NW Growth Boundaries Open Thread
Let's hear your thoughts (I haven't read them yet.)
Tuesday Open Thread
The speaker list is up for the Board meeting tomorrow; not as packed as I thought with just four people on the waitlist. The majority of the speakers are speaking on high school boundaries (with several wanting to talk about Ballard High). There are only three of us speaking about the Green Dot resolution asking the City to not grant the zoning departures that Green Dot has requested. It's me, long-time watchdog, Chris Jackins, and the head of the Washington State Charter Schools Association, Patrick D'Amelio. (I knew Mr. D'Amelio when he headed the Alliance for Education and Big Brothers and Big Sisters; he's a stand-up guy.)
Comments
-sos
HIMSmom
up of Wilson‐Pacific MS in 2016‐17 at
John Marshall with Wilson‐Pacific GenEd and Wilson–Pacific and Whitman
APP 6th grade"
Whitman APP? and what about 2015-16?
-sos
-sos
re-post from NE boundary thread
Those are the folks that don't even want Spectrum.
open ears
So, Whitman Area App students + WP gen-ed students will start at John Marshall.
N by NW
sos: I think Bagley, Broadview-Thomson (K-8), Greenwood, Northgate must all be sticking with Whitman until 2016 and Olympic View must continue at Eckstein until 2016. APP elem stays at Lincoln until then, too. Then in 2016, all of aforementioned roll into John MArshall for a year, then to the new WP.
reader
-uncertain
-LBD
If so then what changed with John Stanford and McDonald?
They are still Wallingford's elite schools
--option my tush
HIMSmom
But "elite" schools, really? There are other neighborhood schools in much more well-off neighborhoods than Wallingford. And there's really not a lot of evidence that these LI programs are so spectacular in the first place, is there? Demand is not the same as outcomes. Immersion comes with a lot of other limitations, like unwillingness to provide walk to math, etc. How is that elite?
HIMSmom
WP middle school will roll up starting with sixth grade APP and attendance area students in 2016-2017 at Marshall. Until then, your student will attend the middle school you are currently zoned for. WP 6th grade APP students will be assigned to Hamilton for the next two years.
- (less) confused
-(less) uncertain/confused
Moving Green Lake to Hamilton doesn't have a huge impact. Although you can't tell from looking at the maps of the current boundaries, at least half of Green Lake's kids go on to Hamilton already. The kids in the upper grades (and those who graduated in the past) all came in before McDonald opened. So, a large portion live in that area and have been going on to Hamilton as assigned by address (usually at least half the graduating class). Also, Green Lake is a small school. I would guess -- thinking about this year's 5th graders -- that moving all of Green Lake to Hamilton is maybe an increase of 25 kids who would have gone to Eckstein under the current system.
Green Lake Parent
In this case, I perceive the call that JSIS and McDonald are "elite" because only neighborhood students could access a program that is widely desired. You can't blame people for being envious for that opportunity.
However, McDonald itself didn't exactly jockey to be an international school (I thought the final vote had Montessori higher). And, it was not good to put these two programs right next to each other.
I blame Director Carr somewhat for this because she pushed and pushed it. If they needed another feeder FI school for Hamilton, they had other choices.
But I'm still wondering if the relief for HIMS will be enough over the next two years. It's hard to get real numbers, but say the NE APP split results in 60 fewer kids at HIMS in the fall, but this is partially offset by the 25 new kids from Green Lake. That's only 35 fewer kids. Given the Gen Ed numbers have also been rising each year, it seems like HIMS might be just as crowded as now, or even worse. Hopefully I'm missing something...
HIMSmom
The "gift" of continuing the APP experience at Lincoln may pale in comparison to the classes and opportunities of being at HIMS. Not sure why APP kids have to be the ones to choose.
Even if they could have some of the opps (like music), I think the Lincoln 6th graders would always feel like they are are the outside looking in.
I wasn't advocating for it. HIMS mom is concerned they're not going to see relief in the next two years and I was pointing out an alternative. I think it's best for those sixth graders to go to middle school next year. It's just likely to be a tight fit.
