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Tuesday, March 03, 2009
Design Team Updates Posted
The Program Design and Transition Team Updates were posted on the district website yesterday.
Wow, NOVA alone has 6-pages of cost related items they need in order to move in. All seem very reasonable (OK, maybe not the PeaPatch and greenhouse) and make sense when you are converting a middle school to high school.
Question: What is the price tag and where is the money coming from?
Jane Adams K-8. Not one word in the update about Spectrum and when you look at the list of needed items, cirriculum mainly you see NOTHING inovative. Generic and boring if you ask me.
The Hamilton update seems to be the most thoughtful, of the three I looked at anyway.
Jane Adams K-8. Not one word in the update about Spectrum and when you look at the list of needed items, cirriculum mainly you see NOTHING inovative. Generic and boring if you ask me.
I agree- why exactly is putting money into this, worth closing a well established school community? Additionally- I see that while families are looking elsewhere in the district- the reason many of them were at Summit was because that program was not available elsewhere in public school.
Closing the school, is not going to make other programs more attractive to those families. Its unfortunate- but as a former private school parent, I can understand completely. Only one chance for your child to get a K-12 education.
Well open enrollment is here and design team updates are posted but still no real details on the offerings at Jane Addams. I really want to know if the middle school will have a 6 or 7 period day or be homeroom based with just a couple of specialty teachers? I also want to what elective and sports they will be offering. These are the things that are VERY important to my son and will affect our middle school decision.
I hope I will get some answers at the open house this Thursday, but honestly, I'm just not that optimistic.
I will post here after the open house and give an update.
Adhoc Are there Seattle middle schools that have a seven period day? (Or are you including before/after school music/etc. as electives?) Does Shoreline have seven period days for everyone in middle school? Just curious.
Shoreline middle schools have zero period, which is in essence a voluntary 7th period, that students can opt to take. Some Seattle high schools, like Hale, have zero period too.
It looks like they have allotted 6 classrooms for k/1, 10 classrooms for 2/3, and the 2nd floor west wing (unknown number of classrooms) for 4/5.
As for the middle school it looks like they have allotted 10 classrooms for the entire middle school. Does this mean that the middle school will be smaller than the elementary IE the chimney VS mushroom model?
If you do the math it appears that there will be about 28 classrooms allotted for k-6 and only 10 classrooms for grades 6-8 (there might be some factors in that I'm not considering such as special ed, or others)
Also I noticed that they propose using the EDM for 6th grade math, instead of CMP2? Does anyone know why they would use the elementary math model for 6th grade instead of moving into cmp2 like other middle schools?
8 comments:
Wow, NOVA alone has 6-pages of cost related items they need in order to move in. All seem very reasonable (OK, maybe not the PeaPatch and greenhouse) and make sense when you are converting a middle school to high school.
Question: What is the price tag and where is the money coming from?
Jane Adams K-8. Not one word in the update about Spectrum and when you look at the list of needed items, cirriculum mainly you see NOTHING inovative. Generic and boring if you ask me.
The Hamilton update seems to be the most thoughtful, of the three I looked at anyway.
Jane Adams K-8. Not one word in the update about Spectrum and when you look at the list of needed items, cirriculum mainly you see NOTHING inovative. Generic and boring if you ask me.
I agree- why exactly is putting money into this, worth closing a well established school community?
Additionally- I see that while families are looking elsewhere in the district- the reason many of them were at Summit was because that program was not available elsewhere in public school.
Closing the school, is not going to make other programs more attractive to those families.
Its unfortunate- but as a former private school parent, I can understand completely.
Only one chance for your child to get a K-12 education.
Well open enrollment is here and design team updates are posted but still no real details on the offerings at Jane Addams. I really want to know if the middle school will have a 6 or 7 period day or be homeroom based with just a couple of specialty teachers? I also want to what elective and sports they will be offering. These are the things that are VERY important to my son and will affect our middle school decision.
I hope I will get some answers at the open house this Thursday, but honestly, I'm just not that optimistic.
I will post here after the open house and give an update.
Adhoc Are there Seattle middle schools that have a seven period day? (Or are you including before/after school music/etc. as electives?) Does Shoreline have seven period days for everyone in middle school? Just curious.
The Design Team at Hamilton has posted the update as well as a letter at http://www.hamilton-ptsa.org/PTSA/blog/2009/03/design-team-update.html
Shoreline middle schools have zero period, which is in essence a voluntary 7th period, that students can opt to take. Some Seattle high schools, like Hale, have zero period too.
It looks like they have allotted 6 classrooms for k/1, 10 classrooms for 2/3, and the 2nd floor west wing (unknown number of classrooms) for 4/5.
As for the middle school it looks like they have allotted 10 classrooms for the entire middle school. Does this mean that the middle school will be smaller than the elementary IE the chimney VS mushroom model?
If you do the math it appears that there will be about 28 classrooms allotted for k-6 and only 10 classrooms for grades 6-8 (there might be some factors in that I'm not considering such as special ed, or others)
Also I noticed that they propose using the EDM for 6th grade math, instead of CMP2? Does anyone know why they would use the elementary math model for 6th grade instead of moving into cmp2 like other middle schools?
Sorry I didn't mention in my above post that I was referring to Jane Addams.....
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