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
(copy paste from other thread)
Based on my child's stops, it looks like they are not using the community/cluster stops. The ride times are around 30 minutes both ways, which seems very optimistic, unless the routes are small and use smaller buses.
I am looking at the scheduled arrival time 20 minutes before start time (Lowell) and skeptically assuming that they gave themselves 20 minutes to fudge the numbers with. On paper it looks like your kid has a 30 minute ride and arrives with 20 minutes to play and socialize - in reality it will probably work out to a 45 minute ride and 5 minutes to play, or worse.
No community stop. Same stop at last year, except they reversed the route so instead of being the last stop on the route, we are now the first hence the nieghborhood tour.
Makes no sense, but I had no excpectations. Will be driving.
Return trip may actually work out in the afternoons.
Also does anyone know why Marshall is free all day K and Lowell is 190 /mo? Just lip service to make the programs equal?
Lowell will have 2 K classes (50 kids) and needed to do Pay-for-K to fund the second teacher.
The travel time to school is about the same, as far as I can tell, but the return trip is 15 minutes shorter. I can drive my daughter to school and back if I want because of my schedule, but she'll likely take the bus about 2/3 of the time.
Helen Schinske
On a bright note--the folks at transportation were extremely helpful when I called today. They had my son getting picked up on a very dangerous corner (top of a blind hill) and changed it back to his old stop from last year...and even called me back to tell me.
Now if we can just get the same awesome bus driver as last year...
Unfortunately ours will be twice as long! Pick up 1 hour and 10 minutes before school starts. One hour to get home. By car, 20 minute route!
We received our official Transportation Assignment today, one week after school began.
That's not the funny part . . .
They've abandoned the "community stop" approach for Lowell, at least in our neighborhood.
Still not the funny part . . .
The schedule is great! Our daughter would be picked up, a couple of blocks from our house, at 8:44 am and return home, one block away, at 3:54 pm. Even though school gets out so much later this year, they would get her home earlier than last year.
Still not the funny part . . .
Our daughter doesn't go to Lowell anymore.
Now THAT'S what I think is funny.