West Blog Report on Sundquist Meeting
- parents in West Seattle (well, some) are worried about the economic divide that is being created by schools with higher free/reduced lunch students all feeding into one middle school while the schools with less F/RL feed into the other. Since they are setting up the middle schools areas to almost "feed" into the high schools (even though that isn't technically what the SAP does), then you'll have that same divide continuing into high school.
-one parent has a very passionate plea about PTAs (she's talking about Concord). She said she knew going in that they were struggling and that she sees that not having a PTA system in place makes the struggle harder. This would be a great place for the Seattle Council PTSA to step in to mentor but the district (via the principal) needs to give parents support as they try to organize.
- several parents asked why Concord and Denny are not considered option schools if they are international schools (sound familiar?). Answer: "Sundquist said he’d wondered about that too and had asked the district’s chief academic officer to study it."
- Steve said a couple of interesting things. Here's what I wrote in the comments section:
“Sundquist took sharp issue with that, calling the money raised by PTSAs and other such efforts “a tiny tiny sliver of the funding” schools get..”
Really? He knows how much PTSA money is raised in every single school? And how much is raised by school foundations (yes, some schools have them) and booster groups? It’s a LOT of money. Likely more than he would like to admit. How does he think the Roosevelt and Garfield Jazz bands exist? The district? Please. Those programs exist because of the fantastic directors who are aided by the time and resources of parents (for decades). Also (and sadly), because this district spends so little on basic maintenance, PTAs are starting to pay for maintenance that should be under the district’s domain but hey, great if parents pay for it.
Also, he said that “no decisions on grandfathering are likely before January, Sundquist said, saying the district has to finalize the attendance maps first, then see how many families will be affected.”
The attendance maps will be final by vote on November 18th. The first time we see a transition plan will be December 16th at a Board Work Session. That’s where it will be revealed how much, if any, grandfathering of siblings will happen. The transition plan will be approved in January but we will see outlines of the transition plan in December. (This was verified at the recent Roosevelt meeting on the new boundary maps held this past Thursday. Steve was in attendance and this question was asked and answered.)
One mom, Kathleen, said this:
"During the meeting it was suggested that PTAs over-all effect on schools was mostly through fundraising. PTAs contribute only a small amount of the over-all budget for a school compared to the school district and therefore the schools without PTAs are not that disadvantaged. I would argue that the effect PTA’s have on the success of the school has more to do with their ability to build community and train parents to advocate for their programs."
Comments
I have seen evidence that in reformed districts (Chicago, New York, DC., Philadelphia, etc), school failure is sought after by the reformists because it is an opportunity for charters.
While our state doesn't allow charter schools, our district does have a psuedo-charter school, and there is support on the Board and from the Superintendent for this school- so I infer support for more such schools to be created.
I don't know what is in the heart of MGJ and her supporters, but I do perceive that forcing kids into neighborhood schools will help to increase the number of schools that will "fail" within several years from now.
Lauren McGuire, the North Seattle rep came to Jane Addams and helped them start their PTSA, and is now helping Sandpoint.
When I spoke with Lauren about the JA PTSA she was very clear that the district and school principal could not get involved. They weren't even allowed to organize a PTSA interest meeting. It had to be 100% parent initiated, and set up solely by parents. These were PTSA rules.
I think this query is more specific than I can see in the data (i.e. looking at differences between neeighborhing schools). But, according to the SAP appendix in data book 1, RBHS, Sealth, and WS all seel their FRL populations go down as a function of the new SAP (compared to 08/09), as does Ingraham. The only school w/ FRL greater than the mean that sees it go up is Franklin, and that's by a small amount (1%).
Of course, these are only predictions, but I don't understand what the concern being expressed here is. Is that Sealth/WS FRL is now 64/42 and will be 56/33 with the new SAP? those numbers look remarkably similar to me.
I'm trying to look at the new FRL numbers with the revised boundaries soon, but using the previously released boundaries, the FRL effect of the new plans was in general positive: i.e. FRL went up in a small minority of schools, and in general, the FRL of schools was lower after the new SAP than before. I'll update with real numbers once I've looked at the new data.