Green Dot Site Likely in SW Seattle
West Seattle Blog editor, Tracy Record, has discovered that it appears Green Dot is trying to remodel a church building in the Roxbury area of West Seattle.
Reviewing city permit application files today, we discovered a just-filed early-stage proposal to remodel and add to what is currently the Jesus Center/Freedom Church building at 35th/Roxbury, in the name of Los Angeles-based Pacific Charter School Development.
The one document publicly visible in the Department of Planning and Development system so far, dated December 31st, is a roughed-out site plan, showing the addition primarily along the Roxbury side of the 2 1/3-acre site.
I note that the Pacific Charter School Development is a capital building/renovation group funded by the Gates Foundation, the NewSchools Venture Fund, Broad Foundation, Walton Foundation - in short, ALL the usual suspects. It's based on this:
Venture Philanthropy
These organizations support PCSD’s adherence to the “triple bottom line” philosophy embraced by some of today’s most creative and result-focused philanthropists: green, sustainable financially, and incorporating the highest possible social return on their invested dollars.
Green Dot is planning to open multiple schools over the next few years and Pacific has partnered with Green Dot to build several of these facilities. For more information, visit www.greendot.org.
The CEO of Pacific, John Sun, has this on his Linked-In page:
• Oversee facilities development in Los Angeles, Boston, Memphis, and Seattle/Tacoma
• Established Seattle office to serve the Washington State charter school sector
• Build relationships with public charter school leaders to support their facilities needs
• Develop partnerships with local elected officials, school district leadership and other key stakeholders
• Defined PCSD growth strategy that will increase public charter schools’ ability to access public bond funding, allow PCSD to serve new geographies and increase PCSD revenues
For a Green Dot school in Tacoma they have leased a former elementary, John R. Rogers Elementary from "a PCSD subsidiary" which is then subleasing to Green Dot Washington.
I have a call into The Jesus Center as they seem to still be an active church with fitness center.
Reviewing city permit application files today, we discovered a just-filed early-stage proposal to remodel and add to what is currently the Jesus Center/Freedom Church building at 35th/Roxbury, in the name of Los Angeles-based Pacific Charter School Development.
The one document publicly visible in the Department of Planning and Development system so far, dated December 31st, is a roughed-out site plan, showing the addition primarily along the Roxbury side of the 2 1/3-acre site.
I note that the Pacific Charter School Development is a capital building/renovation group funded by the Gates Foundation, the NewSchools Venture Fund, Broad Foundation, Walton Foundation - in short, ALL the usual suspects. It's based on this:
Venture Philanthropy
These organizations support PCSD’s adherence to the “triple bottom line” philosophy embraced by some of today’s most creative and result-focused philanthropists: green, sustainable financially, and incorporating the highest possible social return on their invested dollars.
Green Dot is planning to open multiple schools over the next few years and Pacific has partnered with Green Dot to build several of these facilities. For more information, visit www.greendot.org.
The CEO of Pacific, John Sun, has this on his Linked-In page:
• Oversee facilities development in Los Angeles, Boston, Memphis, and Seattle/Tacoma
• Established Seattle office to serve the Washington State charter school sector
• Build relationships with public charter school leaders to support their facilities needs
• Develop partnerships with local elected officials, school district leadership and other key stakeholders
• Defined PCSD growth strategy that will increase public charter schools’ ability to access public bond funding, allow PCSD to serve new geographies and increase PCSD revenues
For a Green Dot school in Tacoma they have leased a former elementary, John R. Rogers Elementary from "a PCSD subsidiary" which is then subleasing to Green Dot Washington.
I have a call into The Jesus Center as they seem to still be an active church with fitness center.
Comments
I forget but weren't there many scandals about charters leasing space, creating profits for affiliated development companies...? If any one has a link, please post.
Seattle 6-12 School
School location: South Seattle (site to be determined)
Opening: August 2016
Grades served in 2016: 6
Grades served at full enrollment: 6-12
Total projected student enrollment: 1200 students
Is this how the school district is planning on dealing with the middle school/high school capacity issues? Let the charters in?
