Seattle Schools Planning New "Pathway" for Advanced Learning in West Seattle
From SPS:
Thoughts from West Seattle parents?
The Office of Advanced Learning is collaborating with school and community members to develop a Highly Capable Cohort pathway for students in West Seattle. That is, when the pathway is established, students identified as Highly Capable could eventually be served from kindergarten through 12th grade in HC classrooms at schools located in West Seattle.
We are forming a Focus Group to provide an opportunity for school leaders and community members to collaborate on implementing new HC services at Madison Middle School and West Seattle High School. If you are interested in joining the Focus Group, application forms will be made available by mid-April on the Advanced Learning website www.seattleschools.org/advlearning.
The pathway will take time to develop and will not be fully in place by next school year, but we want to help families understand their options for this fall:
Elementary
Fairmount Park Elementary became a Highly Capable Option School this year – the first in West Seattle. At Highly Capable option schools, HC students are clustered in classes, where they learn together at an accelerated and/or deeper level. As the numbers of HC students grow, HCC classrooms will be formed. When students are identified through our testing procedures as eligible for HC, families may enroll them in Fairmount Park. Alternatively, a number of West Seattle’s elementary schools offer advanced learning opportunities or Spectrum programs.
Note that eligibility for Spectrum and HC requires following the Advanced Learning identification procedures. HC-identified students are automatically eligible for both advanced learning opportunities and Spectrum. See our web pages and the administrators at your neighborhood school for more information.I'm a bit baffled. Fairmount Park is a neighborhood school but they are calling it an "option" school for HC? As well, what is an HC Option School versus a school with Spectrum? I wonder if that might be confusing to parents.
MiddleI find this "guaranteed self-contained cohort" another confusing term. I have to assume they mean only for APP students because I don't see how Spectrum students could get this "guarantee."
Madison has been identified as the West Seattle middle school that would offer the Highly Capable option. Establishing Madison as an official HC option school would be the next step in establishing the full K-12 pathway, with fall 2016 as the target date for implementation. As with Fairmount Park, HC students at Madison would be clustered in existing classes or placed in self-contained classes, depending on enrollment. Families wanting their HC-identified students in a guaranteed self-contained cohort may enroll them in Washington Middle School. HC students who attend Madison, however, are guaranteed places in the school’s Spectrum core subject classes, which offer learning at an accelerated or deeper level, where teachers will appropriately differentiate the instruction based on student need/level.
High SchoolSo why mention that Chief Sealth - located in West Seattle -has IB but tell parents that if they want it, they would have to go to Ingraham?
West Seattle High School is seen as the Highly Capable option site in the WS pathway, and has already begun to expand its menu of Advanced Placement courses in preparation. An official target date has not yet been established. Meanwhile, current HC students may choose to attend Garfield (which offers a robust menu of Advanced Placement courses) or Ingraham (which offers the accelerated International Baccalaureate program). Note that Chief Sealth International High School offers the IB Diploma program, and is planning to introduce the IB Career Path in the future.
We welcome the opportunity to expand Highly Capable services in the West Seattle neighborhood. Please see our web pages to learn about testing, enrollment, program sites and more.
Stephen B. MartinPerhaps this is how this is all written but I don't find this the most clear explanation.
Supervisor, Highly Capable Services
Seattle Public Schools
sbmartin@seattleschools.org
Thoughts from West Seattle parents?
Comments
The difference between this and a school with Spectrum is that highly capable students are guaranteed a spot at Fairmount Park. At a Spectrum school, there is no guaranteed placement.
West Seattle highly capable middle school students will continue to be guaranteed a seat in Washington's traditional (self-contained for LA/SS) program. Madison is going to create a program for highly capable kids. It might be self-contained or it might offer blended highly capable/Spectrum classrooms.
I understand that they are planning to offer the usual highly capable science classes and that they'll be prepared to allow math placement two years ahead. Maybe they'll follow Washington's example and allow anyone taking algebra in 7th to take physical science and anyone taking geometry in 8th to take biology? It's obviously going to make scheduling more difficult.
The high school thing makes no sense at all. At Garfield the cohort is the point. There's nothing WSHS can do to create that. The note about Sealth is just a reminder that Sealth does not and will not offer an accelerated IB program.
As well (and again) why does this program operate in such a crazy quilt way?
Lynn, what's the difference between IB and accelerated IB? (I feel like I missed some memos here on HC.)
There are some HCC families pushing LOUDLY for it, but Madison is anti-gifted. Unabashedly so.
Washington is a great place for the service because of the teachers and curriculum, Madison will fight delivery of THE service model which is the 3 cores self-contained kicking and screaming.
Take the bus, get the real deal at WMS. After Meany opens, WMS will not have so many portables. In contrast, when all those K5 students roll up to middle school in West Seattle, both Madison and Denny will be slammed.
Pushing for this is short-sited, premature, and destructive to the HCC student learning experience. Another principal and Ed director who are anti-gifted now thrown into the mix. Bad strategy.
Program service integrity is the critical priority, and you will never find that at Madison.
SOS
BTDT
I meant the science classes usually take down by highly capable students in middle school - 6th is a combination of 7th and 8th grade science topics, physical science in 7th and biology in 8th.
Accelerated IB (IBX) is the program for highly capable students at Ingraham. They start the IB programme (and can potentially graduate) a year early.
West Seattle High School was chosen because it is one of the two high schools with open seats. Sealth is full.
There are less than 100 West Seattle kids in the high school highly capable programs. This isn't going to solve Garfield's capacity problem. (And 100 kids does not make an adequate high school cohort.)
Most of Garfield's HC students come from the north end. The solution cannot involve moving out the kids from areas that can't provide a cohort closer to home.
