Boundary Work Session Notes - Part 1
To note again here: I was mistaken about next week's Public Hearing speaking time. It IS 3 minutes as it is at the Board meetings so they will have room for 40 speakers.
Please note: I may go out of order of what was said when to group like items.
Dr. Goodloe-Johnson went over a lot of backstory on the SAP but did say a couple of interesting things about "first implementation steps".
Director Sundquist asked about Spectrum being added at Madison and if that meant Spectrum additions elsewhere and Dr. G-J said yes with no embellishment.
Tracy said they had received 1000s of suggestions for the boundaries. Tracy explained that out of the 58 elementary schools, 48 had boundary modifications.
Dr. Enfield said, from the academic side, they were looking at 3 quality issues.
Michael De Bell said that he wanted to give a shout-out to staff for their volunteer hours at the boundary meetings. He said that he found the feedback more valuable than much Board testimony (not dissing the testimony but he liked the feedback at these meetings).
Tracy addressed a common concern from input from the community about walk zones. Why am I assigned School A when School B is closer? She said that because the City was discontinuing funding for the crossing guards in Fall 2010 that they had to create the safest boundaries they could. (Whether they did is open for question depending on where you live.) The district hopes to find funding for crossing guards but until then, they had to try to create the safest walk zones.
Steve S. suggested calling them smaller or retracted walk zones rather than "conservative" walk zones for clarity.
Sherry came back to the issue of the shrinkage of Hale's area. She kept asking, "What changed?" Tracy said it wasn't done artificially for a program but for balance. Sherry said she thought she might get some positive feedback from some on this but not others. (And I agree. It looks very odd. Also, kids on the west side of Green Lake won't be walking around Green Lake to get to school.)
Sherry also asked Tracy about a rumor that the 10% of Open Choice seats at Ingraham would be for IB students. Tracy said there is no distinction about who gets Open Choice seats by any program.
Steve S. offered thanks for the support for the co-location of Denny and Sealth and alignment of those boundaries.
Tracy got asked about including the capacity at Option Schools in the plan and said they had done that for Option schools across the district.
Peter brought up the issue of the changes for Sand Point saying that walking is difficult on Sand Point Way. Tracy said the new boundaries accounted for that issue.
Then Harium brought up the point about people being concerned about the F/RL percentage at Sand Point. (Tracy said the new boundaries would lower it but didn't say by how much.) He said that there is UW married student housing in that area and so that is a sometimes changing population. As well he said that there are many other schools in our district with far higher F/RL populations.
I would gently refute his points. One, that married graduate housing population will always be there. Yes, those grad students will have different incomes but that housing will always be there. Also, the issue isn't really what the reality is throughout the district in terms of higher F/RL than 30%. The reality is that you are trying to create a new school and get people to want to be there. If the population has a F/RL size that is totally out of whack with the rest of the NE elementaries, you handicap that school from the start in both perception and reality.
It seems, from Tracy's remarks, that Old Hay is definitely going to be an Option School. I make this point because some in the community had suggested a regular K-5 and I don't think that is an option from the district's standpoint because of the nearness of Coe.
So then they got into the McDonald question which was an interesting discussion. Clearly, very clearly, the district wants McDonald open at all costs. And I think the Board is drinking the Kool-aid so I would call this one done.
Tracy said they got "new" data on increased growth in the McDonald area. (This is after Director Carr, at the BTA III levy work session, said that she didn't see reopening the school for 135 kids. And now, voila! more kids. Interesting.) It seems like her argument is to open McDonald to ease pressure, now and in the future, on the other schools.
Tracy said that having McDonald would ease crowding elsewhere and, as a topper, that it could (might) allow grandfathering of siblings. Really? I'm hoping she means this as grandfathering siblings is now really on the table. She said opening McDonald would open up 90 more seats for out of attendance students at JSIS.
