New FAQs at the SAP Webpage
I note that there is a new section in the SAP FAQ page called Computer System. Some of it is very funny I think but I'll let you decide. The Implementation page has also been updated.
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
The first thing that jumps out at me is the part about parents wanting the VAX to be rewritten to continue sibling preference: "Some families like the way the software on the VAX computer prioritizes younger siblings for school assignment. Can the District continue to use that system to continue this approach to sibling assignment?" I haven't heard that anyone wants us to stay on the VAX. The people who want sibling grandfathering (myself included) think we should be able to program the new system to handle this. This is 2009. Retire the VAX! Seriously, if we can't get an agile enough system to accommodate some temporary changes (like grandfathering now OR potentially when boundaries are re-drawn), I think we're either looking at the wrong system or hired the wrong programmers.
And the FAQ suggests they're not going to work on the transition plan until AFTER boundaries are drawn: "The shift to automatic assignment to attendance area schools, other than for entry-grade students, will be determined by the transition plan. We will develop this transition plan after the Board approves the new student assignment plan and the new attendance area boundaries." They should not do this in a linear fashion & wait until boundaries are drawn to draft a transition plan. That is key to implementation & they should be working on it now. If they can write the SAP rules without boundaries, they can certainly have a mostly completed draft transition plan in place before boundaries as well.
Do they really think we will believe that it's too complicated to write software that could either assign sibling priority or assign geographical priority? Huh?
"Her software developers seemed to be in perpetual crisis-mode. The Source was down, or the data was corrupted, or someone had single-handedly brought down the
servers by uploading an un-reviewed patch at 7:30 on a Thursday morning. Patches were
routinely uploaded to the live system during work hours. If the patch was bad, Source would crash, and be down for an indeterminate time. The group seemed to lack basic software-development safeguards such as milestone schedules, design reviews, peer
check-in reviews, and testing."
Unless a LOT has changed in the district's IT culture in three years, I have absolutely no faith in them to get any new assignment plan working at all.
Well, if what it basically does is look at a map and an address, and assign a student to a school, I think they can probably do that.
This FAQ is an embarrassment, typos, meaningless sentences, gibberish. They need to take it down and fix it. And, I don't feel that way about all the FAQs; I think the SAP FAQ is reasonable. I'd guess that the system had been hacked to put up the FAQ, except that doesn't seem to be true.
This blog and community is open and informed. The SPS website is rather coy regarding the SAP. SPS fails at snail/kid mail on this issue. Its no wonder many parents and future parents have little reliable knowledge of the SAP. The SAP appears present a greater district-wide impact than school closures. Where's the Seattle Times?
Exactly. One might say that it lacks the fundamental professional aspects of basic FAQ development safeguards such as peer-review, design-review, editing and testing. Written and executed by the IT professionals?
All it has to do is take an address as input and output an assignment. Sure, or course, how silly of me to be so pessimistic. The software needed will be trivial.
and yes, something has changed there - at the last work session i went to, a new project manager presented the status report on the sap application and vax migration. she might be a contractor - it was hard for me to tell.
what typos? what meaningless sentences? what gibberish?
i think they have to carefully choose every word because people read things into words that are too general - which never makes for good flow.
I called and spoke with one of their education reporters. What I got was that they'd already reported on the new SAP, and that a new story had been suggested but rejected due to space. I mentioned the new change due to siblings and what I got in response was "but that'll only affect a few people who have older sibs in the school system".
So, that's where the Seattle Times is. The reporter also commented that they can't grandfather sibs because it'll take years to establish new new process.
Evan this is the paragraph I was refering to. Someone didn't get this proofread.
And, Evan, yes, the paragraph Dorothy picked was the one that provoked my comment. It's not even as simple as a typo -- the words are garbled enough that they're not meaningful sentences. I'm pretty accepting of "typos"--like, saying they're instead of their. But this typo needs to be read by someone and edited before it's put on a public forum.
I watched a couple excerpts, which were of Tracey Libros answering some questions from off-camera that I could barely hear. I wonder if these were from the FAQ last night?
I'm not sure where to post this, but Lowell parents today got the breakdown of classes in a note from incoming principal Greg King.
In short, if everyone who has applied shows up in September, Lowell will be as full as it was before the District voted to split it in half (--in part, allegedly, because Lowell was too full).
There aren't enough gen ed/ALO kids coming to Lowell to create complete classes at each grade level, so many splits are planned.