It would seem to be in the best interest of HCC to help develop new pathways to ensure the success of those schools. WSHS is not cursed. Who would have imagined a few years ago that Ingraham would become a sought after high school? Help plan for the looming and known HCC capacity crisis at high school. Throwing up road blocks is not going to stop the problem.
BTDT
Not that we can really wait another five years to wait for a solution, but still...
HIMSmom
As far as IBX, it is more prescriptive and less flexible than Garfield. Garfield offers AP and more varied options for math, science, and social studies classes. The IB diploma requires an extended essay written over the summer, plus other requirements beyond the standard course load. It is a choice, and not a default assignment, for a reason.
-NH
stu
They mention Madison will be optional but they don't say the same thing for WSHS. Looks like GHS will loose their Latin teacher after all.
UGH!
There is room at Garfield for all of the HC students south of the ship canal. You can't just say send the south end kids out of Garfield to make room for north end kids.
There are not enough students in West Seattle to make a viable high school cohort. Even 40 kids per grade would bring enough funding for WSHS to hire just one more teacher. That's not going to enable them to provide the range of classes that Garfield offers.
Why not? Not that I'm saying it's a good idea, but doesn't the district do this sort of thing all the time with HCC? How is that much different than opening JAMS as an HCC site, then telling all the NE HCC kids they had to move from HIMS to JAMS to make room for higher numbers of neighborhood and NW HCC kids?
HIMSmom
You can fight tooth and nail but the writing is on the wall. HCC is being distributed throughout the city and the majority of the city is pleased with it.
Longtime parents
If Garfield was successful with APP grade level cohorts of 125, why can't the program be split into 3, with 125 APP/HCC students per grade level? The incoming 9th APP/HCC grade level classes are soon to be at about 375, the number of freshman in a large SPS comprehensive high school. Currently, elementary and middle school APP/HCC placement is based on geography. Why can't high school APP/HCC placement also be based on geography, just as it is for every other high school student in SPS? Choice is nice, but the size of the APP/HCC cohort has perhaps outgrown the choice privelege.
The high schools with room to accomodate a third APP/HCC pathway are West Seattle, Cleveland and Rainier Beach. The natural choice would be West Seattle, which already has FP creating a new, and presumably strong, program under Julie B's great leadership. If the principal at Madison is hostile, change the principal. Don't make one employee the reason a growing and popular program cannot have a third and vital location in West Seattle serving a third of the high school APP/HCC students.
BTDT
Kids didn't have to just move buildings with their cohort, but they had to go far away to high school without their friends at all. I know many kids this happened to who lived within what are now Garfield's firm boundaries.It was also a huge problem in the northend, too. APP/HCC are by no means the only population in SPS who have been burdened by capacity problems.
PW
51 Washington
18 Mercer
8 Aki
5 Denny
20 Madison
33 McClure
37 Hamilton
77 Whitman
20 JAMS
54 Eckstein
How do you think we should spilt up next year's freshman class?
-- Been There
Can Garfield be expected to take up to 200 APP/HCC kids or more in its freshman class next year? What happens to the kids who live in the neighborhood boundaries? Can Ingraham take the remaining 125?
These are real questions, not hating on APP/HCC, but capacity questions that may have answers districtwide. The cohort is important. More important than location, possibly.
PW
PW
- Been There
And there are a majority in the northend, by far.
PW
If a new HCC site opens at one of the high schools with excess capacity, it seems like you either have to move some of the Garfield kids over, or force north end kids who can't fit into Garfield to go to the new site instead. But the latter only works if there's a big draw, an upside to attending the new school. I suspect that most north end kids and parents, if faced with that choice, would opt for their neighborhood school instead. In which case, that HS-wide boundary reshuffling I mentioned above would likely be necessary, no?
HIMSmom
PW
-- Bern there
And that Madison principal? He works his tail off and has received many awards. Betting 2 dollars that it's not the HCC students he doesn't like. It's their parents and often with good reason. Scathing comments in a blog will intensify not fix that situation.
Rigor4all
WSDWG
There are AP or IB classes in every attendance area high school. The "service" provided to HC students at Garfield is a pretty good chance of having other HC students in most of their classes. West Seattle High School isn't going to offer that. (Unless all those kids enroll in the same classes every year - which seems a bit much to expect after they've had the same classmates for elementary school and middle school.)
PW
Seems to me SPS is wishing and hoping for magic, versus reality. You can put HCC at Madison and WSHS, but it won't be long before there's a space crunch and all the typical battles ensue.
We all need Lincoln on line, and for people to realize that we can't grow our way out of a capacity problem. Growth IS the problem.
Kellie: Is it time for another enrollment-balancing explanation?
WSDWG
That just addresses the kids who were tested into HCC. Given how much the district pushed parents not to test their kids if they weren't open to going to the HCC site, I'm sure you'll see more kids getting tested as well.
Cohorts in popular programs grow. Ingraham started with fewer than 10 students in their IB program. Now it serves well over 150 on the diploma track and more taking individual classes.
There are multiple issue being conflated in this thread and I will start with West Seattle boundaries, which is the real driver of this "solution."
West Seattle's boundaries are deeply problematic. Because of the Denny/Sealth co-location. SPS did not have the option to have BOTH rational high school boundaries AND the middle school feeder-pattern.
Therefore the boundaries for Sealth are just too BIG and WSHS are just too small. This could have worked if IB had been located at WSHS instead of Sealth but ... the situation is that Sealth has both IB and too large a geograpahic area to support.
In many ways that problem is very straightforward and has only two solutions.
1) break the middle school feeder pattern and right size the geographic boundaries or
2) make the school with the too-small boundaries attractive enough so that folks opt-in.
But please refrain from spreading non truths as if they are real. Read the OSPI grant from SSD, this high school cohort model is right there. It is THE critical model to put a school in a position of delivering services. That ensures ALL identified by 8th grade students equity of access.
COHORT = MODEL
As for all of the questions and comments about the HC cohort and high school
The high school issue is NOT about HC at Garfield, in any way shape or form.
