JA Meeting
I did end up attending the Jane Addams meeting last night. Some posts from the Seattle Council PTSA meeting did report their thoughts and we all seem to have gone to the same meeting. As has been mentioned, Directors Carr, Martin-Morris, De Bell and Maier were present.
- Despite repeated questions about what will happen, did any staff there tell parents that JA will remain a K-8 beyond next year? No. The closest we got was Dr. Goodloe-Johnson making a reference to demographic data about the rise in enrollment by 2013. So that's 4 years, maybe. Parents were very frustrated on this point. All the Board members sat on their hands. I have to say if I were on the Board I would have said that I would support a 6-year (K-5) plan for JA to give it a chance. This wouldn't have meant that you, as a Board member, could make it happen but you give support to a decision the Board made. Didn't happen.
- Has Dr. Goodloe-Johnson repeatedly cast this as a Board decision? Yes and I hope they are keeping track. She is determined to put whatever outcome that there is squarely on their shoulders and it's getting to the point of almost trying to throw them under the bus.
- The only person to get any applause when introduced was Debbie Nelson, principal at JA.
- Dr. Goodloe-Johnson was late but didn't make up the time so not as many questions got asked.
- Michael De Bell, filling time until Dr. Goodloe-Johnson got there, said they had been aware of the challenges of this region over a year ago. Yes, and yet we are still having discussions over what to do. He also offered to take questions but the mic was taken from him and it didn't happen.
- I asked Tracy Libros a question (again to fill time) about enrollment at Eckstein and what is being done to address middle school capacity. Oddly, she didn't really answer the question but did explain that schools used to be able to set their own capacity as long as the cluster/region they were in came out equally. Now the enrollments are set by the district with schools still able to make requests.
- Dr. Goodloe-Johnson said 4 things were going on. The SAP which they have been working on for two years (but I note they only put the footnote about JA in just last week), enrollment, capacity management and facilities. I find this interesting because SAP and enrollment go hand and hand as does capacity management and facilities. I had to laugh to myself because she said that "we can't wait 3 years from now to plan work on capacity". Yes and Charlie made the point that if we HAD been doing the work 3 years ago, we wouldn't have these issues right now. (Meaning, if they had been working towards re-opening some buildings.)
- One of the issues that hasn't been made clear and I hope to here is that the district doesn't just work off who SAYS they are coming; they work off the actual enrollment figures that are due Oct 1. So when Oct 1, 2009 comes, we will know the true numbers at JA and every other school.
- Dr. Goodloe-Johnson keeps trying to tie BTA III and BEX IV to student assignment and that's kind of weird. I have never heard this before. Yes, the condition of the buildings is a key part of capacity management and enrollment but she's making it sound like we are planning all of assignment around it and that's not true. The overwhelming majority of our buildings are still in play and that won't change.
- She also said not once but twice that we may have to build a NEW elementary in the NE. Yeah and I'm going to grow to 5 feet someday. Not going to happen (or, if it does, expect a huge outcry). What would be the point when you can already expand capacity at several N/NE elementaries or re-open/restore closed ones?
- One parent pointed out that the JA website has remain static for months and nothing was put on the district's website until last Friday. Was there a promise to keep the JA one more up to date? Nope.
- Director Goodloe-Johnson, in trying to backpedal on how this JA situation got created, also said that the e-mail that Summit's principal sent to teachers about looking for new jobs was about RIFed teachers and not about any program changes at JA. I have the e-mail and that's not true. She said it was poorly communicated.
- Tracy was not on her game. Most of her answers were vague and historical. I almost wonder if they got talking points to be vague because that's what happened over and over.
- Peter Maier, a lawyer, also got a smile from me because he talked about the district's work being deliberate and with speed. Would that be like "with all deliberate speed" and didn't that phrase ring in his ears? (Brown versus Board of Education)
Comments
Actually, it's worse than that. Information has been TAKEN OFF of the JA website. They used to have sample schedules for both elementary and middle school, and they outlined their offerings.. Spanish, instr music, math and science specialists, full sports program, after school activities, connection with the Homewaters project, and more. This has all been REMOVED.