Then Sherry gave a long talk about her walk through McDonald with Kathy Johnson and other facilities staff. She said it is beautiful old building but that she was quite taken aback at its poor interior condition. She said the paint is peeling, the boiler bad, the elevator sketchy, etc. She said the work to be done is not extravagant but really needed. However, she said she was startled that this was considered an "emergency" school because she could not imagine putting kids into it as is.
(Yes and this is all part of that big Maintenance puzzle I keep harping on for the BTA III. So if there was an emergency at a school that necessitated moving out a population, where would they go? As it turns out, not to McDonald which is completely undermaintained. That would have been a terrible thing to find out if there were an emergency and what would the district say then? Sorry. We claim to maintain the buildings but really we don't?)
Oddly, Sherry then said that the case is not "overwhelming" to reopen McDonald BUT there is not a clear idea where to put these kids (about 135 I believe). That's when she waxed on about McDonald becoming a foreign language school and that the idea had been to have at least 2 feeder elementary language schools for each middle language school. Great, fine but where is the vision? Where do they go and what do they get in high school? No questions asked here and mute silence when they do get asked from the staff. Don't create more of these schools if you have no vision for the entire program. (See APP.)
Please note: I may go out of order of what was said when to group like items.
Dr. Goodloe-Johnson went over a lot of backstory on the SAP but did say a couple of interesting things about "first implementation steps".
- She said that they need to gather information about incoming kindergarten siblings. I'm guessing that means how many there are for next year and possibly after.
- They have to "complete transportation eligibility analysis". Again, figuring out who gets transportation where. (Someone asked about an analysis of how we save any money on transportation under the new SAP but it will take several years to realize it. I can't see how they could anytime soon.)
- Fall 2010 opening Sand Point, McDonald and Old Hay with Rainier View and Viewlands to follow. This is a bit of a change because it seemed they wanted to open all of them at once from previous timelines. So I'm a bit confused about RV and Viewlands still being on the map.
- Program placement decisions (although as Charlie pointed out, elsewhere in the document, it says "program placement process is changing" without any discussion). Again, danger William Robinson!
- Early registration is extended to January 15th
Director Sundquist asked about Spectrum being added at Madison and if that meant Spectrum additions elsewhere and Dr. G-J said yes with no embellishment.
Tracy said they had received 1000s of suggestions for the boundaries. Tracy explained that out of the 58 elementary schools, 48 had boundary modifications.
Dr. Enfield said, from the academic side, they were looking at 3 quality issues.
- investing and sustaining strong principals
- quality instruction
- quality materials and programs
Michael De Bell said that he wanted to give a shout-out to staff for their volunteer hours at the boundary meetings. He said that he found the feedback more valuable than much Board testimony (not dissing the testimony but he liked the feedback at these meetings).
Tracy addressed a common concern from input from the community about walk zones. Why am I assigned School A when School B is closer? She said that because the City was discontinuing funding for the crossing guards in Fall 2010 that they had to create the safest boundaries they could. (Whether they did is open for question depending on where you live.) The district hopes to find funding for crossing guards but until then, they had to try to create the safest walk zones.
Steve S. suggested calling them smaller or retracted walk zones rather than "conservative" walk zones for clarity.
Sherry came back to the issue of the shrinkage of Hale's area. She kept asking, "What changed?" Tracy said it wasn't done artificially for a program but for balance. Sherry said she thought she might get some positive feedback from some on this but not others. (And I agree. It looks very odd. Also, kids on the west side of Green Lake won't be walking around Green Lake to get to school.)
Sherry also asked Tracy about a rumor that the 10% of Open Choice seats at Ingraham would be for IB students. Tracy said there is no distinction about who gets Open Choice seats by any program.
Steve S. offered thanks for the support for the co-location of Denny and Sealth and alignment of those boundaries.
Tracy got asked about including the capacity at Option Schools in the plan and said they had done that for Option schools across the district.
Peter brought up the issue of the changes for Sand Point saying that walking is difficult on Sand Point Way. Tracy said the new boundaries accounted for that issue.
