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
If we test into Spectrum, we wouldn't have to change schools. Maybe, just maybe, this can help the Spectrum program at Leschi too.
1. The entire 500 students are not needed to form a viable cohort. Re-think what is the critical mass of students necessary to form a sustainable learning community.
2. Do NOT split or duplicate the program until you have defined the curriculum.
3. If you place the program in a school with general education students, put it in a school where the general education population is similar to the APP population in socio-economic status and academic achievement.
Each half of the program will have about 250 students, which is enough to form a viable program. There will be only one 1st grade class at each location and it may be small, but half programs of 250 should work.
The District says that splitting the program is just the kick in the ass they need to create the urgency to write the curriculum and they will have it ready for the fall.
There is, however, no way for them to get around the mismatch in SES and academic achievement between the APP population and the populations at Thurgood Marshall and Hawthorne.
Hawthorne is 76% FRE and the 4th grade WASL pass rates last year were 46.7% in reading, 43.3% in writing, and 26.7% in math. All are below the state average, below the district average, and below the previous year's pass rate.
Thurgood Marshall is 83% FRE and the 4th grade WASL pass rates last year were 35.9% in reading, 51.4% in writing, and 28.6% in math. All are below the state average, below the district average, and below the previous year's pass rate.
Before elementary APP was at Lowell it was at Madrona. The relationship was a total disaster. Putting elementary APP at Thurgood Marshall and Hawthorne sounds like an exact repeat of the Madrona disaster.
So the questions are:
1. How does the District reconcile their decision to place in the program in buildings that are so unsuitable per the APP review?
2. What steps will the District take to prevent a repeat of the disaster at Madrona?
Is your school on the chopping block? Why shouldn’t it be closed? Call The Conversation feedback line right now at 206 221 3663 or email us at conversation@kuow.org
Or you can listen and call in during the show at 1 pm.
http://www.kuow.org/program.php?current=TC
According to the District, they would have put it there, but there isn't a building where they can put it. Hmmmm. We'll have to ponder that. Perhaps we can find one.
Pinehurst will apparently be available. It can hold 280-300 students.
Perhaps a better question would be: "How will those programs work with the existing communities at Marshall and Hawthorne?"
What is the statistical information on south end students that make APP but can't go to Lowell because they can't get a bus there or the travel is too far?
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.
The proposal from the Superintendent, presented last night, was to close Lowell because the building's condition is so poor and move the elementary APP students to two different locations. One, at Thurgood Marshall, for the students who live in the Queen Anne/Magnolia, Northwest, North, and Northeast clusters, and another at Hawthorne for the students who live in the Central, South, Southeast, and West Seattle clusters.
I hope this clarifies matters for the_Lorax.
There are no students who cannot get a bus to Lowell. Elementary students who qualify for APP are all provided with yellow bus transportation to the school unless they live within the school's walk zone.
Take a look at page 109 of the preliminary report and appendices.
Hawthorne has a planning capacity of 428. The functional capacity is surely smaller, particularly given the presence of self-contained special education students in the building.
The District projects placing 238 APP students there. These APP students have siblings. The sibling tie-breaker comes first - even before reference area. If there is one sibling for every four APP students (a ratio I made up without any data to support it), there will be about 60 APP siblings that will also enroll at Hawthorne ahead of the neighborhood students.
Of the 428 seats at Hawthorne, about 300 of them will go to APP students or their brothers and sisters. 34 seats will go to special education students. There will fewer than 100 seats for neighborhood general education students. That's going to have to be a pretty small reference area. The neighborhood students will be outnumbered 3:1 by APP students and siblings.
The situation at Thurgood Marshall will be even more severe. It has a planning capacity of 422, a projected APP enrollment of 261, and a projected self-contained Special Education enrollment of 23. Take away 65 seats for an APP sibling for every four students in the program and we are left with only 73 seats available for neighborhood general education students. The neighborhood kids will be outnumbered 4.5:1 by APP students and their siblings. The general education classes will be about half neighborhood kids and half brothers and sisters of APP students. How small will the reference area have to be for Thurgood Marshall?
Montessori at Leschi is a good thing."
Montessori at TT Minor is a good thing, too. We are loving our experience there.
I believe that if it were allowed to expand, we could fill all of the "excess capacity" at TT Minor with Central Cluster students who want to enroll in the Montessori program.