There will be one 4th/5th grade split, one 2nd/3rd grade split, one 2nd grade, one 1st grade and one or two Ks.
Lowell APP has been left with only two grade 5 teachers (three have been assigned to Thurgood Marshall even though 100 fewer APP kids will be there). The fifth grade APP class sizes are predicted to be 31 kids in each. The school is planning for 27 in each of the three APP 4th grade classes. In contrast, for the 2008-09 school year, the APP 4th and 5th grade class sizes averaged about 23 kids.
There will also be one 2nd/3rd grade APP split class. Not sure if this has been done before.
In other words, as a result of the School District's vote to break Lowell in half, APP kids will be crowded into large classes, ALO/gen ed kids will barely have enough classmates at each level, the school will still be over-full,
and only 55 TT Minor kids are expected to come to Lowell, so there really isn't going to be much merging of the schools, nor much diversity added (another rationale the District gave for the split).
(And we haven't gotten all the numbers for APP & ALO at Thurgood Marshall yet.)
So, what exactly was accomplished here? What are any of the kids at Lowell or TT Minor gaining from this?
Crowded classrooms for APP kids and sparse classes for ALO doesn't sound like great "Capacity Management" to me.
Excellence for no one.
My point is that if the Superintendent and District are going to close or break apart schools, uproot thousands of kids, change bell-times, impose a controversial new math curriculum, shouldn't we at least be able to demand that all these changes lead to an improvement over what was there before?
It's becoming increasingly evident that this is not the case in so many ways for so many kids throughout the District as a result of all the changes this Superintendent and Board have been forcing upon us all.
If the District has well-functioning and economical schools that offer class sizes as reasonable as 23 kids, don't you think the District shouldn't tamper with these schools?
There was no good reason for the District to break apart Lowell. School Board Director Steve Sundquist admitted it was a political maneuver. It is mind-boggling that the District would weaken or destroy one of its strongest elementary schools.
And now as the enrollment numbers come in, we are seeing the results of the idiotic "Capacity MISmanagement Plan," from the Jane Addams farce to the Cooper Elementary & Summit tragedies, and all the outrageous elements in between, like the co-housing of Nova and SBOC in a building that will likely fall apart in the next earthquake. (http://blogs.seattleweekly.com/dailyweekly/2009/06/school_closures_a_lesson_in_ma.php)
i think that's a little harsh...
yes, they should proof-read, but sometimes the timely is the enemy of the perfect...
You seem to have a bit of an attitude problem, reader, and missed my point entirely through your furious haze.
You also seem willing to rant about a topic on which you have limited knowledge, which is not a very helpful contribution to the dialog.
T. Marhsall instantly, and with no effort, accountability, or results, gets to become a "good" school. The school as a whole will get "good" test scores, and appear "popular" as it will now be full instead of under enrolled.
I think it is clear. There is no benefit to either APP or T. Marshall students with this merger, the benefit is to the district (capacity management, no more NCLB sanctions, no more bad press, no more Title I).
Talk about an achievement gap. Can't wait to see the schools disaggregated test scores.
I don't see any problem with "instantly better" by changing demographics. Concentrations of poverty and challenges are the reason schools are underenrolled and under utilized in the first place. You can't get out of that cycle by some sort of "hard work", or at least, we don't have models of that working.
BTW. Other schools failing schools are: Sacajawea, John Stanford International, Eckstein, Greenwood, Olympic Hills & View, Salmon Bay, TOPs... plenty of north end schools.
At the SAP Q&A session the other night, much of the discussion was about this. I got the impression that (many?) more TTMinor families thought they were going to go to Lowell but were assigned elsewhere. Tracy described some cases were the parents had filled out the form in a way that made them get reassigned (something to do with transportation?). Some parents there were going to follow up with her with a list of names (I believe Andre Helmstetter was in the group, but I don't know the others' names).
The District's transportation policy calls for yellow bus transportation to Lowell for any Lowell student who lives within the Central cluster but not within the Lowell walk zone. So these T T Minor students who are not getting transportation to Lowell must live either outside the Central cluster (38 of 157 TT Minor non-Montessori students) or within the Lowell walk zone.
Oh, and it's fairly likely that my daughter will test into APP for 1st or 2nd grade. I see both sides here. The larger cohort has some value. So does the ALO. There's a trade-off. I recognize that the APP families feel like they were used here. They were. So were the Montessori families and Van Asselt families and everyone else who was moved around. It may not have been the right thing to do, but its done, and changing it again will cause even more pain.