PUGET SOUND CHARTER SCHOOL DEVELOPMENT
WASHINGTON NON-PROFIT (REG)
Address: 4315 S. Webster Street
Seattle, WA 98118
Address Types: Registered Agent
Registered Agent: Cordell Carter
Filing Date: October 15, 2014
File Number: 603444530
cific Charter School Deveopment
Yes, that's exactly how the enrollment crisis will be solved. Watch the neighborhood flock to Green Dot. Seriously. The losers will be the SPS middle-high schools. Fewer kids, fewer dollars, less reason to invest in the SPS staff, programs and buildings and meantime a pumped up by CA and Gates Green Dot offering. Let the death cycle for SPS in the SW commence. Just like the privateers want.
ChartersNo
I find it very interesting that the first few charter schools in Seattle are likely to be highschools (the one in the ID and now this 6-12 in SW Seattle), but I'm having trouble seeing how this solves the capacity problems unless we draw some very weird boundaries and/or move programs currently housed in north and central Seattle to the schools further south that either already have some space or might have space after these charters open.
It would be interesting to see the high school projections for 2016 and beyond for the entire district (not just north end), then factor in these two schools and see how it changes.
I honestly don't understand how the $$$ works, do charter kids take their $$$ w/ them from the public to the charter school? How does the funding work for private school kids going to charter schools?
Half Full
It is interesting to watch. There is not a lot of noise/publicity around this building. It happens quietly.
Some parents choose private so those dollars are not used.
Charters are public schools so the dollars follow the kid. (This is the argument pro-charter people are happy to give.)
So your local district public school loses 50 kids and loses those dollars (with seemingly no kids to replace them) so you can see how it would be a whammy for a school and a dent for a district. (Seattle is filled up so they might be somewhat relieved but Tacoma is furious because of the money they estimate they may lose in the next couple of years, about $5M.)
That's how districts lose money. The state doesn't, districts do.
Charters, because some portion of those state dollars go to the state authorizer for oversight, don't get the entire amount. BUT, they are not hiring unionized people saving themselves many thousands of dollars.
This issue of facilities is probably the largest one for charters and why Gates set up this group to help facilitate finding and renovating buildings.
You will see - as California and others have -that you end up with far fewer "homegrown" charters because of the heavy lift it involves. If you are not a Gates-annointed charter, you won't get the help that a Summit or Green Dot will.
The shortage grows each year, reaching an estimated 1625 seats for the 2018-2019 school year.
After Lincoln opens, we are still short about 500 seats for the 2019-2020 school year. By 2022, the shortage is severe again, estimated at 1750 seats. Their analysis included option seats.
The document can be found here:
http://origin.library.constantcontact.com/download/get/file/1104982944920-207/FACMAC_recommendations_may_2014.pdf
It takes money "away" from SPS???? Money that won't be used to educate kids? District says that kids cost more to educate than they receive (eg. McCleary). So, isn't taking kids out a savings? Hard to see how that's a problem.
Reading
And "Reading", by that logic if the district had no enrollment at all, they'd be rolling in the dough, right? Since every kid costs more to educate than the state forks over? Something's wrong with that reasoning.
Now, let's say a charter opens up nearby. It pulls 5% of the students from our hypothetical school. That's 15 students or ~$75K in state money. That's roughly the cost of a full-time teacher. Once you add in the operations levy money the charter will eventually get too, it's definitely 1 to 1.5 full time salaries lost from the school's budget.
When you go back to class sizes, each grade is now 47 or 48 students. That's a hair small for two classes per grade (at least how SPS does it), but way to big for 1.5 classes per grade and mixed-age learning.
The school is now stuck. They've lost a teacher's worth of revenue, but they can't cut a teacher. That's how charters bleed money out of schools.
How will this help schools like Franklin High School with 70% FRL population? Schools are able to fund services when enrollment is high, taking dollars from public schools hurts the remaining students.
Let's remember: There are 20,000-30,000 homeless students in Wa. State and the number is growing by 500 each year.
What I see/worry will happen is that these charters open up spaces at southend schools that can't afford to lose students (as Eric B explains), and, when the capacity situation breaks up north, we're going to need to bus kids from the north to the schools that have room, which will be in the south end.
Nothing wrong with that per se, except it's the opposite of a neighborhood school system, which the district has been trying to create. The commutes alone, on public transportation, will be tough, especially if bells time remain as they are now.