This is about trying to eek out a little extra "efficiency" in the incredibly inconvenient geographic placement of physical high schools and where students live in Seattle.
At this particular moment, we have approximately the same number of high school students and seats in high school. (IMHO, we have more students than seats - but that is a different debate) However, there is almost no way to shuffle the deck so that there are the right number of bodies in the right locations.
There are only two schools with real wiggle room - RB and WSHS. RB is hard at work to be more attractive that their historical enrollment issues and there are some really impressive folks working on that. But it takes a long time to change a legacy issue.
WSHS's problem is more artificial. In a classic capacity balancing model, you place attractive programs at schools that would naturally not fill from the geographic area. There are more than enough students in the area, they just are assigned to Sealth.
This is going to become more and more clear every year that the enrollment in West Seattle continues to increase. It will not be long before the same K8 vs middle school issue that plagued the Jane Addams building rears its ugly head in West Seattle.
But what the District KNOWS but is NOT telling West Seattle is that West Seattle's capacity is broken.
Surely parents can see this? The same parents who crowded the meetings and told them NOT TO CLOSE SCHOOLS because there were too many kids? Final analysis: parents were right, district was really really wrong. (Genesee Hill reopened with 660 seats, Fairmont Park reopened with 660 seats, brand new k5 STEM opened more than 400 seats, Arborh Heights being enlarged to 660 seats --- where exactly does the district say these ADDITIONAL students are going to land??). All those K5 students rolling up into middle and high mean that West Seattle MUST find a way to export 'volunteers'; students who will choose to take a bus and go elsewhere, like to Washington or Garfeild. Pulling students who now go 'off islsnd' BACK into the 'island' is going to bite ALL west Seattle students in the behind. Can you say, "school in shifts"????
The District people pushing for this won't be here in 3 years. But we will. Marty has been so disappointing.
Capacity Equalibrium
Once again, this one more band-aid being placed on the hemorrhaging wound that is the lack of a QA/Mag high school. This problem has causes the vast majority of ALL capacity issues for decades now.
This problem is so persistent that even a fight that went all the way to the Supreme Court failed to address this fundamental problem in providing a public education to ALL children who live within the boundaries of the City of Seattle.
When Seattle closed schools, Lincoln was a natural choice. The property is a terrible high school campus. It was opened as an interim solution and served many functions over its lifetime. However, closing QA high school was foolish and politically driven
With NO high school for QA/Mag, there is a game of everyone move to the next school. This is the reason that "north of Aloha" couldn't go to Garfield.
QA/Mag students are entitled to a public high school and they have to go somewhere. Under the choice system, they were ballast to balance seats. Under the new system, they fill Ballard.
Then, the Ballard areas displaces into all the other north end schools. The north end APP students going Garfield is the thing that hold it all together (at least for the moment)
So while it is tempting to say -- everyone go back to your attendance schools, that is the answer!!! If that actually was the answer, it would have already been done.
SPS clearly has no issue with moving APP students. If it was possible to have 100% of north end HC students magically assigned to Ingraham, it would have been done already.
Even with Lincoln on line and fully enrolled, there simply is not enough high school seats in North Seattle for the number of students who live there.
Simply put, as long as QA/Mag students MUST go north, there is always going to be pressure to send other students south.
How many K5s DEPEND on deflecting HSC students to Lincoln, Thurgood Marshall or Fairmont Park to stay afloat? Look it up in the District's enrollment report. At least a dozen.
The problem is NOT HCC, the problem is the District's BAD planning and poor choices. How wasteful to close Meany, move NOVA, all to reverse this at a cost of $10M, not to mention the pain and tumult dealt to students, families and teachers.
Your 1600 number is puzzling at best, inflammatory at worst.
There is not enough capacity in the regions that need it the most. Queen Anne Magnolia are missing their high school, for example, that is not HCC's fault. Ballard students are pushed out of Ballard High School. That is not HCC's fault. Roosevelt is beyond 1700, bigger than Garfeild. That is not HCC's fault. The District sought to obtain, for the first time ever, a zoning departure from the City to over-portable a k5, going beyond the lot coverage limits, that is a new low, and, that is not HCC's fault. Although readers of this blog had a feild day attacking Laurelhurst residents because those families rejected this and were outraged by how poor planning was trying to mask real problems of a lack of capacity. Graham Hill was in danger of losing its preschool a while back, that was not HCC's fault.
Please, do not throw shade at kids or communities. Step back, look at the big picture, and see the capacity issue for what it is: district failure upon failure. You cannot blame the legislature for this. The Capital matching funds come in like clock work. Goodloe-Johnson, then Banda, then a care taker who does not get it that is what has caused our children's problems of math pull-outs in the hallways, 3 shifts of lunch, lack of playgrounds because of portable footprints, insufficient bathrooms for schools like Kimball or Whitman because of way too many (beyond 10%) portables. None of the is HCC's fault.
Please, don't blame kids. Any kids.
Better planning
The debate around HC services, rigor and cohort and model, is a beautiful distraction. As long as people point fingers at the "HC problem" they are NOT discussing the capacity problem.
There has NOT been a massive burgeoning of HC students in Seattle that is somehow driving all of these "problems." There has been a massive burgeoning of STUDENTS.
Seattle Schools has been growing by over a 1,000 students per year. Slicing and dicing HC is the capacity management plan.
Slicing and Dicing APP was the only way to make the farce of the closures look good on paper, despite ample evidence from the community that it would not work.
When it was no longer possible to ignore the tragedy of the school closures, the "only" way to open schools seems to be to re-assign the HC students.
The bottom line is that there is not enough capacity. Plain and Simple.
And do you know the district 's timeline for releasing any updated, multi-year projections?
HIMSmom
I had mention to get up a thread on the Budget section of the most recent Work Session but the question was asked - by Director McLaren - about high school capacity.