Then Harium brought up the point about people being concerned about the F/RL percentage at Sand Point. (Tracy said the new boundaries would lower it but didn't say by how much.) He said that there is UW married student housing in that area and so that is a sometimes changing population. As well he said that there are many other schools in our district with far higher F/RL populations.
I would gently refute his points. One, that married graduate housing population will always be there. Yes, those grad students will have different incomes but that housing will always be there. Also, the issue isn't really what the reality is throughout the district in terms of higher F/RL than 30%. The reality is that you are trying to create a new school and get people to want to be there. If the population has a F/RL size that is totally out of whack with the rest of the NE elementaries, you handicap that school from the start in both perception and reality.
It seems, from Tracy's remarks, that Old Hay is definitely going to be an Option School. I make this point because some in the community had suggested a regular K-5 and I don't think that is an option from the district's standpoint because of the nearness of Coe.
So then they got into the McDonald question which was an interesting discussion. Clearly, very clearly, the district wants McDonald open at all costs. And I think the Board is drinking the Kool-aid so I would call this one done.
Tracy said they got "new" data on increased growth in the McDonald area. (This is after Director Carr, at the BTA III levy work session, said that she didn't see reopening the school for 135 kids. And now, voila! more kids. Interesting.) It seems like her argument is to open McDonald to ease pressure, now and in the future, on the other schools.
Tracy said that having McDonald would ease crowding elsewhere and, as a topper, that it could (might) allow grandfathering of siblings. Really? I'm hoping she means this as grandfathering siblings is now really on the table. She said opening McDonald would open up 90 more seats for out of attendance students at JSIS.
Then Sherry gave a long talk about her walk through McDonald with Kathy Johnson and other facilities staff. She said it is beautiful old building but that she was quite taken aback at its poor interior condition. She said the paint is peeling, the boiler bad, the elevator sketchy, etc. She said the work to be done is not extravagant but really needed. However, she said she was startled that this was considered an "emergency" school because she could not imagine putting kids into it as is.
(Yes and this is all part of that big Maintenance puzzle I keep harping on for the BTA III. So if there was an emergency at a school that necessitated moving out a population, where would they go? As it turns out, not to McDonald which is completely undermaintained. That would have been a terrible thing to find out if there were an emergency and what would the district say then? Sorry. We claim to maintain the buildings but really we don't?)
Oddly, Sherry then said that the case is not "overwhelming" to reopen McDonald BUT there is not a clear idea where to put these kids (about 135 I believe). That's when she waxed on about McDonald becoming a foreign language school and that the idea had been to have at least 2 feeder elementary language schools for each middle language school. Great, fine but where is the vision? Where do they go and what do they get in high school? No questions asked here and mute silence when they do get asked from the staff. Don't create more of these schools if you have no vision for the entire program. (See APP.)
Comments
This is what the IB director at Ingraham indicated to me when I was looking into the program a few months back.
Thanks so much for your great notes Melissa.
I can’t believe she said that. Is it good spin, or has Tracy (or whoever told her this issue is now void) never bothered to look at the map or has any familiarity with the neighborhood. Sure, a 5 block square area that was Sand Point is now back at View Ridge Elementary. But the ENTIRE Hawthorn Hills neighborhood is still on the OTHER side of Sand Point Way and the issue remains for them. Walking to VRE or Bryant was safe, and walking to SPE is not. I know ultimately some kids will have to cross Sand Point Way to fill SPE regardless, but she can’t really believe the new boundary is fully accounting for this issue?
* investing and sustaining strong principals
* quality instruction
* quality materials and programs
--------------
Please have Dr. Enfield explain the k-12 math instructional materials, which are off the mark on State Standards and the National Math Advisory Panel recommendations.
Who made this quality judgment other than the school directors that adopted this mess and the members of the intentionally stacked adoption committee.
Only the no results team from UW and District Office seems to like the unproductive mess now in place.
Does the following look like quality... "with the exception of Cleveland HS ... every comprehensive high school in Seattle scored lower on the Math WASL in 2009 than in 2008".
