Tuesday Open Thread
The speaker list is up for the Board meeting tomorrow; not as packed as I thought with just four people on the waitlist. The majority of the speakers are speaking on high school boundaries (with several wanting to talk about Ballard High). There are only three of us speaking about the Green Dot resolution asking the City to not grant the zoning departures that Green Dot has requested. It's me, long-time watchdog, Chris Jackins, and the head of the Washington State Charter Schools Association, Patrick D'Amelio. (I knew Mr. D'Amelio when he headed the Alliance for Education and Big Brothers and Big Sisters; he's a stand-up guy.)
Comments
I'm also concerned, as I said on the other thread about Lowell, about what's going to happen to the shuttered buildings. Could the Horace Mann building be used as an extension of the Garfield Community Center? I understand they have a small farm; could that become a P-Patch? Is there any space for a farm or garden at Meany?
Helen Schinske
It would seem wrong to house anything in the Horace Mann building after NOVA is moved out because the whole idea is to capture the savings that would come from leaving it vacant. If the District still has to heat it, power it, and maintain it for some other purpose, they might as well just leave the school in it.
My point was that someone else would pay for it, as is happening at places like University Heights. I'm concerned that the building would get stripped, walls bashed in for copper wiring, all that. How can the district keep that from happening?
Helen Schinske
So first, given how building condition is driving all of these decisions, I'm glad that the District has decided that the NOVA Project is worth saving even if the Horace Mann building is not. I'm also glad that they found a very suitable new location for it.
Meany is on Capitol Hill on 21st between Thomas and Republican. It's next to Miller Park and close to the intersection of 23rd and Madison. So it's a quick bus ride on the 48 (or bike ride or walk) along 23rd to or from Garfield and a quick bus ride on the 8 for about twelve blocks to or from Broadway and Seattle Central Community College.
I don't think that there will be much mixing between the S.B.O.C. and NOVA at Meany. I can definitely see students from the S.B.O.C. earning credits for teaching their native language to NOVA students. I can definitely see them sharing a garden/farm on the property. I think it would be great if the cafeteria prepared vegetarian and vegan meals - which would also be halal, of course. I'm sure mixing will be encouraged, and I hope it will happen, I just don't think we'll see much.
There was a lot of talk from the District about how NOVA would provide the SBOC with a good model of how to make Alternative Learning work, but they don't have to share a building for that.
The Summit high school IDP will also be there, and I'm confident that these students will find a safe and welcoming home at NOVA.
Best of all, of course, the S.B.O.C. has been allocated capital money for renovations to their new home. This money is already set aside for them and now we know that it will be spent on Meany. I'm sure both schools will benefit from this money.
On opening this blog, I noted that there are about seven new threads, one for each school/program closure/movement. I then noted that a couple schools has one or two comments, a couple had three or four, one had seven...and APP had 23.
a) dividing these threads up is, well, divisive. Can't we all comment generally? Is this "divide and conquer"?
b) I hope that the APP stakeholders can continue to contribute to the other threads;
c) I hope that stakeholders in the other schools can step up their commentary
d) I hope that everyone is advocating for everyone (a repeat of "a", but necessary!)
Carry on.
Sorry that this got off subject of the building closure.
When I heard the proposals, my first concern was for Central Region middle school students enrolled at Meany. Where will they go when Meany Middle School is closed?
The preliminary proposal says "DISCONTINUE Meany program and reassign students to other schools based on where they live"
Well, what about the Meany students who live in the Central Region? Where will they be re-assigned? Not to Washington. That school is totally full. So these students will have to be bussed out of their reference area to... Hamilton? Mercer? McClure? I'm thinking Hamilton. The proposal doesn't say.
This isn't right. When the staff were considering the idea of putting Pathfinder at Cooper, they ultimately rejected the idea because it would mean that about 30 students in the West Seattle-North cluster would have to be bussed to a school in West Seattle-South. Yet the fact that the decision to close Meany Middle School would require 150-200 students to be bussed out of their region isn't even mentioned. It should have been a deal-breaker as it was for Cooper.
The solution, of course, is to make more room at Washington. They can only do that by moving some students out, and that means APP.
Hamilton Middle School has an enrollment of about 700. Their new building will have a capacity of about 1,000. From those numbers it may seem that Hamilton has almost but not quite enough room for APP, but Hamilton has A LOT of out-of-region students. If the out-of-region students were sent back to the schools in their home reference area, Hamilton would have plenty of room for APP.
With APP out of Washington, all of the local students could get in.
Meany has a building condition score of 47.34. There were buildings with higher scores that were closed for being in such bad shape, but the District moves two programs INTO Meany with this score.
The report describes Pinehurst as having "a very poor building condition (55.32)" which is 8 points better than Meany's. T T Minor is closed and described as having "a very low building condition" at 54.61 - 7 points better than Meany. The report says "the poor condition of the Lowell building makes it a better candidate for closure, not for continuing to accomodate students". The Lowell building condition is 53.72, 6 points better than Meany.
Was this move somehow predicated on the presumption that they will use the capital funds committed to S.B.O.C. to fix the place up?
Oddly, they seem to think that this represents a big move forward for NOVA. The report says "The Meany building has a significantly higher condition than Mann (18 points higher)".
This would be a perfect NOVA student project, and it would provide the very sort of information that seems to be lacking in the districts analysis behind the proposal.
Yes, it was Ted Howard that said my daughter could not take the class at Garfield.
I see that he is allowing Nova students to be in the orchestra and music classes at Garfield; I can only assume that he feels that these kids have something to offer to the Garfield school and is making allowances for them. I'm glad to see that Mr. Howard is giving these kids the opportunity to benefit from Garfield's proximity; however, I wish that he were open to allowing other kids to as well.
By the way, who is Michael Tolley?
Thank you.
I suggest that you contact him. He's a pretty right guy who believes in following the rules. If the rule is that your daughter can be in the class, then he will see it done.
The problem is that Meany has a lower building score (47) than the buildings they are planning to close. What does the district propose for improvements to Meany? And if there are no improvements, I fear that Meany will be slated for closure in the next round.
The strongest reason for the S.B.O.C. to be in the building, however, is because the money for fixing up Meany belongs to the S.B.O.C. Without the S.B.O.C. kicking in their capital, Meany doesn't get renovated.
When you try to figure if the programs will fit, you have to ask the question about the new, renovated Meany, not as it is currently configured.
But if NOVA didn't go to Meany, then where would it go?
Well the first choice would be for it to stay at Horace Mann. It could also go to T T Minor - that would be a shorter distance move and a bigger step up in building condition than the proposed change to Meany.
Meany parent here. Since there's no thread for us, just wanted to let you know that the Meany community is very committed to showing the board why we have a program worth saving. A few reasons have already been mentioned, such as no room in the cluster for current students to transfer to. Many of us chose Meany over other middle schools because it is a small school, it has integrated advanced learning opportunities, a fabulous group of teachers and administrators, an integrated arts program and a new arts festival that was a huge success last year. We are open to sharing the building with another program,but that would have to be researched more fully. It came as quite a shock to us that we were on the chopping block, so we are rallying now to show Seattle what we are all about.
Cara
Welcome! This is the thread for Meany, so I've renamed it to make that clearer.
Cara