Staff all looked at each other and then Mr. Tolley said, that's Flip's area and, as it turns out, Mr. Herndon was not there. Tolley said Flip would have a report "soon." I asked at the BTA IV meeting at Hale and Herdon said in the next "month." Is that April or May?
Remember how you got to this place because it has very little to do with HC and very much to do with how this district is management and the incredibly short-sightedness of how they do capacity planning.
He also said they are looking into all ideas like split shifts, year-round but he didn't seem very upbeat about those options.
Yes, Denny/Sealth was not a good idea (and I'd be interested to know how much collaboration does actually go one between the schools and staffs as was advertised).
You just are not going to get more people into RBHS for two reasons. One, the City doesn't seem to have made the effort to make it look and feel safer in the surrounding area of the high school. That IS the City's job. Second, the district decided, probably 10 years back, that RBHS was never going to come back and did very little to the physical building.
Mistake. Because unlike all the other comprehensives, it is not a thing of beauty or comfort. (Ingraham and Sealth may not have had total remodels but they both had huge amounts of work done on them in comparison to RBHS).
And now the district desperately needs to get kids into RBHS. Oh dear.
And Lincoln? Yes, we got Flip to weigh in on that as well. They are getting their - what? $19M - and that's it (even as he admits it could use much more). Again, you will have a much-loved, fairly well-used building with what are going to be (in the big picture) minor upgrades. I'm sure it will end up full but those parents now will be agitating for more.
The 8th grade HCC cohort has nearly tripled in a few short years. The growth in APP/HCC since the split, etc, has far outpaced the growth in SPS. It does not make HCC the bad guy, but it does present a big problem having so many kids able to choose Garfield as their high school. A problem that needs some kind of solution. Remember, the cohort at GHS used to function very well, for years, at 125. The district is at least starting to look at planning a new pathway, where this conversation started.
PW
The answer is making all these pathways, in every region, coherent and equitable. You may still have capacity issues, as Kellie has pointed out, but at least it won't look like a game of checkers.
While it is very appealing to clearly state that without HC, then Garfield would be right-sized. It is even more appealing to look to the handful of things that worked really well during the choice system.
No doubt about it. It is appealing. And that beautiful distraction is nothing more than a distraction. HC is not the source of crowding at Garfield.
Roosevelt now has more students than Garfield. Ballard has about the same number of students, in a slightly smaller building.
The Garfiled-Roosevelt-Ballard triangle are the three schools that cover the middle (ish) of the city. All THREE schools are full. All THREE schools have significant master schedule issues.
Any change at one of the schools means pushing students to one of the adjacent schools.
The "limited choice" model is really one-directional. It is about getting students OUT of the Garfield-Roosevelt-Ballard triangle and into any other school.
A comprehensive new high school at Memorial Stadium could be a model humanities and arts program. Fold in the Center School and build upon its ties with the Seattle Rep. Make Jon Greenberg head of the humanities dept. Expand athletics with the field that is already there. Use public transit to bring students to the Seattle Center.
SPS could continue to lease the space in the Armory building where the Center School is now. They could make it an elementary school and take advantage of the nearby Children’s Museum, Science Center and Children’s Theater.
Ballard H.S. and Garfield could then attract more families from their neighborhoods.
We need to build capacity in the center of the city.
S parent
PW
You wrote that Flip weighed in about Lincoln at the BTAIV meeting. Did he say anything regarding the need for a high school for Queen Anne/Magnolia?
Thanks.
-reality check
There are a few hundred, less than 300 from K-12, who need to be in a isolated environment, call it cohort or self-contained, in order to succeed at school.
The rest of the tested-in HC kids can find all they need in "normal" schools. AL knows this and is steadily changing to a dispersed model for the service.
There will be a place for the subset of HC who actually need to get away from other students to thrive.
I commend Dr Martin for a thoughtful and controlled winding down of the current model. Even as it expands, it s getting dismantled. A small stable self-contained program for the few who need it will be implemented in a few years.
Orca Parent
The meeting is at JSCEE from 7:15-9:15; several invites/reminders have gone out to PTA leaders in the past 2 weeks but everyone is welcome.
After our short business meeting, Ken Gotsch (Finance, Budget, Grants) will be doing a presentation on school budgeting. Then we will break into round tables with staff including:
Ken Gotsch (school funding)
Flip Herndon (Capacity, enrollment planning, BTA, Capital projects.)
Bernardo Ruiz (school-family partnerships, equity and race, Native American education)
Eric Anderson (enrollment data, student assessments)
Michael Tolley (T & L, SBAC, Common Core)
Shauna Heath (C & I, MS social studies adoption)
Stephen Martin (Supervisor of Advanced Learning)
Margo Siegenthaler (Ombuds for SPED).
Dianne Casper
SCPTSA Secretary
- EverybodyKnowsThis
I agree with Orca parent that the time is approaching for a radical alteration of delivery. Savvy parents are not going to count on Garfield as an option city-wide, it's not going to be there for long. The smart parents are going to be helping their neighborhood school, from high school and middle, down to elementary, provide service that is effective and compatible with the ideals of social integration we share as a community.
pulsar watcher
I'm sorry I misunderstood your point. How is it problematic?
You rarely hear -from anyone on the Board or from staff - that the issue is the lack of a high school at QA/Magnolia. It's a little strange especially when you then see them jumping thru hoops over the Federal Reserve building.
Some of you seem confused.
Orca parent, where did you get the figure that there are less than 300 K-12 in APP? Because that is simply not the case.
Second, EVERY school is supposed to have AL offerings. So every school is part of Advanced Learning and is "normal."
Pulsar, what school within a school is there except when Wilson-Pacific comes on-board? Because APP at Garfield is not its own school.