That's why so many north end schools are in like step 3 or 4 but nothing happens to them. Or in the case of AS1, we jumped to step 4 and reorganization in our first year as a Title I school. We weren't Title I for the first 3 steps of NCLB so the district didn't do anything to us. Then we were suddenly a failing school when our demographics changed.
I see this as less of an immediate problem at Thurgood Marshall because the APP community will be smaller there, at least to start with (people who could stay at Lowell or move there seem to have generally stayed at Lowell).
I could see that playing out in a few ways. I'm not sure which is better.
Maybe both schools will be option schools? There isn't a concept of an option program, its either the whole school reference or the whole school option. Well, APP isn't reference, so maybe the ALO programs will be option programs?
Or, both schools have reference areas. They both have good reputations. Kids in those reference areas actually go to the schools, rather than applying for option programs or going to private school.
If APP grows to the point where an additional class per grade is needed, there will be less room for ALO students. Someone else on the thread said the APP classes were pretty small this year, so that may not be a problem for awhile. If it is, then there will probably be some split classes. Either within APP (such as an APP 4/5 split), or across the programs (APP 3rd graders and ALO 4th or 5th graders). It seems like it should be managable for some time. If it's not manageable in 5 or 10 years, well then it should be re-evaluated. I figure they'll be redrawing boundaries again in 5 years, and that all program placements will be on the table then anyway. So much for predictability.
Lowell has about 528 kids this year. Next year we are right at 500. This is at the top of fire code. No parents were allowed at assemblies this year due to the fire department restrictions. Is this how the school district want to foster family involvement in the schools?
As Gavroche was saying in an earlier post, this isn't about Lowell. It's about stupid decisions by the district. It sounds like Meany will have serious overcrowding issues next year, too. These changes haven't even taken place yet and we are already seeing how horrible and poorly thought-out they are.
This would completely and explicitly go against the fundamental philosophy of APP historically. Would be a tremendous shift. The WHOLE idea is that kids need academic peers and still need SAME age developmental peers. That's a fundamental given. NOT grade skipping. Never. APP teachers and the Highly Capable staff in the district have been adamant against that. (I actually disagree with the amount of negativity towards it, but whatever. it's there.)
AND, the whole concept of APP is that kids learn faster. So putting them in a class with kids two years older who are therefore more accomplished, but do not learn faster... well, that also goes against the history of the program.
I am not saying I would completely disagree with an APP3/ALO4-5 split class, but it is completely against all history with APP. Given how watered down the entrance requirements have become and the lack of a curriculum that really has the rigor and high expectations and accountability that APP sorely needs, well, perhaps this would be an inevitable and not surprising result.
It means that the kids who really need APP will be even less well served than they are now.
I should also add that I fully expect the district to have to re-open TT Minor in 5 years. Either that, or put a forrest of portables at McGilvra and Stevens.
That's very different than being the only kid who is two years younger in a class with older kids who think more slowly.
Helen Schinske
"Enrollment in the Accelerated Progress Program
...Eligible students in other grades who apply during Open Enrollment will be admitted into the program and assigned to their regional APP site. (Be sure to indicate on the application that it is for APP.)
Regional APP sites for the North, Northeast, Northwest, Queen Anne/Magnolia Clusters are:
Lowell, Hamilton, and Garfield.
Regional APP sites for the Central, South, Southeast, West Seattle North, West Seattle South Clusters are:
Thurgood Marshall, Washington, and Garfield.
Assignments for students who apply after Open Enrollment are based on space availability. APP students may apply for available seats at either site but preference is given to those within the region."
It says nothing about not being admitted if you apply on time.
No gavroche, YOU missed the entire point of the school closures. The goals of the closure didn't include keeping the APP upper grade class size at 23.....
reader -- I never said that it did. I was pointing out that the many changes the Supt. and District have imposed on our kids' schools are not resulting in improved learning environments for any of our kids. Surely our kids are one of the District's most important "resources" and I would argue they are being grossly mismanaged by this District.
None of the reasons given by the District for splitting Lowell in two have panned out, so I don't believe I'm missing any point, except why you are so vehemently defending the Capacity Management plan that was clearly poorly thought out and has resulted in numerous unfavorable consequences, from the Jane Addams chaos to under enrolled, undersized ALO classes at Lowell -- a part of my discussion you ignored-- and yes, larger APP class-sizes and fewer teachers.
