Needed Elementary Capacity in the Northeast
Issue #4: The urgent need for additional elementary capacity in the northeast.
Possible solution A: A new attendance area elementary school eventually located at the John Marshall site (the building needs significant renovation). The program will meet at the Lincoln site until the building is ready.
Possible solution B: A new option elementary school eventually located at the John Marshall site (the building needs significant renovation). The program will meet at the Lincoln site until the building is ready. The option program could house a new program or it could house the language immersion program now at JSIS, relieving the overcrowding there and providing more equitable access to language immersion.
Variation: The new option enrollment language immersion school at John Marshall could be a K-8 providing language immersion through middle school and providing some relief to the north-end middle school capacity crunch (see Issue #1).
Possible solution C: Reopen Cedar Park as an elementary school. This solution is not mutually exclusive with any other solution.
Possible solution D: Actively attract students to the unused capacity in some north-end buildings through a variety of methods including program placement and changes to attendance area boundaries. This solution is not mutually exclusive with any other solution.
Possible solution E: Find some suitable building or building site for a new elementary school in the target area. Suitable buildings could be currently designed as schools, churches, motels, office buildings, apartment buildings, retail, or light industry space.
Possible solution F: What suggestion do you have?
Special note: The Special Education, ELL, and APP students who live in the north-end are just as deserving of a north-end school location as any other student living in the north-end.
Comments
I also like the idea of opening Cedar Park. There are no elementary schools in the far NE which stretches up to the Shoreline border (145th st) so it would be a convenient location. John Rogers is the closest school now and it is at 105th - hardly a neighborhood schools for families living at or near 145th. Plus maybe that would have a ripple effect freeing up space at Rogers, Wedgewood and Sacajewea.
I'd look at working with the city to get space at Magnuson Park too.
All three NE schools are really doing tremendous work with very little district support.
Open the new schools with a good design (language, art, etc.). Build it smart and they will come. Leave what is working alone. Too many times, Seattle tries to make things bigger and as a result, the schools move into crisis management mode.
Signed,
Give the schools some breathing room and open the new schools in an intentional manner.
Jane Addams does not have an active link on the SPS schools website. Is there a PTA website somewhere (is this a bad omen, or was it never active)?
Opening up Cedar Park would be wonderful. You'd probably get some serious push-back from the artists colony currently entrenched, however. And judging by the roof (invisible under a thick cover of moss), I am guessing it will be millions to get it up to snuff. There are so many kids around there, it would definitely be a huge draw however.
http://www.janeaddamsptsa.org/
I don't know what's up with the regular Jane Addams site.
- Very happy Jane Addams parent of a 1st grader
http://www.janeaddamsptsa.org/index.html
It is hard to escape that the NE simply has fewer schools than similar sized areas AND those schools are on the smaller size. There is going to need to be some creative uses for BEX funds to expand the footprints for existing schools and very likely some form of partnership with the City or State to acquire some new property for additional facilities.
While the sale of University Heights did go to a legitimate community group, I am still shocked that the district sold such a large, conveniently located property. Opening University Heights would have actually added real capacity, it is large enough to have housed APP.
Unfortunately, there has been relatively little conversation about the existing JSIS siblings that find themselves suddenly outside the boundaries which the district increased to include them barely two years ago. As a parent in this situation, I'm extremely frustrated at the lack of sibling priority. The goal of the school district should be to keep families together and foster community which in turn tends to provide more school volunteers and monetary support. For families that utilize before/after school care, the logistics of planning multiple small children at multiple schools is expensive and difficult. The lack of foresight on the part of the school district caused this problem. They need to use a little creativity and make it right for existing school families.
Unfortunately, there has been relatively little conversation about the existing JSIS siblings that find themselves suddenly outside the boundaries which the district increased to include them barely two years ago. As a parent in this situation, I'm extremely frustrated at the lack of sibling priority. The goal of the school district should be to keep families together and foster community which in turn tends to provide more school volunteers and monetary support. For families that utilize before/after school care, the logistics of planning multiple small children at multiple schools is expensive and difficult. The lack of foresight on the part of the school district caused this problem. They need to use a little creativity and make it right for existing school families.
I'm repeating this post because I don't want it deleted for lack of a signature.
I have to concur. The district needs to guarantee sibling assignments for families put out of schools by boundary changes going forward.
There's just really no excuse for this. If the district is going to change a boundary, it needs to change it enough to accomodate the families that will be put in an unenviable split sibling situation.
The district currently guarantees a seat to the older sib in the younger sibs school, but no one wants to be put into the position of having to disrupt their older child's school situation to accomodate poor planning on the district's part.
The district came to JSIS this week and asked parents what they want when they change the school boundaries, and the overwhelmingly universal #1 answer was don't split families.
The district didn't listen to JSIS families when we told them last year and the year before that they needed to change the boundary sooner rather than later as they were undoubtably exacerbating an inevitible capacity crisis.
The school, which under the old assignment plan held 378 students, is expected to have 560 students in a couple of years, and now they say they need to make a change this year with minimal planning because the crisis is acute. Hint: You should have started planning last year -- we all saw this coming then.
I hope they will at least listen to us about the sibs.
Incidentally, I really think the proposed boundaries will continue to be too big. They are shooting for no more than 3 K classes per year, but they said that was how many we would have this year based on projections wand instead we have 4.
I think the district still hasn't come to terms with the fact that more kids will show up than they expect because families will keep moving into the neighborhood for access to the school no matter how small the boundaries.
As always, the school should be an options school. I'm fairly confident it will be some day, but as usual, the program planning won't be based on any rational underpinning, but will continue to be a mess and until their hand is forced by intractable capacity problems.