A true testament to lack of k-8 math preparation and the evils of social promotion and lack of effective interventions.
A real Quality Math program as judged by the "PR" machine.
================
Also it seems that the directors can approve primary instructional materials using the process described in state law ... BUT ..
there is NO process for the adoption of supplemental instructional materials.
Thus it looks like the Central Admin can say "up your nose with a rubber hose" to the board as far as ever doing anything with Singapore Math ... (as if Ms. Santorno and crew had not already done so).
The do not micro-manage the superintendent model looks more and more like NO management of the Superintendent.
However, there is a lot of parent enthusiasm for opening the school, particularly as a language immersion school feeding into Hamilton. With an additional immersion school community, there is some optimism that perhaps momentum could be formed to begin an immersion high school in a few years (Lincoln, perhaps?).
The families around McDonald *should* have a draw zone made up of more than leftovers. And they *should* have a great program(s). And that program(s) should be announced in conjunction w/ opening the school.
But...I don't think throwing a language immersion program as a carrot to McDonald is for the greater good of the district unless (until) it gives all neighborhoods a roadmap of how it plans to roll out immersion programs. And Montessori. And alt-style teaching methodologies. And K-8s. What is the end goal? One of each in every quadrant? Placement by schools that need propping up? By nearby population needs? What? Surely there is more thought than "let's appease this parent group by "poof" creating an alternative program."
I don't even have to agree with District reasoning behind a specialized program roadmap. But at least come up with one so we can have intelligent use of resources and methodical program outreach to all kids in the district.
And it's such a crapshoot over whether we'll get a good quality school with such a rush to implement it.
If it's only 135 students, why not wait 2 years until the building is ready and programming is more thought-out?
I'm not saying that it can't be explained, but I think someone needs to explain it.
This language immersion idea is coming directly from families affected by the new attendance area. Some have been lobbying the School Board and others to gain momentum with this idea.
I completely agree with you that it is unfair that other areas of the city do not have access to immersion programs. You have to understand, though, that some of these parents have "gotten a rock" (a la Charlie Brown) for YEARS. No access to JSIS, because it was overcrowded. Some in the U District and south Bryant have also been in a dead zone, where they can't get into any of the nearby schools. This area has very low SPS "market share" as a result. Why shouldn't these families try to make this school into something very attractive to them?
Per Dr. Libros, following the final approval of the boundaries (Nov. 18) a letter will be mailed to all K-4 families that are living outside of the attendance area of the school they attend. It is to specifically find out about younger siblings.
This letter is also mentioned in the updated FAQs about Grandfathering.
I'm not saying that it can't be explained, but I think someone needs to explain it."
How about this explanation: Program placement changes are still in the mix, and will be decided by staff *after* the Board votes, right? And this will give a building that's dead-center of the entire NE/N/NW/QAM "north half" of SPS. And it's under-enrolled. Voila! There's your north 1/2 of elementary APP, and the Board doesn't get to interfere.
Sure, it's probably wishful thinking, but it's logical. What's not logical is that it sure feels like the staff has some specific plans for that building, and they're not telling us. Why? Why can't we ever get honest, transparent answers?
And, immersion schools strike a particular hot spot because the district says it is harder to hire folks for these programs. Which means even more attention needs to be put on where they are offered.
It would not be OK to place a program like this *right next to* the most highly regarded (and one of the only) district language immersion programs without explanation about how they will role out similar programs district-wide. Really, really bad on the equity front.
And again, I'm saying the McDonald draw area is one of the weakest assignment areas as far as cohesiveness of neighborhoods. And I do completely agree it will need great programming to get it off the ground. So, what's the District's plan? Or maybe we shouldn't be opening the school at all, if there isn't a clear one.
In your original post you said:
"Sherry also asked Tracy about a rumor that the 10% of Open Choice seats at Ingraham would be for IB students. Tracy said there is no distinction about who gets Open Choice seats by any program."
