Chief Sealth Petitions for Portables

The community at Chief Sealth High School is petitioning the superintendent for portables. The overcrowding of the school has put teachers on carts.


From the petition:
We informed the District as our remodel was being designed that the remodeled Sealth would have less space due to the removal of the portables. Our enrollment has increased by 400 students since that time and now we have even less space. Our capacity has been set at 1,200 students and we are now at 1,246. Our remodel did not include any planned work spaces. 


See the petition here.


Perhaps this petition should go, instead, to the FACMAC.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Ya,didn't think about that. Not only did the misguided demographer's information lead to school closures that now need to be reversed, but it also looks like it led to design flaws in the remodels of buildings. How many building remodels reduced classroom size, storage space, and/or work space based on the same data as the closures? The space crunches we see now, district wide in all of the remodeled buildings (exept for Madison, of course, because they shrunk their draw area)?
-Didn't think of how wide this might have stretched
11/19/11, 7:09 AM
anonymous said…
Either you have a neighborhood school assignment plan and you take everyone who lives within the boundaries, or you don't. In this case an overcrowded school is the trade off for guaranteed assignment.

West Seattle HS has 995 students enrolled and a functional capacity of 1099, so they have extra space. Maybe the Sealth/West Seattle HS boundaries need some adjustment?

Otherwise, portables seem like a reasonable request

my2cents
11/19/11, 8:34 AM
dan dempsey said…
Try this number from OSPI:

October 2006 Student Count 1,361
that was for WSHS.

There was plenty of outcry from WSHS about how the district NSAP boundaries were designed to choke WSHS and aid Sealth.

====
The 1,361 was partially due to Cleveland's remodel in year two and several students figuring that WSHS was a better deal than Boren.
====

Sealth remodel was a bizarre action all by itself. Another School Board abdication from leadership ... Irene Stewart chose not to run in 2007 and was replaced by Sundquist.
11/19/11, 11:28 AM
Anonymous said…
2cents is right, we either have neighborhood plan or we don't. The key question then is what percentage of Sealth lives in the attendance area? The Board has to own the overcrowding at Sealth and Franklin because they messed with the 10 percent cap. If $400,000+ is spent putting portables at Sealth, the district will forever be chasing its tail on capacity.

Emile
11/19/11, 4:40 PM
wsnorth said…
The district purposefully overcrowded Sealth for some bizarre reason they would never explain. Now we live with it - portables are a lousy solution, but better than no solution.
11/21/11, 11:26 AM
Anonymous said…
my2cents- it isn't as if the capacity issue CREATED by the poorly drawn boundaries haven't been pointed out to the board, the previous super, the current super, etc. The issues were brought up BEFORE the assignment plan was approved. For whatever reason, it was ignored. Now, Sealth is packed to the gills, teachers are on carts, and Madison and WSHS can probably start leasing their extra space to the other over-crowded area programs -at a fee, of course... call it a fund raiser.
-TOLD THEM SO
11/21/11, 12:51 PM
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