Also, I heard an idea floated about doing away with elementary to middle school feeder patterns. I think that is a great idea, so long as there are no tiny slivers of elementary school areas split off. Maybe it would simplify some of the problems finding ways to match up kids into middle schools.
-uncertain
HIMSmom
-LBD
1. The strange Loyal Heights “horn”. Seems these kids should go to Greenwood for more walkability. Loyal Height’s lower boundary is also weird – why not just draw a straight line (at 70th?)
2. The Greenwood boundary at 6th, rather than the more natural geographic boundary at 8th. There might be some adjustment up of the lower boundary of Greenwood to accommodate this shift of the west boundary from 6th to 8th.
3. The lower boundary of West Woodland is unusual, with a bite out of a neighborhood that is very close & walkable to West Woodland. Why not just draw the line at 50th?
4. In general, boundaries that span Aurora are problematic, especially for middle school, as it makes biking to school problematic. The same is true for spans across I5. I have no good solutions to offer, as any change has cascading effects. For example, a possible solution to make schools more walkable is to move Greenwood and Bagley boundaries east, so Greenwood boundary spans 8th to Aurora and Bagley boundary span Aurora to I5, but this affects Olympic Hills, and North/South boundaries. More work is needed to get this right.
5. Why doesn’t the geozone for JSIS run straight down Meridian? (Who has a friend living in that strange little panhandle spanning 45th to 47th and Stone Wy to Meridian?
I am really bothered that the JSIS and McDonald schools are now option schools in name only. The primary reason the district seems to have implemented them is to control capacity as families with means continue to move into these areas to nab a spot at these popular schools. The district needs to admit it made a mistake co-locating these schools. The most reasonable plan would be to move one of the programs and return the other school to a neighborhood school. I have no idea where to move the program. I would want to think about available buildings and making the programs more (geographically) accessible district-wide. They don’t need to feed to the same middle school, as there is no middle school immersion.
The transition plan needs to be clarified. Any solution that involves any group of students being sent to a 6th grade only school is a non-starter. These students will not have the resources they need in middle school to meet their academic needs (libraries, computers, orchestra), extra-curricular needs (clubs, sports, after school programs), and social needs (learning to be the ‘small fish’ again).
The district needs to clearly address the rising 6th bubble. This was the last group of choice students, so some students are assigned to schools outside of their geographic boundaries. I doubt there will be any consideration for these kids, but the district should understand how these kids affect projected 6th grade numbers across schools.
-uncertain
Yup.
However, I'd argue that are in fact implications for middle school. While true that there isn't "immersion" in middle school, there needs to be an appropriate language sequence for these kids post-immersion. Your typical middle school--where kids start a language in 6th grade--doesn't have it. Until this year, Hamilton had 6 levels of language: three years worth for those new to a language, and three years for those coming via immersion. This year--due to the small size of the immersion cohort and the increasing demand for beginning classes--they decreased the number to 5 levels. For those 8th graders who would have been in the highest level immersion class this year, they are stuck essentially repeating what they did last year. The 7th graders lucky enough to get bumped into the new top level course got a decent deal this year, but what will they take next year?
So yes, while there's no "immersion" in middle school, it DOES require a sufficient cohort size to ensure that the kids have access to the appropriate courses. Hamilton currently does NOT have a large enough cohort to make this work. Hopefully the addition of McDonald kids soon will be enough to tip the scales.
HIMSmom
APP faces this problem too, with th north end cohort now being split 3 ways in middle school. APP also requires a sufficient cohort size to ensure kids have access to appropriate courses.
The difference is that APP is a service (required) and language immersion is a program (not required).
-uncertain
The weird little square north of 85th makes some sense, but maybe not as much. That area is cut off from the rest of the area north of 85th by the Olympic Manor development. There is a pedestrian-only path through towards Whitman and over to North Beach, but that would be an awful lot of hill climbing for an elementary student to walk. It's much more level and probably shorter walking distance to go to Loyal Heights.
I completely agree that APP, like immersion, also requires a sufficient cohort size. The question is what size cohort is required?