Are they going to renege on what they promised to offer? Has all that changed too? Is there anything solid at all at JA?
Same for Hamilton. Hamilton's new building will house about 950 students, which is about 150 more than the old building housed. They are in Lincoln this year which can easily accommodate the extra 150 kids this year (until they move into their new building). So why do they have a 55 kid waitlist? Why is the district not accommodating these kids?
Are they trying to force feed JA on NE families? That is grossly under handed and manipulative.
We need to push for Eckstein to take the 440 kids per grade that the building can hold, and for Hamilton to take as many kids as their new building will hold too.....until this mess is cleaned up.
Yeah and I'm going to grow to 5 feet someday. Not going to happen (or, if it does, expect a huge outcry)."
You WILL grow to five feet, you WILL! And the outcry will be one of celebration!
My attempt to read between the lines is that the board won't start thinking about what to do until fall, it'll probably take six months or more to decide what to do. Even if that response is to split Jane Addams, it'll take another year or more after that to take a closed school out of mothballs or build a new one. My child would probably be a middleschooler at JA by the time such a split is made.
The district officials might as well have stayed home for all the straight answers they gave. Their person in enrollments was asked at least four different times by at least two different parents why the number of kids enrolled at Eckstein was shrinking and whether it would continue to shrink, and every single time she gave a non-answer about distance tiebreakers from the school.
There are two things that happened at Eckstein
1) the infamous "higher than expected show rate." Back in the day Eckstein had only a 80% show rate so the district over booked by 20% with the idea that only 80% showed and you had a full school. The show rate has been much higher in recent years, hence the "over booking" had decreased more than the actual enrollment.
This year they booked with an 88% show rate, which is also going to be too low so don't expect that wait list to move.
2) Eckstein finally complied with some special ed requirements and that took a few classroom out of play. So this was a true reduction in space.
You can't get blood from a stone. Complain all you want, there is just simply not any more room at Eckstein. And if it is bad this year, just wait. Every cohort in the NE for the next 6 years is larger than this current 5th grade cohort. The demands on Eckstein will only increase. Adding any extra students to next year's 6th grade cohort will remove seats from the following year.
Back in 05, when Raj introduced the conversation about closing schools, there was a recommendation to increase capacity in the NE. The NE slide in on page 28..
http://www.seattleschools.org/area/spsplan/
SupePowerpoint.pdf
This proposal was of course immediately killed because it is not good politics to add schools in the NE. But there you have it. This was a documented long standing known problem.
There are even more kids in the NE now than those 05 enrollment projections that created this recommendation to add portables to three schools, repurpose Summit and turn TC into a K8. The only thing that has changed is that there are even more kids than expected. There is no surprise here.
The big difference is that the crowding is now so severe that is OK to talk about it. I actually appreciate that huge change that has happened in the last year where they are actually addressing this. Unfortunately, all real solutions are both expensive and have a long planning horizon.
I've seen this said several times on varies threads, and while I understand on one level that there is a perception that north-end schools are "better", have more family involvement, more active PTAs, raise more money, and so on, and I still don't understand how failing to address a legitimate capacity need in the north serves anyone well, in the south, central or north part of the city! You cannot solve problems elsewhere in the city by failing to put the capacity "where the bodies are."
Tracy Libros said last night that Eckstein is taking 372 kids per grade this year. She said it's much less than they took a few years ago. She couldn't explain why.
It has nothing to do with show VS no show overbooking; it has everything to do with how many kids are actually assigned to the school, and that number is 372, which is much less than in the past.
What I heard from parents last night was "why no transparency". Why didn't anyone formally announce that Eckstein has reduced it's capacity? Why wasn't it mentioned on the school tour? This took many families by total surprise. Families who live in neighborhoods that have always gone to Eckstein before. What I heard the speaker say last night was due to the lack of communication and transparency, she didn't seriously look at alternate plans for her child.
