope to never hear an advertisement for the "MLK Elementary Condominiums, featuring original chalkboards.") But before the city moves forward on this idea, are we sure we don't need more elementary school space in the central cluster?
I understand how SPS could argue the need to close the school given the dwindling enrollment. And yet, there’s a huge growing issue about elementary school capacity not keeping up with demand (look what's happening in the north right now with kindergarten overcrowding). In the central cluster, Montlake, McGilvra, and Stevens are all above capacity and still there is more demand. The district has had poor luck trying to assign the excess capacity to other schools (losing many to alternative or private schools), but that doesn't mean they should give up -- the demand has not gone away. And once we give up school buildings, they are not easy to get back.
A Seattle public schools alum and fellow board member of Community & Parents for Public Schools, Kim Gould, suggested to me the following idea which I think SPS should strongly consider:
There’s always talk about “replicating” programs, but we all know that is easier said than done. What if we made MLK an feeder school for an existing program (or multiple programs)? For instance, what if using MLK allowed McGilvra to admit another 150 kids? McGilvra would be the SAME program – same principal, same PTA, same curriculum, etc… but maybe 4th and 5th graders all move together to MLK (almost like an "annex"), so everyone would still have everything great there is about McGilvra. I haven't worked out the numbers, but perhaps we could even do it for more than one school – e.g. Montlake 4-5 graders go there also, and there’s a shared vice principal, more kids to bond with, ability to offer some pre-middle school honors courses, etc. There are issues around transportation, but I believe the benefits all outweigh the costs, and it would be a way to get more families back into SPS (e.g. all those north capitol hill folks who live near TOPS and can’t get into Montlake).
Back when my wife went through Seattle public schools, the district used to do things like this to manage crowding. When she went to Montlake, the school only went to 4th grade, they used Madrona for 5th & 6th grade, and Meany Middle School was only 7th & 8th. Why not try out creative solutions like this again?
Unfortunately, this idea has yet to gain any traction. I'm unable to attend the MLK meeting on Thursday, and this could be the last chance to make the case for SPS to retain use of MLK. Anybody else think this is an idea worth pursuing?
Comments
But I definitely think the district ought to see a spare building as an opportunity, not a liability, and try to do something creative with it if possible. If they've already thought about all that, and feel a school use is impossible, they should say so and present a report or something. What's the building like? Is it in okay shape?
Helen Schinske
I am, however, pleased to read that a member of the Montlake community is open to the idea that their school could be in another building. It "would be the SAME program – same principal, same PTA, same curriculum, etc…"
This is the very same idea that the Montlake community absolutely rejected during the school closures discussions.
A more practical solution to the need for additional capacity on the north side of the Central Cluster would be to re-purpose Lowell as a neighborhood school and close Montlake. This would avoid the problems inherent in having one school in two buildings and would allow economies of scale. Elementary APP could be relocated; there are possibilities.
Another option would be to repurpose Seward as a neighborhood school. TOPS could be relocated, perhaps to Aki Kurose if that building were to become available as a result of the federal mandate that the school restructure. This would be more challenging because the folks at TOPS regard their building as integral to their program. I'm not sure exactly how or why, but that is the claim they made during the discussions about closures.
As for the community being married to the community center idea, well, I live in the area and it's the first I have heard of it.
What about making it a quality small middle school? Or is there a rule that you can't have a middle school with less than 14,000 students.
Of course, SPS would still face the challenge of filling the building with 'neighborhood' kids. Somehow I can't see Montlake kids trudging up that hill and crossing over two highways in large enough numbers to make it worth while to move TOPS. That, of course, is why Seward was closed and repurposed as TOPS in the first place.
I'm sure it would go over like a lead balloon.
I'm less enthusiastic about Charlie's proposal since it would require moving so many programs and school populations around.
Once Maureen gets a look at Aki Kurose in its present condition, I doubt she would be willing to see the TOPS community move from its state-of-the-art facility to one that has been neglected. It is my reference middle school and we rejected it for a number of reasons.
Andy's idea shows the kind of ingenuity the District needs to address its space problems and retain families.
Regarding "X's" comments: McGilvra in fact welcomes students with disabilities and minorities. The school has long hosted two blended Special Ed kindergartens. And the "lead balloon" comment is flat out wrong: when the CAC was meeting a couple of years ago to make recommendations on school closures, the McGilvra PTA explicitly requested that the MLK reference area be appended McGilvra's, in order to enhance the school's diversity. I believe this was in the CAC's final recommendations, but it's unclear what the District did with the MLK reference area--the maps on the web site have never been updated.
McGilvra parents (unlike private school parents) are committed to the system and are working hard to build a better school and district. We're all on the same team!
The only thing I found on Wikipedia listed under notable alum was Dave Dederer and Chris Ballew, members of the band the Presidents of the United States of America.
I asked a coworker, who is a Bush School alum about momma snark's comment and he made a couple of points...
1. While Bush is a liberal school, and the people in charge are liberal, there are plenty of conservatives behinds the scenes.
2. If they lived in Seattle, where would they go to school? Lakeside?
3. They would feel more comfortable at Bush than MLK.
Thats just one Bush alums opinion, of course, albeit a conservative Bush alum.
Jenna and Barbara Bush went to two private schools, the Hockaday School and St Andrews Episcopal, tuitions for both are comparable to Bush. They also attended a public high school. I going to guess that in Seattle they would have gone to Garfield.
