What is the process?

If you had an idea and community support for a new school program, what would you do?



The new program placement policy, 2200, for all its inadequacies, does make some things clear. It defines the terms school, program, service, and curricular focus and delineates the authority for each of them. The schools have authority to determine their curricular focus. That's why any school can decide to offer an A.L.O. or not, can choose to have an environmental focus or a STEM focus, or to offer Montessori or language immersion. The superintendent has no authority to interfere with these decisions - they are site-based. The superintendent, in turn, has absolute authority over programs and services like Special Education, ELL, APP and Spectrum. He alone decides whether to create them, close them, expand them, shrink them, or move them. Policy F21.00 makes it clear that the Board can't interfere with his decisions. The Board, in turn, has authority over the creation, relocation, and closure of schools. So it is entirely up to the Board to designate Lincoln as a school separate from Lowell. It requires a Board vote to open a new school at Genesee Hill or to relocate the STEM school now at Boren (if it is, in fact, a school).

Each school can develop their own process for deciding if they want to establish, alter, or discontinue a curricular focus. That process can be documented or not. As previously stated, the superintendent has refused to document his process for making program placement decisions. The Board has an established process for making decisions about the closure of schools; we've all seen that and there is state law around it. What about a procedure for the creation of schools? I see none.

Many of our option schools started as community-based efforts. A dedicated group of families developed a proposal for a new school and presented it to the Board. The Board approved it, and that's how most of our option schools were formed. The most recent school created as a result of an outside proposal was South Shore K-8, which was proposed by The New School Foundation. The IB program at Sealth was also the result of a community-based effort. Those were in the recent past, but what's the current process? How could or would someone go about proposing a new school to the Board?

• If a community group wanted to create a new elementary school, one that focused on providing real inclusion and team teaching for students with disabilities at, say, the Columbia building, how should they approach the Board? What would they have to prepare to win approval?
  
• If a community group wanted to create a new high school in partnership with the Port of Seattle that focused on preparing students for careers in the aviation, maritime, logistics, and hospitality industries, what would be the correct way to make a proposal to the Board? What's the procedure? What's the first step?
  
• If a community group wanted to propose the creation of a Waldorf school, a Montessori school, or some other school that used an alternative pedagogy, how would they go about it?

Does it matter that the Board has not set a clear procedure for this? Couldn't it just be worked out on an ad hoc basis?

I think it does matter. It matters more now than it did last year. In the absence of such a procedure from the District and the certainty that a documented procedure offers, such groups might choose to create a charter school instead. Not because they particularly want to be a charter school, but because that path is clear. That procedure is documented and has defined criteria and benchmarks. And, frankly, that path promises less interference and more independence from the district.

I have long said that there is nothing that a charter school can do for students that a public school cannot do, but there may be one thing: get open. If the school district is not open to the creation of the new school and doesn't offer a path to creation, then the new school cannot be created. Charters, on the other hand, do offer a clear path, a documented process, an application form, a set of criteria and benchmarks. This is what people who want to create a school need instead of vague and political maybes and "we've got hotter fires to address" responses.

The best way to reject charters is to offer equivalent opportunities in the public system, and Seattle Public Schools isn't doing that.