And what about the 30+ title I kids who got into Eckstein laste year? They came from as far away as Aki Kurose, with bus service, and got in BEFORE neighborhood kids? Why? and why didn't Eckstein mention this at their tour?
Why didn't someone on the Eckstein tour say "last year we reduced the number of gen ed students that we have taken in the past and additionally due to taking 30+ title I transfer students we were unable to move even 1 kid off of our 6th grade waitlist".
Don't you think we are owed honesty. Shouldn't we be able to make educated decisions?
More incompetence, more lack of transparency, more and destruction of neighborhood. It's becoming this districts MO.
LOl, good question. You would have to dig into the past to find out more. It's all because of racism and trying not to look racist. See, the board even mandated at one time that the cuts would be uniform across clusters, so that all those white privilege folks north of the ship canal would feel the effects evenly with the minorities in the South. Well, that's absurd logic given that there was no excess capacity in the north end, but there you go. I am pretty sure that this was something the board (from back in those days, not current board) agreed to, in the spirit of stamping out racism. That's why Sacajawea got on a closure list. Then of course, the numbers showed that there was no way to close Sacajawea, so that got reversed. Irony is that action gave folks looking for racism even MORE ammo that the closures were racially based.
Transparency means letting parents know information that would allow them to make the right decisions.
Along with the invitation there was a list with the names of the JA teachers and what schools they are coming from.
Of the 15 teachers that will be at JA next year, 10 of them are from Summit, 2 are from the African American Academy, 1 is from JSIS/central office, 1 is from Lowell, and 1 position is yet to be filled.
In addition a majority of the support and office staff are from Summit.
Every single middle school teacher is from Summit, except for one who is from the African American Academy.
Not only is Summit an alternative school but it was the lowest performing school in the NE cluster. African American Academy was the lowest performing middle in the district: 8th grade wasl pass rates were 8% science/13% math/42% reading.
So lets sum up. We have a new school that 2/3 of the families did not choose to go to. It is in threat of being repurposed before it even opens. The district will only guarantee it's existence for one year. And the majority of their teachers come from an alternative school and/or two of the lowest performing schools in the district.
I love Debbie Nelson, but she's been dealt a tough hand.
This is not looking good. I really didn't think this situation could get any worse, but here it is.
Summit 8th grade WASL pass rates
49% reading/32% math20% science
Compare these scores with our other neighborhood school, Eckstein, and you will see there is a big difference. They are performing well above district average.
Eckstein 8th grade WASL pass rates
84% reading/74% math/ 72% science
As I said it's not looking good for JA. I guess we're going to be one of those families looking at Shoreline. I hope they still have some space left for us.
and by the time students get to middle school, there is very little that teachers can do to change those pass rates without even more extreme intervention.
or maybe more "teaching to the test" which most people protest.
please don't judge the jane addams teachers by the wasl pass rates of the schools they came from.
seriously.
I don't think this is unreasonable.
Remember, here's the order of events from our view:
1. The district announces a K-8.
2. We say "A K-8 is what we're looking for!" go to the presentation, and make JA our first choice.
3. We get accepted at JA.
4. Less than a WEEK later we find out the district is probably going to eliminate the K-8 program, and it sounds like it'll happen halfway through our kid's elementary school years. But it's hard to tell.
5. A bunch of emails, letters, and meetings, where the district can provide no more useful information, neither denials nor confirmations.
Are we out of line for trying to plan our child's education? We're certainly going to make the most of the school we end up in, but blaming the parents for being negative doesn't seem fair.
Let's be clear - the district is not "expanding" JA k-8. The JA building holds 850 students and the school only has 320 kids enrolled this year. If the district were trying to "expand" the school they would expand into their own building.
Further the district is not "standing behind" or "supporting" JA k-8 in any way. I wish they were. Actually, it's quite the opposite. The districts main goal is to solve the capacity crisis in the NE, and in doing so they are DISMANTLING JA K-8.
