Who Decides What the Reopening Schools Will Be?
"With the recently released assignment plan and proposed attendance boundaries, the school district has announced the reopening of several schools, including the Old Hay school located on Boston Street.
This school will be renovated and reopened in 2011 as an option school to help ease the overcrowding in our neighborhood schools. For the 2010-2011 school year, students will be bused and the program will be located in Lincoln High School.
Options schools typically offer unique programs and are all-city draws,
with attendance preference given to a small, local geographic area. The
district has proposed this school become a Montessori K-5 school, but
they are asking for our feedback.
Some of the community proposals so far have been:
1. A Montessori school
2. An international school with language immersion
3. An advanced placement school
4. A regular K-5
Please invite your friends and neighbors to attend a community meeting tonight at Catherine Blaine Elementary, 6:30 pm. This is our opportunity to work together and provide input to the district on our newest neighborhood school."
I think all this is great although on number 3 I'm thinking they mean APP. (I love that idea; AP courses for kindergarteners.)
My only thought is, and I'm probably late on this so don't bite my head off, that so if there are no community groups organized around what McDonald, Viewlands, Rainier View and Sand Point should be, how does the district know what communities there want? Has anyone here that has a child in elementary in any of those areas seen any notices at their school asking what you want the new school in your area to be?
I looked at the Student Assignment Plan area and I didn't see any link for parents to give input for any particular new school.
I applaud the parents of SSIA (the group has been around for awhile so they were organized and ready to go) but I have to think that when you have an organized group, it looks more united on what they want. And, I have to believe that united input will weigh more on the district than a series of random e-mails.
It seems like the district could have had a meeting in the NE, NW and SE for those schools reopening to allow parents to give concentrated input.
I was telling a friend (who has a child at View Ridge but is now drawn into the Sand Point area) that one thing on the upside (she's not happy for a number of reasons) of being in a new school is the ability to help form the school. I have to wonder if maybe I'm a little too hopeful about that. Will the district wait until after enrollment to ask parents what they want? That's seems a little late.
Comments
Sherry Carr asked the staff directly about putting in a language immersion since that was the most popular and they said it would take too long to set up and it was hard to find teachers. Where are they going to find the teachers for the Old Hay program?
What about the new school in the SE? Why don't they make that an attendance area language immersion program like JSIS and Beacon Hill?
Doesn't anyone at the district must realize how arbitrary and unfair the special status that Old Hay is receiving looks?
District policy on curriculum might have to be revised to allow any curriculum so long as standards...state EALRs? are taught.
Assessments will be mutually developed by district, school and community.
The school will be all-city draw, recognizing its proximity to the 48 and to the city jewel, Green Lake. It will be a true watershed-ed focus, with interdisciplinary studies revolving around the themes:
What goes in within the borders of a watershed? Science, math, literature, history, social, political, economic, transpo, housing...
There will be rigor...socratic rigor. There will be discipline...self-discipline. There will be resepect...of one's world...
Funding will come from regular sources. Staffing will come from regular sources, and must agree to the pedagogy. Staff will be given ample PD to learn the methods of the school.
ELS, SpEd and Safety Net will join with APP, Montessori and other stakeholders to come to mutually agreeable terms on lessons and curriculum that respect the incredible uniqueness of those and other and all students, with the focus on "unique", "special", literate in many ways of expression, including languages and arts...
Children will dance. Adults will model activism within academic community. Some won't make it, and we will with them well, anyway. Others will flourish.
I don't have one for Sand Point, but maybe there is a link to it on the NE Seattle Moms group.
Starting a new school could be really great and exciting, but oh so much work! And so many things to anticipate and plan for. Hard without guidance of experienced parents and doubly hard when the staff will all be new to the building and new as a group. I just saw on Nina Shapiro's article in the Weekly that the expense of closing schools included "team building" exercises for relocated staff. I sure hope there are plans for new Team Building Exercises to include parents and staff (and neighbors! and businesses!) for newly opened buildings.
Sandpoint is scheduled to open in 10 months and so far, no word as to whether there will even be all six grades at first. So much unknown.
I have heard from one school board director that Sand Point likely will open as a K-1, though that is not certain yet.
I heard from another director that the District staff say McDonald is a key piece of the puzzle & that it must open; the director made it sound pretty likely it would open and remain on the map when the revised maps come out next week.
Certainly the Sand Point--and McDonald, Rainier View, and Viewlands--families would like to have input into the new school. Many people have sent mail to the district about this, but it would be wonderful to have the District solicit our feedback and hold community meetings in the respective areas.
And none of them will answer the question of what they will do should the BTA levy fail. You don't just find $50M under the mattress.
I think this issue of opening new schools may be the district's but building communities is the Seattle Council PTSA. There's a wealth of information/experience there and parents should tap them for help.
Everything is so up in the air. I don't want to put much more mental energy into this issue until I see the revised boundary lines next week. It very well could be that I've been stressing out for nothing, if they draw the boundaries differently.
Or, perhaps the Board will approve sibling grandfathering, and I can continue focusing on our current school.
Or, perhaps the levy will fail and this plan will be put off for a little longer.
Or, perhaps there will be enough room at my oldest's school to allow some siblings in, and perhaps we'll win the lottery and get in.
There are too many contingencies. Since my worst case scenario is that the district will still force us to put our youngest at McDonald (or "choose" an option school), I truly cannot get excited or engaged about building a McDonald School community at this time.
From an outside perspective, I can see how one could be excited about forming a new school. That is not my choice, however. If my oldest child wasn't going to enter school for a few more years, this might be possible.
Now that's interesting. I can totally sympathize with the up-in-the-air quality and the older sibling issue. But on the other end, what about parents who won't have a kindergartener for several years? That's where you might find some real energy and strength. If there were any way to work together with the preschool parent contingent, that might be something really positive.
1) At one extreme: A program placement committee that rarely (ever?) responds to citizen input/requests
2) In the middle: Administrators lukewarm (at best) about the care and feeding of alternative programs
3) At the other extreme: Throwing open the doors to QA and with no apparent process saying "Hey, we're going to give you an option school. What do you want?"
Shouldn't there be a more systematic way...a way that's embraced by central staff and well explained to the (WHOLE)community...for siting new programs and revising tired ones?
I totally agree with you that there is no advocate for alternative schools at the district level. Ruth has worked hard to standardize the alt schools under her jurisdiction. Her ideal school is Madrona and she would love to see all the K-8's following their model.