"It's not fair to the kids in the cohorts to be labeled and segregated any more than it's fair to make single-subject gifted, high achievers and just regular students feel inferior and excluded."
And yet, in districts thru-out the country, there are gifted programs. Hard to fathom if that statement is true.
I do agree, however, that we have to strive to make ALL schools good and schools that can serve ALL learners. That means a smaller class size and differentiation.
That day is not yet here.
Would agree the writing is on the wall in light of the policy regarding incoming high schoolers and their inability to access Garfield until and unless they have exhausted all AP course options at their assigned high school.
If WSHS can ramp up enough to serve HC then any high school can do so as well. The "option" will not be there for long, it will be Hc at a student's assigned school.
Taylor
please read more carefully before disputing someone's comments.
I said
"There are a few hundred, less than 300 from K-12, who need to be in a isolated environment, call it cohort or self-contained, in order to succeed at school."
note, "who need to be in an isolated environment", NOT in HCC, as you erroneously interpreted.
Also the "school within a school" environment as exists with the HCC at Garfield, as exists at Hamilton, as existed at former self-contained Spectrum schools, and is no doubt developing at JAMS-
that is what I was referring to in my comment.
I will try to be more clear in the future.
Orca Parent
When you say "school within a school" and leave out "environment" it will lead to confusion.
As well, APP elementary IS totally self-contained. There are far more than 300 students in Lincoln. As well, there are APP self-contained students at Washington.
So no, I don't need to "read more carefully." I would suggest you be clearer in your comments.
Remember, for years and years, before the split, the APP cohort by grade level at Garfield, pre-Ingraham IBX even, was about 125. Year in, year out. And that was not that long ago. This year (2015/16) it is 323 for entering 9th grade. Though it will not happen, they all have the right to choose Garfield. In fact, it is their placement unless they choose Ingraham IBX.
PW
I know that elementary APP/HCC, along with Licton Springs K-8 are in the building now, and that they will be relocated to Wilson-Pacific when the new elementary and middle school opens there (2017?).
Lincoln isn't opening as a high school until 2019, right? Is there another school that is supposed to be housed in Lincoln for 2017-18 and 2018-19, or will it just take that long to get Lincoln ready?
The reason why I'm asking is because they opened JAMS before that building was done. Construction at JAMS is happening in phases. There was some work done last summer, before the school opened, but the really big jobs are scheduled for this Spring/Summer. More work at JAMS is scheduled for Summer 2016.
Is it possible to do Lincoln the same way? I'm not saying it is ideal (because it is obviously not), but it might help get additional HS seats online faster.
Has this been discussed at all?
- North-end Mom
The freshman class at Garfield is already at 450 this year and 500 is most certainly in the immediate future.
Here is the link to the high school enrollment report.
.
Ballard - 436
Roosevelt - 429
Garfield - 459
The high school numbers should be scaring people but they are not because total enrolled looks pretty stable. However, this is only because the running start students simply *disappear* and are not in the reports.
In many ways, the HC students coming into Garfield is helping Garfield's capacity issues as many of those students exit for running start.
To make a general statement that something isn't "fair" is so intellectually dishonest, it is hard to know how to respond.
I would also add that classrooms today are not just collections of a variety of learning levels but of management levels, too. Whether due to more working parents, longer working hours, processed foods, or just plain poor discipline at home, the classroom behavior of students is way out of line. I believe a lot of parents try to get their kids into HCC to guarantee they will be in a classroom where they can learn.
Just as we need supports for low kids, we need challenge for high kids and those kids are not just the geniuses Lynn talks about. The top ten percent is a very high group of children. They not only learn quickly but they come curious and ready to learn. When they are not engaged, they become problems as well. Fair - who doesn't think they deserve to be treated fairly as well. And "fair" is an educational construct that meets their needs.
Big Picture
There is a portion of the Garfield population that is a bit transient. Section 8 housing is prevalent in some of the neighborhoods that are within the GHS boundaries, and many kids enroll and drop out of GHS each week throughout the year. Between this and the Running Start students, kids do seem to disappear from the tally. But my experience is that it is not the APP kids who are going to Running Start.
PW
At the moment WSHS is the school that is importing the greatest number of students. They are exporting only 58 students and importing 278. The only school that is even close is Ingraham who is importing a whopping 411 students but is exporting 194. (mostly to Ballard as many of those students live a lot closer to Ballard.)
A pathway at WSHS could make the school even more attractive. However, by the time the pathway would be *active* in 2019, it won't make a bit of difference to anything.
It certainly seems like the entire capacity management plan lands on the back of which *slightly less crowded school* can you entice the HCC to go. At the moment, Garfield is the slightly less crowded school as Roosevelt and Ballard are much more crowded. A WSHS pathway won't change that.
Yes, I do know for a fact that Garfield has slightly larger running start numbers and that those numbers are trending upwards.
Meg and I did quite a bit of analysis on this topic at the beginning of this school year, when Garfield was threatened with the loss of a teacher in the budgeting process. The whole budget issue in many ways hinged on the increase of running start students and the lack of transparency in that process. As well as a serious push to get students to remain at Rainier Beach.
The running start analysis is how we were able to realize that the running start program is masking quite a bit of the high school enrollment pressure. Students who are enrolled in running start on a full time basis are completely subtracted. Students who are part-time are then partially removed.
Effectively, there is no way to easily determine the drop out rate vs the running start rate, without combing through all of the p223s by hand and calculating the running start enrollment. (Thank you Meg!!)
Running start enrollment is increasing along side the capacity problem. As the capacity issue puts more pressure on the high school master schedules, students are less and less likely to get the classes they need/want. Even with running start there were almost 100 Garfield students who wanted a sixth period during this school year and were unable to get one either at Garfield or via running start.
Conversely this means that there is a serious risk that if for any reason the community colleges decided to cap running start, there would be even more capacity pressure. The failure to report running start enrollment as a line item in the capacity management report is a serious issue that creates a false impression of high school enrollment.