I think I misinterpreted this, but it illustrates a question: if 10% of seats are available for open enrollment, is that grade by grade? So, if a school has, say, 1600 slots, there'll be 40 in each grade for open enrollment? Or 160 in (if it's a high school) 9th grade? Or what?
I think I assumed that open slots were in 9th grade - I don't know why, exactly. Is there some demographic flattening to the distribution of open slots, or what? Does anyone know?
"if 10% of seats are available for open enrollment, is that grade by grade? So, if a school has, say, 1600 slots, there'll be 40 in each grade for open enrollment? Or 160 in (if it's a high school) 9th grade? Or what?
"
The official answer, so far, is:
"That will be determined in the transition plan."
My expectation, which I know has not been confirmed, is that 10% of the seats in each grade will be available to out-of-area students.
So, starting with the 9th grade in 2010, 10% of the seats available for incoming freshmen will be for out-of-area students.
In 2011, again, 10% of the seats available for incoming students will be for out-of-area students. The $64,000 question is, what share of any available seats in the 10th grade will be available for out-of-area students? I believe that that the only possible answer would be "All but those deemed necessary to meet anticipated demand from attendance area students."
The district will have to estimate the number of attendance area students who were not at the school in the 9th grade the previous year but might want a seat in the 10th grade this year. They could be coming from private school, from a service school, from out of district, or from some other school in the district because their family moved or because they decided to change schools.
That's what I would reckon, but I haven't seen any actual statement on it. It is a problem for next year - not this year - so I think they have deferred it to next year.
Re Siblings and open choice. They have not asked at all which high school students have younger siblings entering schools as 9th graders next year. They are only planning to ask incoming kindergartners, right? Not very smart in my opinion. If you have a lot of siblings coming from what is now out of area or from private middle schools in area, those siblings and private school attendance area students must be seated first in the open choice 10% seats for high school. This really will cut down on the amount of open choice seats available. Example: Ballard or Roosevelt. 10% of open choice seats is 160, 40 per grade, let's say you have 20 siblings who need the open choice seats, that means only 20 seats are available to out of area students. Not really "choice" at all. This is a scenario I fully expect to happen. And they have no idea how many are coming, because they haven't asked anyone.
I can only assume that they are counting on kids at the RHS and BHS areas to go private, center school or APP at Garfield to keep the numbers down. Good luck with that one.
They are also expecting 5% of the students in the Ingraham, Nathan Hale, Sealth, and West Seattle attendance areas to choose Cleveland STEM, 6.5% of the students in the Garfield attendance area, and a whopping 13% of the students in the Franklin and Rainier Beach attendance areas.
I don't think it's going to happen.
Honestly, one of the appealing things about Cleveland STEM for my family is the strong possibility that no more than 50 students may enroll as freshmen next year. We're looking forward to class sizes of less than 20.
This year, with Cleveland available to any student who wanted to choose it, 49 incoming 9th grade students named it as their first choice for assignment during open enrollment. Forty-nine. By the end of open enrollment, 88 incoming ninth graders were assigned to the school. Of course by the time that October 1 head counts were done, there were 244 9th graders in the building.
That was this year. Next year enrollment will be done differently.
First, every student will get a default assignment in February. Because Cleveland will be an Option school, there won't be anyone who gets a default assignment there. No one. Not even the students living in the geographic zone.
Then, in March, only those who want something other than their default assignment will participate in the Open Enrollment process.
Does anyone honestly believe that students who get a default assignment and a guaranteed seat at Roosevelt or Ballard will reject it in favor of Cleveland? I suspect that a few students might, but nothing like one out of every twenty. More like one out of every fifty.
How many of them are choosing to go to Cleveland now? Seven students from the Ballard area and five students from the Roosevelt area are now enrolled at Cleveland.
Why would they? For the STEM program? Maybe, if anyone had any idea what this STEM program is really going to be about. Cleveland is going to have the same math classes as every other high school and the same science classes as every other high school. So what exactly - if anything - is the STEM program that makes Cleveland different from a comprehensive high school? No one can say yet and I don't think they will be able to say by March either.