Lets be very clear again - there will be no JA K-8 if the district moves the elementary out. There will be an elementary school and a comprehensive MS. JA environmental science k-8 will be gone.
On the WASL at Summit...
You should also try and find out how many, if any, 8th graders opted OUT of the WASL at Summitt. Since it was an alternative school, it is highly likely that many families abhorred the WASL and chose not to participate. Those non-participants count as ZEROS in the mix (as if they took the test and got every question wrong). That could account for Summit's low scores. You need to chechk that out before you start judging the quality of the teachers based on those scores.
Helen Schinske
Adhoc - This is something that was not clear to me. I don't recall anyone specifically saying this at the meeting though. I guess my understanding was that it's the K-8part that is up in the air. I did not realize that the entire environmental science program was in question. Thanks for clarifying this.
John - I definately do not blame anyone for wanting to plan their child's education. I am doing the same thing. The main thing that frightens me about the new JA is all the negativity and second guessing. I think the administration was clear and honest about the fact that they cannot give us the kind of definitive information we really want. I wish they could.
Spectrum Families - There was some confusion at the meeting on Tuesday about the number of students enrolled in the 1st grade spectrum program. At first we were told that there were only three students. Today when I wrote to Debbie Nelsen and asked her specifically about the numbers she replied very promptly and informed me that there are currently six students enrolled in 1st grade spectrum. That sounds right to me for a new program. I wanted to share that since I know several people were confused and struck by the information we recieved on Tuesday night. Also, when I contacted enrollement to ask about space in the NE cluster I was informed that "we've got alot of smart kids up here." Wedgwood's, View Ridge's and JA's first grade spectrum programs are completely full.
Tina, I wish I could join you in believing they were clear and honest. (Not saying dishonest, though.) They absolutely could be definitive if they wanted to. They are not for whatever reason.
Any of the Board members (or all of them) could have stated that they are committed to JA being a K-8 for at least 6 years (the term of a K-5 education) to give the school a chance. No one did. The Superintendent could have done the same. She didn't.
They don't need new information. They know the facilities (Meng report), the functional capacity (done this year) and the rising demographics (have known this for at least 3 years). Once they have their new computer system on-board, they can run simulations to see how the new SAP will work for each area.
They can do it. But they aren't. That's what's discomforting.
Also, a father stood up and told a story about one son in Eckstein and another coming in. The older is 8th grade so he is exiting and the younger one is coming in at 6th. They were not told on the tours that Eckstein was pulling back on enrollment. This is simple fact that both the district and the school knew and yet chose not to tell parents. That's the kind of transparency that parents need and are not getting.
Actually, you might want to check it out yourself before making assumptions about how many Summit families "abhorred the WASL". ;-)
Looking at OSPI data, it looks like only a single 8th grader opted out/refused to take the WASL in 07-08.
Yes, that surprises me as well, and don't get me wrong, I'm NOT a big WASL fan. But when data like this is so readily available, it's worth taking a look before making assumptions.
---------------
All this aside, WASL scores (as opposed to WASL trends) have much more to do with the mix of students at a particular school than with the skills of the staff. While Summit wasn't a safety-net school, for quite a few kids it was probably performing a similar function. And no one will argue that it was a typical NE school brimming with high achievers.
Trends can be better attributed to staff, but even still, other factors are at play. Better staff can attract "better" students, and therefore help the trend. At the end of the day, WASL scores are not necessarily a good measure to base program closure decisions. And WASL scores of a completely different set of kids in the same building shouldn't be a big part of a decision to enroll a child in that building.
Unfortunately, district support for a building/program WILL and SHOULD weigh heavy on these decisions, and that doesn't look good. :-(
Going into the Board meeting, I noticed a green SPS form on a table full of various info sheets being made available...
It was a complaint form... Gave you room to describe your complaint and promised investigation and action... there were no criteria limiting what you could complain about....