PW
PW
Kellie's right - by the time WSHS could have something online, it won't have any empty seats.
What's the short term high school capacity fix? Does anyone have a feeling for what the district will do with north end students in the next few years?
All I can say is that I spent many, many hours last Fall at Garfield researching the *enrollment issue* that triggered the potential loss of a staff member due to the budget process. In this process, I spoke to a wide variety of staff members and looked at the capacity issues from a variety of angles.
I can say that historically, that Garfield did not have a very high enrollment in running start. However, that does not seem to be the case any longer. District-wide running start has increased significantly and I would strongly anticipate that this trend continues.
I have no way to tell you the precise percentage of HC that are enrolled in running start as that is information that only enrollment services can process. However, I can tell you that the pressure on the master schedule strongly hits the HC cohort.
I know patterns and I know capacity. The pattern strongly fits an increase in running start that is proportionate with an uptick in adoption from the HC cohort to running start. It does not fit any other pattern.
Once again, the problem of a freshman cohort of 500 at Garfield is a result of very poor planning and has NOTHING to do with any increase in HC enrollment at Garfield.
Simply put, if north end HC enrollment was ended at Garfield, there would NOT be any decrease in enrollment. Instead there would be an increase in the size of the attendance area so that some or all of QA/Mag was drawn into Garfield.
The issue is that there are just MORE students who live NORTH of Garfield than there are high school seats. There are more students who live in the Garfield, Ballard, Ingraham, Nathan Hale, Roosevelt attendance areas than there are seats at those five schools.
There are already more students enrolled at Garfield, Ballard, Ingraham, Nathan Hale, Roosevelt than were intended during the remodels and rebuilds of those schools. The BEX III process is still recent enough that there are people who were on the design teams for those projects and are very aware of the intended enrollment of the schools, despite whatever the current *capacity* number might be.
You can divide up the students any way you like but eventually they are just not going to fit and eventually is probably sooner than anyone expects.
A WSHS pathway simply pulls students who live SOUTH of Garfield to South of Garfield. At the moment, there is ample high school space South of Garfield, but not for long as enrollment in West Seattle is on the steep incline.
Once again, my opinion on this is that it is one more band aid on a hemorrhaging wound.
If a high school at Memorial Stadium might be a long-term solution, what would be the best way for the district to create short term capacity for high school?
"HCC as it now operates is obsolete. It doesn't serve the students, in fact it's bad for them."
Really? HCC doesn't serve the students? That's news to me. Why do you say this? What data do you have to support this claim?
"There are a few hundred, less than 300 from K-12, who need to be in a isolated environment, call it cohort or self-contained, in order to succeed at school."
Again, what data do you have to support this claim? Which 300 students out of all of the others need to be in HCC? And why is it that the others don't? Because they can be reliably served in general education classrooms in their neighborhood schools? What evidence do you have for that?
"The rest of the tested-in HC kids can find all they need in "normal" schools. AL knows this and is steadily changing to a dispersed model for the service."
Really? Why can they now when they never could before? What has changed? Is this thanks to MTSS?
"There will be a place for the subset of HC who actually need to get away from other students to thrive."
Really? What place? After you have eliminated HCC what place will they have? Why can't these students be adequately served in normal schools?
"I commend Dr Martin for a thoughtful and controlled winding down of the current model. Even as it expands, it s getting dismantled. A small stable self-contained program for the few who need it will be implemented in a few years."
You know about this new, stable self-contained program that is coming? Please tell us more about it and about how you know about it, and about how you are confident that it is coming.
Then please tell us why you are an ORCA parent and why your child couldn't be served at a normal school.
Kellie's explained it quite wellz: It's not one group or another. It's everybody.
The counts every year in WS have been so inaccurate, and predictions so low, I can't understand how it continues. Look at our elementaries! Good God! They are bursting at the seams, and Schmitz Park now has more kids in portables than in the main building.
Seeing what's happening with HCC, if I'm a STEM parent at Boren Elementary, I've got to think my cohort might be slated for Cleveland HS, on the other side of the bridge, given all the growth and how specialized cohorts are tools for enrollment-balancing in SPS. Is it already time to plan additions to WSHS and Sealth? All these kids have to go somewhere.
WSDWG
Yes, ALL kids have access to "advanced" high school classes. AP/IB classes - with only small exceptions like prerequisites - are open to all. IBX, I think, is only for APP kids.
Honors? Any school that has honors attached to any class (like at Hale) well, any student can access those.
I have always been for kids accessing any higher level class, whether tested or not, "gifted" or not.
I just don't know why this isn't widely known and understood.
There's lots:
http://ny.chalkbeat.org/2014/07/14/the-citys-gifted-education-system-needs-to-shift-one-school-at-a-time/#.VSIwoGZ938c
Self-contained has drawbacks and programs like SEM work to bring all kids the benefits of a gifted education.
Our program, HCC,is outdated. It is not current best practice.
Use the internet and you will see that progressive districts are moving away from self-contained and reserving it for extreme outliers.
OD
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/03/gifted_and_talented_education_cities_try_to_make_programs_more_inclusive.html
nightshift
http://www.alfiekohn.org/article/kid/
Also, from one of my favorite cognitive scientist, Daniel Willingham about Alfie Kohn. Which also leads to a rebuttal from the great Kohn himself.
http://blogs.britannica.com/2009/02/alfie-kohn-is-bad-for-you-and-dangerous-for-your-children/
Lastly, for the math ed nerds, Willingham has his own blog which he tackles science and education. Here's a post about "computational competence doesn't guarantee conceptual understanding of math". Duh.
http://www.danielwillingham.com/daniel-willingham-science-and-education-blog/archives/03-2015
nightshift
You wrote:
"What's the short term high school capacity fix? Does anyone have a feeling for what the district will do with north end students in the next few years?"