How many students in the Ingraham and Hale attendance areas who live north of NE 85th street are going to choose to get on a METRO bus and ride all the way down to Cleveland every day because they are so excited about the STEM program - a program that is unlikely to be much more defined in March than it is right now. Do you think it's going to be one out of every twenty? I don't.
How many of them are choosing to go to Cleveland now? Three students from the Ingraham area and two from the Hale area are now enrolled at Cleveland. That's all.
Cleveland draws a little better from West Seattle.
Most of Cleveland's students come from southeast Seattle, but I wonder how many of them will choose Cleveland after they get an assignment notice in February saying that they are assigned to Garfield, Franklin, or Rainier Beach. Honestly, I think that most of them will simply accept the assignment. That's certainly what the District is expecting people to do.
Do you see many of them choosing Cleveland over Garfield? I don't. Over Franklin? Not many.
You might think that some of them will opt out of Rainier Beach, but consider this: Does Cleveland offer an escape from the concerns presented by Rainier Beach? If you're opting out of Rainier Beach because you are concerned about violence or because you're concerned about academic achievement are you going to choose Cleveland instead or are you more likely to choose Franklin or Garfield or Sealth? Is Cleveland's record of discipline and achievement so much better than Rainier Beach's?
For our family, the expectation that enrollment at Cleveland will be very small is part of the appeal.
We listed Jane addams as our second choice school for the same reasons - small school/class sizes. When enrollment was complete we were quite happy to learn that there were only 100 kids assigned to the entire middle school!
Two things happened to change this thoug.
First, after open enrollment was complete, JA was the only traditional (albeit not comprehensive) middle school north of the ship canal that had space. So any kid who wanted a MS seat north of the ship canal had no choice but to "choose" JA (or AS1 if they wanted an alt school). JA gained a lot of enrollment after open enrollment was complete - over the Spring and summer.
Second, since it was the first year of existence for JA, they were technically considered a NCLB "passing" school. So kids from all across the district, that were attending NCLB "failing" schools were offered an opt out transfer to JA with transportation. This happened the last two weeks before school started, and added about 100 kids to the over all school population.
All of a sudden the 6th grade classes at JA had 30+ kids in them. Not so appealing any more......
So there is some recent history on opening a new school.
It may be different in the south end, because Franklin and RBHS have extra space, so kids won't be "forced" into Cleveland. But it's still something to consider.
Sure, they needed to get an idea of the boundaries for the attendance areas, but setting those boundaries in stone without the answers to the myriad of questions and contingencies voiced on these blogs is, IMHO, irresponsible.
However, after open enrollment all MS's north of the ship canal were full. So any families who did not apply on time or were new to the district, who wanted a MS north of the ship canal had no choice but to "choose" JA. All of the other schools were full.
You may be right and these projections may prove to be very bad. As I often say, I don't know the truth, I only know what the District tells me.
It seems that the shift of the kids around Greenlake and the Zoo to Roosevelt might have opened some space at Ballard, or was it overenrolled in this plan already.
The transportation issue in the area, even Greenwood where I love, to Ingraham is huge, inadequate Metro service, transfers etc. Hard to accept this when we live close enough to walk.
It appears to me that a far larger percentage of both the Ballard and Ingraham area will need to be transported than any other high school. I would have thought they might have tried to spread that around a little, but seems to have been no effort to do so.
Also a parent from Loyal Heights who I met at the school board meeting told me that because these boundaries are set up to accomodate the students that will live in the boundary area in 2015 the incoming classes for the next few years at some high schools (we were talking about Ballard) will have more space because there is a population bubble of kids coming to high school in a few years, so he implied there might be additional open seats at Ballard this year.
Interested in any input on this.
Tracy does keep saying that they are trying not to fill to the brim now in case of growth later on. (That is the reasoning behind making Hale's boundaries tightening up for example.)
However she is firm that we have a smaller high school cohort moving through over the next 4 years so I don't know where anyone would get the idea there will be a surge (unless we get a lot of kids from private school which is possible).