My point, again, is that I think the onus is on the District to prove that all these changes will result in better Capacity Management, significant cost savings, and moreover, better education experience for ALL the children in the District (and not just APP, which appears to be more your fixation).
So far, the indications are, as amply outlined throughout this blog, this is not the case.
Arguably the District is also failing to save much money through all these changes. Each merger and closure has come with a price tag. Design teams at each affected site have made requests, and a number have been granted. This all adds up.
Lastly, APP has already taken two major hits in this Capacity Management scheme – split at both the elementary and middle school level, potentially weakened, with a lot of disruption for hundreds of kids. Knowing pretty much all year that their school was going to be cut in half with an uncertain future has cast a pall over Lowell for many kids and parents since November. So I don’t find it appropriate for anyone to lecture APP families about not ‘sharing the pain’ of this District’s budget cut maneuvers. If anything, APP kids, kids of color, alternative schools and Special Ed kids are bearing a disproportionate amount of the upheaval costs of the closures and splits.
Anyway, I don't believe we will agree with each other on this, so let's return this thread to its original topic and move on.
Regarding the future of ALO at Thurgood Marshall, Michael DeBell has now said twice – once to the Seattle Weekly, and more recently to a group of parents in his District – that the new SAP will push ALO kids out of Thurgood Marshall, leaving it pretty much entirely to APP. How this is fair to the current T. Marshall kids or even those who will be there next year, I don’t know.
Here’s an interesting historic detail: in its 30 year or so existence, the District has always placed the APP (formerly IPP) programs SOUTH of the ship canal – Madrona, Lowell, Garfield, Washington. As far as I can tell, the split move to Hamilton marks the first time the program will be in the north part of town. (So much for the District’s argument that the split was necessary to create more “access and equity” for the south-end families).It does appear that the District has a history of using the program to bolster south-end schools, or as part of a desegregation effort. I wish the District would focus on testing and identifying more kids of color who should be in the program and truly making the cohort more diverse that way, rather than playing these superficial games with everyone.
Jane Addams, now that WAS a bungle. SPS didn't accomplish its goal. The building is less full than before, and people don't want to go to the school. They have to force assign people to an empty building, which they've promised to close. It looks like a lose lose lose, all the way around.
Clearly other agendas were at play, and the District and Directors have admitted as much.
And some of this agenda may come back to bite the District in the rear. At Cooper for example, the District is booting a school of kids, predominantly of color, from their building simply because "Pathfinder needed a better building" -- quote unquote from Michael DeBell.
Why do some kids deserve a good building and not others? Why are some kids and schools deemed expendible and not others? If you are going to counter-argue, reader, that underenrolled or underperforming schools were the ones targeted for eviction, your argument would not hold up, and if that were the determining factor, schools like Madrona and others would have been included in the "Capacity Management" plan, but they weren't.
The Supt and District are also playing semantic games with the definition of the term "school" to justify not giving Cooper a hearing. Those are not the actions of "transparent" policymaking made in good faith and good conscience.
Is it any wonder they are not getting community buy-in on their plans?
Sorry but I do not share your belief that any aspect of this plan was "well executed." But then, I guess it depends on what the District's true motives were.
At least you and I can agree that Jane Addams is a certifiable screw-up.
Didn't you say there was 23 kids in a class (average) some with 17? That's not full, that's deluxe. Deluxe is out. Every building could be full if we all had class sizes of 17 or 20, but that isn't what we can afford. MLK in fact had classes of l3. With a split, they can move half the program to a half-full building and make both full. Win-win. AND all without closing another school full of minorities, which is untenable. Win. They have now the flexibility to move the N. half, to the north and reduce busing. Win again. And everybody will go gladly (or not gladly), because they LOVE the program. All city draws are really going to be a thing of the past. Lowell isn't the only one killed, they're all being killed.
As to the "why not Madrona?" issue. Think a year or 2 out... people will be placed at Madrona, because all the space is going to be used everywhere else. Then, even Madrona too will be full. No, Epiphany can't take everyone trying to escape. And if it isn't full, they'll move S. APP back in there and make it full.
Cooper was killed because it couldn't fill it's building. Now it's full.
Sure they had a song and dance about "improving quality". But the quality improvement is really just using capacity maximally so we don't have to make other cuts. It's really just "sucking less than we would have".
You really think the district believes in "transparency". ??? Gee, where have you been?