Flip was asked about this at the BTAIV meeting at Hale. He mentioned that Roosevelt and Ballard had small lot sizes and had no room for portables, though he mentioned "carving out space" at Ballard for classrooms. He also mentioned the (double) portable added to Hale this year.
When asked about a high school for Queen Anne and Magnolia, he said there was none, because the district sold it.
So, in answer to your question, my best guess is that they will be placing a ton of portables at Hale and Ingraham.
- North-end Mom
I was wondering that, too. Last I heard, the City wanted to make it into a park.
- North-end Mom
I will ask the Board if they might consider telling the City the dire need for space and portables there. It's not like the City has the money for a park (and our neighborhood, admittedly, does have parks).
Good thought.
There are going to be a lot of upset parents in the north end when this is brought to the board.
So staff have to deal with possible changes to bell times, increased instructional hours, increased credits required for graduation and redrawing high school boundaries in the north end. Ignoring the lack of transparency, are they capable of handling all of that at once?
Were there some more palatable options out there that we've forgotten about???
HIMSmom
I can't figure out what vision AL has for gifted ed in SPS. They seem to be moving away from self-contained classes, and allowing single-subject advancement (students on an accelerated math pathway can take science on an accelerated pathway, even if they aren't identified as HCC, and Spectrum students are being placed in HCC LA/SS classes, but it seems more out of convenience than part of a planned delivery model). Unfortunately, many middle school HCC classes aren't taught at the level of challenge you'd expect for students testing at the 98%ile. At the same time they are increasing access, they are eliminating challenge. Some students that may not have tested into AL programs may see some incremental improvement, but what about the students that the program is supposed to serve?
-vision?
Growth is not happening at just Ballard and Roosevelt.
Elementary and middle school enrollment in the Hale attendance area has been growing like crazy. More portables will be needed at Hale to deal with growth happening within the Hale boundaries.
Likewise, Ingraham has been growing by leaps and bounds since IBX.
Redrawing boundaries to funnel more kids into schools that are already experiencing growth does not seem like a sound way of dealing with the problem.
I like the idea of using the Sisley properties for Roosevelt. Too bad there aren't condemned properties surrounding Ballard, as well!
- North-end Mom
The spectacular lack of planning and foresight is showing. Again.
Facilities Planning?
WG
I'm not against using portables to solve the problem. I'm pointing out that the solutions I've seen suggested seem unworkable. I don't think north end parents are going to be happy with split shifts, year-round schedules, moving the high school boundaries twice, moving high school students to Lincoln after they've started at another school or starting Lincoln as a roll-up.
Has anyone heard an updated completion date for the schools at Wilson Pacific? There had been some discussion by staff of opening Lincoln in stages as the necessary work on the building is completed.
Three, this model is expensive, so not very feasible. From another article:
Potter acknowledges that the Renzulli approach — the differentiated classroom — may not be not easy to pull off. At the very least, she says, to do it properly teachers would need more resources and probably smaller class sizes.
But where resources are scarce, skeptics argue, teachers will have to make choices about how to spend their time and gifted kids will be left to drift.
(http://national.deseretnews.com/article/1724/all-the-children-are-above-average-should-schools-separate-gifted-students.html)
And four--where are the actual data that show this model is effective?
HIMSmom
There is so much debate because there are lots of little things (band-aids) that can help but none of them fix it.
Redrawing boundaries provides little or no relief. The Ingraham boundary is already very close to Ballard and the Hale boundary is already very close to Roosevelt. Unless we are considering making the boundaries just a few blocks from those schools there are no reasonable boundary fixes.
Ingraham is going to get portables and lots of them. Probably up to about 400 seats in portables. Hale will also get a lot of portables.
We have multiple problems and they need separate fixes.
*the geographic gap in the assignment plan that is QA/Mag.
* additional capacity for all the projected growth
* additional capacity for all the growth that is greater than the projections.
IMHO, the simplest way to look at this is that we have cohort sizes in elementary of about 5,000 students. That seems to be a natural set point. If that set point rolls up, then we are looking at needing capacity for 15,000 middle school students and 20,000 high school students. We have no where close to that.
Blaine might make a better high school than McClure, based on the fields there. However, Magnolia is much harder to access by transit. A new comprehensive high school at Memorial stadium could attract students from more locations.
It might make more sense to start from scratch rather than trying to rebuild Blaine into a high school.
S parent
According to the March BEXIV master schedule from the Friday Memo, the Wilson-Pacific projects are on-time for occupancy in July 2017 (with June for move-in).
For Lincoln HS:
Pre-design: Begins Jan 2016
Design/permitting: Begins July 2016
Bidding: Begins Jan 2018
Construction: Begins April 2018
What is happening at the Lincoln building between July 2017 and the beginning of construction in April 2018???
- North-end Mom
I asked about Blaine being a high school at the BTA IV meeting. No go, not big enough lot for their ed specs.
Unfortunately, the district does not have the cash to demo it and build something much more efficient on the same site.
northwesterner
I wonder if it's time to ditch the neighborhood assignment plan for HSs in the north end? Or maybe just make a real commitment to offering a large percentage of choice seats. Then the north end schools could all be free to differentiate and draw students to them who want to be there and the District wouldn't have to draw boundaries for BHS and RHS that don't actually contain those schools.
The problem I see is that you can't really open that choice to students from the rest of the city because the system can't support a net inflow from parts of the city that don't have a capacity crisis. That is probably enough to kill the possibility.
It's just like here, a program started in order to slow white flight to private schools, turns into a contest to test kids into what parents perceive to be a less disruptive and more rigorous and ultimately more advantageous pathway.Parents are consumed with acceleration at the expense of mastery, they dream of exclusivity while attending a public school, forgetting about the rest of the district that doesn't have the built-in advantage of educated parents and frequently a non-working parent.
