Somali Outreach in West Seattle

Great story from our friends over at the West Seattle Blog about Denny Middle School's principal, Jeff Clark, and his efforts on outreach to the Somali community which a growing population at his school.

From the story:

"According to Denny principal Jeff Clark, this was the third weekend that Denny has housed a new program partnering with local Somali families – a cultural education program in which the families use the school building on Saturday and Sundays, as a supplement to regular school. Clark says Denny will probably have about 100 Somali students next year; he pointed out that district managers announced recently in West Seattle (mentioned in this story) that Somali is now the second most common non-English language in the district."

and this great partnering with other community groups:

"Part of this new phase in encouraging Somali families’ closer involvement with the schools involves partnership with Neighborhood House, parent organization of the new Neighborhood Center at High Point, which was the site of a meeting two weeks ago (WSB coverage here) giving local families – many of them Somali – a chance to hear from and speak to local school officials (attendees included the principals of Denny and WS Elementary, as well as high-ranking district managers)."

Comments

Josh Hayes said…
Melissa, this is indeed a great story. This is the best aspect of what a neighborhood school can be: responsive to the actual neighborhood! Yay!

And it's also a good example of what you were referring to in another thread, that school by school and teacher by teacher and principal by principal, the Seattle schools really do try to do the right thing.
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Jet City mom said…
Im glad that Jeff Clark was able to find a good fit for his talents- talking to friends whose kids were at Salmon Bay under his tenure, they thought he was a great principal, but he really wanted to be in a school with more challenges- sounds like he found it.

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