And I wondered - what would the District do with hundreds (thousands even!) of formal complaints from parents from dozens of schools on all sorts of issues around all of the events that have taken place this year, each of them having to be investigated individually and reported back on? A bit like a legal challenge but less costly and scarey! And if we had large enough numbers (and with a media campaign to cover this process), the District couldnt ignore all of them and couldnt spin their way out of avoiding dealing with them....
I think its been easy for the District and Board to miss/dismiss how strongly many of us feel things are being handled really badly - they get emails and testimony yes, but none of it gets committed to paper and none of it demands some sort of response or action from them...
A formal written complaint would, and if there was no acknowledgement, response, reasonable attempt to resolve the problem/issue, we would have lots of paper trails to take to court...
And as I wrote on another thread last week, I also still like the idea of school boycotts as a form of direct action, maybe a big joint one for the first day of school to start off the process and then rolling around the district, school by school - imagine that happening - empty schools, empty school buses forced to drive the routes in case kids are going to show - and imagine how hard it would be for the District to ignore or spin that message.... An AS#1 parent I talked to suggested October 1st(?) would be a good day for a mass boycott cos thats the day they do the student count on which funding is determined....
And we could take turns to organise child care and car pooling for the kids out of school on any given day, so that parents who cant get off work wont be impacted too badly....
What do people think? Anyone want to get on board with this and make it happen? I'm willing to work on this. The complaint letter campaign could start almost immediately and we could plan a school boycott action over the summer...
Feel free to pass these ideas on to your other networks - maybe we can get enough of us together and enough momentum going to make some change happen....
Sahila, AS#1
metamind_universal@yahoo.com
This is the green complaint form that was available on the SPS information table last night...
I notice multiple copies are required to be submitted though the table only had the green one...
There are no critieria listed as to what can and cannot be complained about.... I went looking for such information on the net via a Google search, but the only thing that came up was the District's student discrimination complaint policy document. If any one else knows of any policy governing the general complaint process, it would be useful to know.
The complaint form says you have to have talked to a person at Level 1 first, but gives no details as to who/what that is...
In this case, I should think it wouldnt matter because we would be ticking the N/A box in that first section...
We could also state that we have already taken our complaints/concerns to individual principals, BLTs etc, school directors, board directors and the superintendent....
I'm going to give this a go.... and I'm going to send in multiple complaints, about each separate instance of failure to adhere to policy, failure to engage the community, failure to listen to stakeholders, failure to support the kids, failure to provide continuity of learning etc, etc, etc... Printer paper, time and a few stamps.... not too much to pay to have a say and maybe not get swept under the carpet like so many nuisance dust bunnies!
Lets get a bunch of us together and maybe we can send out a press release about this.... Who's going to join me?
AT this point the district needs to commit to JA k-8 long term, and if they just can't do that, then they need to get the families assigned there the hell out NOW! Stop keeping us in limbo......
What can we do as a community to demand this?
We can't do anything. There's nothing we can do but wait in limbo, whether for 2 more weeks, or 2 more years. We asked the board and superintendent to their faces repeatedly, and they didn't say squat. (well, we heard a lot of words...) I don't know why they would think this a reasonable way to deal with us, but apparently they do. (Though it sounds like Sherry Carr came away from the JA meeting with serious concerns.)
Right now I think they're just committed to using JA as a holding pen for our kids while they muddle their way through the changes they're making. Why else wouldn't they give us any commitment, or even hint, one way or the other?
I have to say that I completely understand the father who said he was surprized by the fact that Eckstein had reduced its class size. The information I was getting from other Wedgwood families early this year was that since we live so close to Wedgwood it was not likely that we would not get a spot in the spectrum class we wanted. But the classes have been capped so low I feel that this has created an un-natural situation for families who would have been much better placed at their neighborhood or sibling school. If some NE schools were capped unfairly low so as to grow JA only to have the administration backtrack on JA I will have serious reservations about supporting this administration and trusting them in the future. Believe me, I do not feel entitled to know the future but I do demand to know that this adminisration is upfront about the mistakes they have made in the past. If a mistake was made I expect that the administration will respond in a responsible way and correct things as they can. I feel it is only fair to the students to somehow raise the low caps they have put in place, especially if they know JA is in question.