Unfortunately, children with disabilities have definitely not gotten that same "welcome mat". Yes, they do have a K-only program. But, McGilvra kicks out all students after their stay in the blended K. Would you like your first grader to transition after s/he had just figured everything out and had a few friends? Not welcoming at all. Not best practice. They've done nothing to keep these students with their peers. And, the school even kicks out some of the kindergarteners while they're still in kindergarten, if they decide they don't want to serve them. McGilvra's program has the highest special education staffing of any program in the district. It is well-staffed to handle the most challenging students. So, nobody should ever have to leave. If they do leave, they'll go somewhere with LESS support and LESS appropriate. It is really a question of will and commitment. Even kids who no longer require any special program are forced out. To top it off, parents who have gone to look at McGilvra have been promised by the parent-voluteer-tour-guides for Kindergarten-tours that the parent association was fighting and doing everything it could to keep students with disabilities out of this PUBLIC school. "We promise you. There won't be any special education programs here." Usually, these tour guides don't know that yes, parents of children with disabilites go on school tours also.
I'm sorry AutismMom has such a negative impression of McGilvra. I think her criticism is unfair, though. The District sets the program and enrollment rules, not the school. So it's the District which "kicks out" the disabled kids after the blended K. McGilvra has absolutely no say in the matter, nor would any school. I agree that it is a stupid policy, and I have friends whose children have suffered from it.
As for mid-year transfers from the blended K, I'm no expert, but I would think that this happens on a case-by-case basis depending on a child's readiness to be part of a blended classroom. I seriously doubt that the principal and special ed staff are conspiring to force out "difficult" children--let's give the professionals a bit of credit here.
The story of the tour guide is disconcerting, however, and I will see if I can find out more about it.
Overall, though, McGilvra gets a bum rap which is highly undeserved. Again, these are parents and staff who are committed to public education and have worked hard to turn an under-enrolled school with middling test scores into an first-choice school with good scores and a long waitlist. We don't deserve any medals, though; we just ask that people don't jump to simplistic conclusions about our motives and attitudes.
I think your emotions have gotten the best of you and you've lost touch with reality. I know many families and a couple of teachers at McGilvra and I can assure you that this is not the attitude of the school. Argue as you may, but McGilvra has made great strides in outreach, diversity, and inclusion.
McGilvra has the most highly staffed special education program in the district. 1 teacher and 1/2 and aide for 5 kids exists nowhere else. They are staffed for the MOST CHALLENGING students. That means, IF they had the will and commitment to serve these students, they could.
And then Autismmo says..."McGilvra has the most highly staffed special education program in the district. 1 teacher and 1/2 and aide for 5 kids exists nowhere else. They are staffed for the MOST CHALLENGING students. That means, IF they had the will and commitment to serve these students, they could."
They are only "highly staffed" for kindergarten. Who will teach the rest of the grades? There is no spec ed staffing after K.
Your beef is with the district, and it is a valid one. Aim your advocacy and anger at them. It is fruitless to aim your anger at parents and community, and in most cases at the school itself. I know that you think there is a huge conspiracy in Seattle, and that we all meet and try to figure out ways to keep disable kids out of our schools, but it is not so. Most everyone I know wants and seeks diversity.....on all levels...socio economic, etnic, and yes special ed kids too.
Now stop ranting at parents and focus your energy in the right directions.
Of course parent groups, PTAs, would be out in numbers to stand against such prejudice. So it's not enough to lay blame on the district. We have to ask, why is this prejudice so invisible as prejudice in our community? Why don't people who say that they care about civil rights see it for what it is? Reasonable intelligent people are not getting this. Yet if you look at the data, it's right there in plain site and it is also the reason the independent review of the special ed programming in our district was so severe.
Parents have the influence and in my opinion the responsibility to ask critical questions in these schools where these things are going on. PTAs could stand up for these children's rights to the types of continuity that our non-disabled children can take for granted. I don't think it's enough to blame the district.
People who don't face challenges can't see the fact that others do. Since this thread is about the dream, let's think about that. We hear a lot of people saying they want diversity. But, the data really doesn't support that conclusion. They vote with their choice. The district published it's choice information and if you do linear trendline regressions on that information, you will see, on a macro scale, people strongly favor the schools which are the LEAST diverse. They may lament it, they may claim other things were the reason, they may be in denial. But, they simply don't choose the diversity. That is also a fact, not a rant.
I never said there was a "conspiracy", it's actually simply called "status-quo".
It doesn't look very believable or credible when you simply say "the school lobbied against special ed". IF this actually happened the community needs to who at the school was responsible.
Did this principal influence the district to NOT place a special ed program at the school? If so, how Surely she couldn't just tell the district her "teachers weren't ready"
My perspective as a parent of two " twice-gifted" kids, is not that there is a conspiracy- but that the squeaky wheel gets the grease.
While both of my kids are now out of high school- I try and stay apprised of what is going on with SPED, because I care about the families & I know how hard it is to advocate for your kids in the school system ( and to get even a " good-enough response), when you are also facing physical/emotional/financial/logistical challenges at home.
As an urban district- one of our strengths & challenges is diversity in background & perspective. It is more than diversity of skin color.
We all need to look beyond our present needs & be a little more flexible.
I agree that MLK should be retained as a school building & ease some of the over capacity.
Schools can designate which type of special ed students they want. I do not believe they can say no students with IEPs, however- schools like the Center school have few. It is part of the budget making process- but the principal/superintendent would have final say.
After that, discussion was mostly about the parking impact in the community of using the building as an arts/performance space.
My sense is that the train has already left the station. The District is not about to do a complete 180 and reopen a building which was closed due to under-enrollment at the school and excess capacity in the cluster. They party line is probably that the new enrollment plan will fix everything.
Richard, if you start asking questions you will discover that McGilvra has a lot of say in this matter.