We need more integrated school options in the Central Cluster. It seems that we have some of the most segregated schools in the District.
So far, the Montessori program at TT Minor is a great mix of kids, I'd love to see it allowed to grow.
Montessori will be good at Leschi, but does TT Minor really have to close?
1) The District has absolutely guaranteed that each of these schools would develop an Advanced Learning Opportunity program in their general education classrooms.
2) Once things get rolling, the APP siblings could account for anywhere from one-third to two-thirds of the general education students - or more.
So I would think that Charlie may be onto something. Younger siblings of APP students would start out at Hawthorne/TM. Many, but not all, will eventually test into APP, but before then, they can bridge the gap, so to speak, between the regular and ALO classes and the APP classes. Would a strong active push to get siblings enrolled alleviate some of the negative issues that existed when APP was at Madrona?
Check out the data on student turnover for Hawthorne and Thurgood Marshall.
At Hawthorne, only 66.8% of students enrolled the previous year returned to the school last year. And 42 students transferred out during the year. That's 16% of the average enrollment of 258. If those rates hold up, then there will be seven to ten seats made available in each grade at the beginning of the year and another three seats in each grade that becomes available during the year.
At Thurgood Marshall, only 51.4% of the students enrolled the previous year returned to the school and 105 of the 297 students - 35% - transferred out during the year. This would translate into 15 seats made available in each class at the start of each year and about ten seats made available in each class during the year.
Younger siblings will be applying for kindergarten seats and will get in ahead of neighborhood students.
Due to the rapid student turnover at these schools, even APP families seeking seats in the general education programs shouldn't have much trouble getting one.
Thanks to the updated sibling rule in the student assignment policy, two siblings are admitted to a school at the same time. So a family can get sibling preference for a general education child at one of these schools in the same year that they choose it for the APP-eligible student.
What I am still slightly unclear about is #3 of the APP Review... why do the APP kids need the be in a school of similar socio-economic status and academic achievement? Is it that the APP kids will stick out like a sore thumb at Hawthorne/Marshall? Would they not be able to be friends? How did they come to that conclusion (is there research behind it?)?
I am not going to make any false pretention about understanding how difficult it is to have your school closed, or program moved. But why exactly wouldn't parents send their kids to T Marshall or Hawthorne? We can say "none of the ones I know would go" but there isn't clear explanation of why that is. It is something I'm grappling with.
Here is the report. The reccommendation actually appears on the very last page of the report. The concern was that severe differences between the populations could be the source of divisiveness.
We have already seen this played out here in Seattle when elementary APP (then called IPP) was housed at Madrona. It was a poor partnership.
I don't think anyone can predict whether APP families will choose to enroll siblings in the general education programs at Thurgood Marshall or Hawthorne. reader has predicted both that they won't be able to get in and that they won't want to get in. I won't predict if they will or not, but I can project what would happen if APP families did enroll their other children at these schools. I can also say that I think they should.
I believe the District will work hard to make these programs successful. I think Bob Vaughan will work hard to make these programs successful. I think that Carla Santorno and Dr. Goodloe-Johnson each have a personal stake in seeing that these programs are successful.
Moreover, I live in Southeast Seattle myself and I think that these programs can be successful. I think that the presence of APP in the schools and the high-level attention paid to the programs will attract involved families from all over the clusters. It's possible that Thurgood Marshall could become the fifth school on the assignment form for a lot of families in the Central Cluster (Montlake, McGilvra, Stevens, and TOPS being the first four). I think families in the South might list Hawthorne as a fourth choice.
Leschi is nicer campus. I'll admit that it's also somewhat more convienient for me, but it really is a nicer building, with a big park next door, a great view, access to beaches, and a lot of other plusses. Montessori and Spectrum at the same school is appealing to me, and I'm hoping the two together can attract more neighborhood families, and maybe even get Spectrum-elligable in kids in Central to go there instead of private school. The neighborhood is far more affluent than the school. Getting affluent neighborhood kids and Montessori and Central Spectrum kids to go to this local school could, potentially, make this a successful, integrated school in a nice building in a good location. I'm hoping the Montessori is the spark needed to get this started.
There are some good things about Minor, and I would have preferred to see T Marshall or Gatzert closed instead, but I think this move will be ok, and has the potential to do some good things.
Helen Schinske