How can we do this?
We can protest in mass at a school board meeting.
We can all go and sign our kids up to Shoreline schools.
We can start writing letters in mass to our school board directors and the superintendent. Or we can fill out the complaint forms that Sahila mentioned in mass.
We can coordinate a protest by not sending our kids to school on the first day of school. Or the first week of school.
We can hold a protest by picketing at the school day and night.
We can do something, it's just coordinating in mass.
School board directors emails are posted on the SPS website, under school board. Let them hear your voice!!!!
Tracy Libros head of enrollment services email is
trlibros@seattleschools.org
Can anyone think of anything else that could work?
We can communicate and organize via this blog since we do not have each others information. Or we can start our own JA blog!!! I'm going to work on the latter right away.
I'm up for being involved, helping co-ordinate all of those action suggestions... Its why I put forward those two posts yesterday...
The critical part is getting this to happen en masse...
Which means networking and collaborating and making it easy for people to be involved - helping each other with child care, car pooling, pooling resources for activities that cost money (snail mailing and photocopying etc)...
I know there are many people in many different groups who are as fed up and angry as you and I are - people have said we cant get it together because we cant agree on one single issue.
I dont think we need to focus on one single issue - everything is linked and the District is doing everything arse over kite (backwards and topsy-turvey for you non-antipodeans!)...
My objective is to make them stop... stop everything, go back to the drawing board, check the figures and other data, ask families what they want, what would work for them - and not those rigged community meetings and small group discussions and the 3-minute board meeting charade - ask for input (and act on it, accept it, implement it), get creative and come up with some 'out of the box' solutions....
Families have to be willing be involved, to look at the big picture - what does education mean to us, what does it look like... how can we ensure all kids get what they need... what are my baselines and what am I willing to give up for the greater good...
This process is going to take some time... and it has to be linked with lobbying further up the line for realistic education funding.
In the meantime, leave everything as it was before the January vote... all of this next year's enrolments - do the enrolment process again over the summer - 3 months is long enough - we will still be able to start school on time... un-RIF the teachers, unchange the transportation and bell time shifts... use the rainy day and capital interest money to keep us going until we can do this whole thing properly...
Work out the boundaries based on demographics, parental preferences for types of schools and modelling of probable population/choice scenarios likely over the next 10-20 years, bite the bullet and solve the technology issue that's holding things up, then tackle the new assignment plan
Take this action now and save the money the current four law suits will cost the District, as well as the legal fees that will come from further actions people will lodge as the matter deteriorates further...
I'm up for this - who else is?
My email address is metamind_universal@yahoo.com - send me a message if you want to help take this on, and we'll see what we can do to get this started and to get some publicity behind us...
Sahila ChangeBringer
www.janeaddamsk8.blogspot.com
I am not sure about this but I believe that at one point in the JA meeting one mother explained how surprized she was that her daughter did not get into the Wedgwood spectrum first grade class, especially since the daughter is the sibling of a current Wedgwood student. I was also surprized that our family did not get a spot in that Wedgwood Spectrum class, especially since it is our neighborhood school. I finally found out yesterday that Wedgwood capped its spectrum class very low."
Potentially naive question du jour: Does SPS rig the open enrollment assignment process to pad or fill unpopular schools?
Any evidence of this? (ie. Capping Spectrum class sizes?)
Before this JA K-8/6-8 thing, I would have said yes because they have a lot riding on the success of this thing. But to throw a whole monkeywrench into by the footnote insertion about JA into the SAP, well, I have to wonder.
please visit
www.neschools.blogspot.com
http://www.janeaddamsptsa.org/learn-about-our-school.html