If you have a single language immersion school feeding into a middle school, it's likely not possible to provide the full sequence of language classes to those kids. For example, if you have 20 5th graders in Spanish and 25 in Japanese, after you lose a few from each group come middle school (to option schools, privates, etc.) you're down to numbers that make it impossible to offer the appropriate next class.
In APP, on the other hand, say you have a small cohort of only 60 kids. You can still offer everyone APP LA/SS, and APP science. For math, since it's not APP-specific, there will also likely be non-APP kids who test into Algebra 1 (which some NON-APP middle schools offer anyway). APP kids won't have done immersion, so would be fine with intro world language classes, which should also still be offered in a middle school. The biggest issue would likely be in the decreased options for music--but with a smaller number of kids, you don't need to break them down into so many groups anyway. If there's a little more a spread in terms of ability in the uppermost level, kids can still play and learn.
Don't get me wrong, I like the larger APP cohort very much, and would prefer to see closer to 150 kids per grade level. But I do think it's still feasible with somewhat lower numbers. Language immersion, on the other hand, really isn't conducive to having a single immersion program feed to a middle school, unless perhaps there is only one immersion language taught (e.g., two 5th grade classes of Japanese).
These aren't really related issues, though--it's not a matter of APP vs. language immersion. :)
HIMSmom
The district wants 2 immersion elementary schools feeding into middle school to get enough students to continue to offer language at middle school. They haven't had enough students at Hamilton with just the JSIS kids to provide much language instruction, and we hope that when the McDonald immersion kids enter Hamilton in 2 years, we will have a large enough group there to improve the middle school language program.
That McDonald and JSIS are right next to year other, rather than farther apart but still in the same middle school service area, is an accident of opportunity. There was no pre-existing monolingual staff at McDonald that needed to be replaced in the switch to immersion, which would have been the case at any other elementary school in the Hamilton service area.
Also, many McDonald parents were advocating for the school to be immersion before it even opened. There was neighborhood flyering, community meetings, meetings with Sherry Carr, etc. -- pretty active advocacy around this issue. The district was not responsive and opened McDonald its first year as general education. It was designated immersion its second year, and became very popular.
It doesn't make sense to give this triangle to Loyal Heights, at least not in its entirety. This area can be carved up among North Beach, Loyal Heights, Whittier, Greenwood and Viewlands. My suggestion:
Move Greenwood's boundary westward to 8th Ave NW between 85th and 92nd (leaving the west edge of Greenwood at 6th Ave NW south of 85th). Greenwood is the nearest walkable school for these families, and this would not be a significant addition beyond existing boundaries. Loyal Heights is quite far away for these families.
Move Viewlands' boundary westward along 92nd to either 9th, 11th, or 12 Ave NW. Students here would have a walkable route to Viewlands via 8th Ave NW and NW 100th Place.
Give the much smaller triangle bounded by 92nd (or 90th), 12th NW, and Holman Road to North Beach. This would not be a large number of students and the pedestrian bridge over Holman would help get them to North Beach easily.
Move Whittier's line up to 92nd between 8th Ave NW and either 9th NW or 12th NW. Crown Hill Cemetery takes up a large chunk of this area, and this would not be a large number of families either.
Give the remainder - bounded by Holman/15th NW, 85th, 92nd, and 9th or 12th NW - to Loyal Heights. These families are the closest to Loyal Heights of anyone in area 116.
Dividing up area 116 like this makes much more sense than giving it to Loyal Heights in its entirety. Families here either identify as residents of Greenwood or upper Ballard, so there is no sense of neighborhood cohesion that necessitates treating the entire area as a single unit.
@Greenwoody I think I'm mostly opposed to dividing us up because I'm thinking ahead to the kiddo making friends through school, and where he'd be able to walk to their house for a hang-out most safely. That's probably my bias because I grew up hanging out a lot with the kids in my neighborhood, and walking to their houses. To me, within the triangle is his best bet for this, but I don't really like being so far away from the elementary school either (whee, NE corner), so I have no idea really what I would like, or what to propose. I guess I just feel generally disgruntled, heh.
-LBD