You raise an interesting question. When there are two distinct programs within one school, which program has priority for the building space?
I would think in the case of Lowell and Thurgood Marshall it would have to be APP because the program is only in those two schools.
But, as you point out, do we know if that has even been thought through? I think we'll face this question within just a year or two at Lowell. I would imagine the kindergarten space will get smaller and smaller.
A number of the schools being merger or moved will be BEYOND capacity. There is NOT ENOUGH ROOM for Nova and SBOC at Meany. Thurgood Marshall will also be too full once APP is moved there. Jane Addams is going to be half empty, despite the District kicking out Summit. And again, if it's okay in your or the District's book to kick out Cooper kids because the school is not full, then why didn't the District kick out or close Madrona, Rainier, Cleveland, Aki, Thurgood Marshall or Hawthorne, to name a few?
Why is TT Minor being closed but not Madrona?
The answer to all of these questions is politics and public perception. These are the driving forces behind the District's decisions. One of the Directors admitted this. Any claim that it is making decisions with the objective of achieving "excellence for all" is rubbish.
By all accounts, the new SAP will not solve Madrona's problems. Local families have already tried to send their kids to Madrona; they were not welcomed by the principal.
My point is, the Capacity Management plan was not simply about filling buildings. Value judgments were made by the Supt., staff and Board regarding which kids or schools were more valuable than others, how to rid the books of underperforming schools without actually doing anything to help the kids at those schools, and yes, how to use APP kids to the District's advantage.
There is no north end APP for elementary or HS, nor one promised. I don't know why you keep repeating that this has been accomplished. In fact, as part of her Jan. 6 Final Recommendations the Superintendent very specifically asked the School Board to rescind the District policy that required the District to create a North end APP in the event of the split. The gutless Board complied.
I said this year some classes were 23 at Lowell and one is 17 (an anomaly) because it's in a small room. As has been pointed out by others on this thread, class sizes and enrollment fluctuate at Lowell and the school is obligated to admit and make room for every child who qualifies for the program. There are already over 500 kids at Lowell this year. The place is full. Lunch is held in shifts (as is the case elsewhere in the District), and parents cannot attend assemblies because there is not enough room. There is nothing "deluxe" about Lowell. Have you ever been there?
And again, the predicted gen ed/ALO population at Lowell for 2009-10 is so small that it cannot fill grade levels, so there will be a number of split classes. "Capacity management" that leads to such anemic cohorts is not a win-win of any kind.
You clearly misunderstood my comment about "transparency" and all the rest of the meaningless catch-phrases the District and Supt. throw at us and the media ad nauseum. Don't worry, I'm not fooled by any of them. But I am very tired of Board members parroting them as if we parents are dumb enough to believe them. And my point in repeating them is to highlight the hypocrisy and lies fed to us all by the District and Superintendent.
'Where have I been?' Pretty involved in all of this for quite a while.
Okay, let's move on, shall we?
For example, the district considers Madrona good already. Great, as a matter of fact. Ask any district official. They will laud it, they even gave the principal a big award. Why would they close a great school? YOU just don't happen to agree with that assessment. The district considers YOU (and others like you) the problem. They will fix the enrollment numbers at Madrona with the SAP. Who knows? It may work for them.
As to high school capacity issues. The district said they weren't dealing with that last time. AND look, No, it's not dealt with as they told us. The SAP will have to address that as well. My guess is lots of choice will be functionally eliminated.
Splitting the APP program gives them the flexibility to move it, which they don't have at its enormous size. Now, they can move it to the north end if and when they choose. It also provides general capacity. BTW. Lots and lots of other schools have split lunches. Lunch together isn't an APP entitlement.
And as I mentioned before, the books won't be rid of underperformance. ALL subgroups must still do well for adequate yearly progress to be met. Failing schools will either pass for everyone, or still fail for everyone. However, the district DOES rid itself of the obligation to provide a transfer if the school is no longer "Title 1". You see, SPS counts that as "good" too... they are not forced to do something (that may or may not have helped anyway).
Who the heck said it was? The opposite point was made, as far as I can see. (And while other schools have split lunches, I don't offhand know of any other where all-school events are impossible due to fire code regulations.) The point is that the school is crowded this year, and will be crowded next year, and not much has been solved, even though we were told a lot of the reason for the split was the overcrowding. Putting another program in there makes it even *harder* to use the space appropriately, and even *more* likely that stopgaps like split classes will be necessary.
Helen Schinske