It's all speculation on my part, of course. Maybe there's a viable plan in the works that ensures that every north end high school student has a spot somewhat near to home and doesn't involved split shifts or year-round schooling. I will state again that it just astounds me that there is so little community engagement happening on this issue. The same northend families who spent years not knowing how they were gonna resolve the middle school capacity situation are now staring down the barrel of the high school mess, with no plan or stated vision yet.
At the beginning of the school year an SPS staffer told me they wouldn't have their new 5-yr projections available until May 2015. Let's just hope they follow through with that, and that the projections appear to be accurate--and that they then use the data to move forward WITH the community!
HIMSmom
Of course E. C. Hughes couldn't hold anything like 1,200 students and it isn't set up to serve as a high school - no science labs, etc.
But folks have been saying that a middle/high school capacity crunch is coming to West Seattle and the District will need to expand Chief Sealth into the Denny space and move Denny into Boren and it was therefore foolish to allow STEM K-8 to have Boren.
So, if that's the case, then why didn't the District buy this church and convert it to a middle school as the new location for Denny when Sealth expands or as the new location for STEM? If the District needs property, then why aren't they finding it when the charters can?
- Jus Sayin
Green Dot in the News
<Back to News
Green Dot Schools Earn Top Rankings in U.S. News & World Report's Annual Survey of High Schools
Posted 04/24/2013 05:25PM
Los Angeles – Six Green Dot Public Schools campuses are among the top high schools in the country, according to the annual U.S. News & World Report’s list of America’s Best High Schools released today. Four schools – Ánimo Jackie Robinson Charter High School, Ánimo South Los Angeles Charter High School, Ánimo Venice Charter High School and Oscar de la Hoya Ánimo Charter High School – earned their top nationwide rankings for the second year in a row. Ánimo Inglewood Charter High School and Ánimo Pat Brown Charter High School also earned national recognition from U.S. News.
“We are honored our schools continue to earn top rankings,” said Green Dot CEO Marco Petruzzi, noting Green Dot uses an academic model designed to create small, safe, high-performing learning environments to meet individual student needs at all of its 18 schools. “This recognition is a tribute to the hard work of our students, parents, teachers and administrators at all of our schools in our mission to prepare students for college, leadership and life.”
Petruzzi added that last year Green Dot graduated more than 1,400 students, sending nearly 1,300 on to college, the most of any charter school organization in the nation. In its 13-year history, Green Dot schools have graduated more than 6,500 students with more than 90% being accepted to college.
According to U.S. News & World Report, schools are evaluated on two key principles: that a great high school must serve all its students well, not just those bound for college, and that it must be able to produce measurable academic outcomes.
U.S. News uses three tiers of evaluation to determine its rankings: 1) whether a school’s students are performing better than their peers; 2) whether its least-advantage students are outperforming similar students in their state; and 3) how well the school is preparing students for college. Those schools ranking among the top 100 in the nation produced the highest college-level achievement for the greatest percentage of students, according to U.S. News.
For its 2013 Best High Schools rankings, U.S. News analyzed information from 21,776 public high schools in 49 states and the District of Columbia using data from the 2010-2011 school year and ranked six Green Dot Public Schools among the top eight percent of public high schools in the nation.
For more information, visit http://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools
Parents reading this might be very interested in a school like this. 1200 students seems a lot bigger than their other schools and small classes they tout. How much do they cherry pick their students and how many leave before graduation?
HP
http://dianeravitch.net/2013/06/05/the-inside-story-of-the-green-dot-charter-schools/
- charter sucks
http://www.progressive.org/news/2014/12/187950/behind-charter-facade
-charter sucks
And why is a Seattle Principal on their board
http://www.examiner.com/article/green-dot-s-locke-charter-reality-bites-and-the-press-starts-to-get-it
- charter sucks
HP
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/01/education/gaming-the-college-rankings.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/article/2014/08/26/how-northeastern-gamed-the-college-rankings/
or the way the "lists" are made..
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/02/14/the-order-of-things
This is a reflection of American's stupidity and need to rank and list crap based on nothing. Whoever pays for the survey gets the results they want or need.
So you get what you pay for and the hedge funds ensure that.
Yes the Green Dot website I am sure has unbiased and balanced information that reflects some of the allegations, investigations and issues that former staff and media have made.
- charter sucks
HP
- Hates Charters