HCC parents are so quick to hate on anybody who suggests that there is a better way to serve their kids at the same time serving non-HCC students better. There are kids in HCC who would benefit greatly from a less restrictive and homogeneous environment, lots of them. Excessive self-esteem is as harmful as too little, and being with only your intellectual peers, or being told that who you are in class with are the "gifted", is not always a good thing. Less gifted students have much to offer and I don't think instilling the notion that only the HCC and similar students are going to run the world is either factual or positive.
So, react angrily if you must, Charlie can be you guide, but reasonable, I repeat, reasonable people can discuss gifted education and try to find new methods that do a better job of educating the children all along the spectrum of "intelligence".
OD
Wow, very pompous and naive perspective, OD. Peppered liberally with some shocking assumptions that HCC kids are going to run the world, and less gifted kids have less to offer. Blech.
-YouNeedaTherapist
Who are these HCC students who would benefit from being in blended general ed/HCC classrooms and how exactly would they benefit?
If you want to have a discussion, we need to start with the same facts. What data leads you to your conclusions?
Your post is so bloated with the typical anti-gifted myths and bigotry, I have little hope of changing your mind on the subject. "Run the world?" So typical.
You aren't convincing me of anything with your arguments. You're only reminding me of what I already went through and what a failed and miserable pathway it was for my kid.
The runaway growth in HCC was caused by the dismantling of self-contained Spectrum. Obviously the clustering method was not popular with families who fled to APP the year after cluster-grouping was implemented at several Spectrum schools.
Self-contained Spectrum had it's own issues, the worst of which were perpetual waitlists that denied kids access. That shouldn't have happened, and went on way too long, but it wasn't the delivery model, but the lack of space that doomed it - like it could doom a lot of other stuff, despite it's efficacy or the demand for it.
And I won't even bother with the ghost-like, mythical ALO's, which were supposed to answer your very question of why can't single subject or all kids get rigor? That was SPS's version of "differentiation" folks! So, yes, it's already been tried and how would you grade it? Think about it, OD, because that is what you're advocating for.
WSDWG
How did you get this out of a capacity management problem that is everywhere in the district? (And you know that in the AL programs it's acceleration over mastery how?)
I still wonder why the teen center is still in Hale. Why it didn't move to the community center. Why isn't it being turned into classrooms?
HP
Once again, the mythical *runaway* growth in HC has to do with overall enrollment growth and the creation of NEW programs that rely on HC identification and the need to attract students to the NEW program.
Unfortunately, debating about the philosophical nature of gifted education, the nature of rigor and equity and choice seats vs assignment seats, simply misses the point that every MAJOR advanced learning decision has been dictated by capacity.
* Your school is UNDER-enrolled. Excellent, we will declare you a Spectrum school so families will have a reason to choose you and help balance capacity.
* Your school is now adequately enrolled. Excellent, we will declare you a self-contained Spectrum school and make a nice wait list so other students can't attend.
* Your school is OVER-enrolled. Excellent, you are now a cluster model school and students will be distributed evenly.
* ALL the schools in your area are OVER-enrolled. Excellent, we will place an Accelerated Program or Highly Capable program in your area, that is intended to load balance the entire area by being attractive enough to entice families to leave their neighborhood school. We will also incentivize the area schools to have everyone tested so that the greatest number of families can feel empowered to take a risk on a different school.
The GROWTH is HC is the capacity management plan. NE schools would have imploded were it not for the active identification of students to volunteer to leave the cluster. Fairmont Park should have been the home for the STEM school or a neighborhood school in West Seattle. But no, the over-crowding was severe enough that an attractive option had to be created.
Momof2
I was saying how sad it is that the district so cynically uses parents, teachers and students to manipulate capacity. The whole argument regarding Al delivery is moot if that's what the program is now really is in place to manage numbers. It throws Stephen Martin and Roger Daniels in the AL dept in the unenviable role as complicate in this charade of "service". Puppet-masters is what manipulators are called. One would like to believe they care more about the students than Kellie seems to think they do.Are kids really just widgets to move around?
It really saddens me to think so.
Concerned Person
You have touched on the the heart of almost every debate about public education. What is the distinction between an education and education services???
Most everyone I know that has done advocacy work does it because they believe in education and want to support the vast majority of educators in this district. I say educators rather than teachers because we all know how much education *support staff* can and do provide. I say vast majority because it is exceptionally typical to work with people who work very long hours to provide an education to our children.
I don't know Stephen Martin but I have worked with Roger Daniels over many years and he is a true educator.
That said ask any family that has been on the receiving side of a capacity management decision whether not, the experience is that of widget and you will get a yes. Ask a sped family that was picked up and moved from one school to another and told "don't worry all the services you need will be at the new school. don't worry if you child has friends and is thriving, they will make new friends"
POLICY is all about education services treats students like widgets.
You need capacity to provide an education. School capacity has a natural threshold of 95% efficiency because the dear little widgets don't come in nice tidy efficient little packages. Capacity problems are inconvenient by their nature as a capacity problem is typically that you have too-much or too-little in a certain location. As such, students have been picked up and moved around to solve capacity issues for as long as I have been working on this issue.
By my estimation, the district is running at about 120% capacity which means that surge capacity is up and running at almost every school.
* It was only possible to close TT Minor by splitting Lowell.
* It was only possible to close Meany by splitting APP between Washington and Hamilton
http://www.seattleschools.org/modules/groups/homepagefiles/cms/1583136/File/Section9.pdf?sessionid=9d4bfad026b9b8ac385971e8ee977f37
I found some information on dual enrollment (in high school & college-level classes) at Garfield on the School Report Card.
Last year only 19 highly capable students were enrolled in running start classes.
There is a tremendous amount of ambiguity on the running start reporting. The students are counted in a different ways for different reports. Meg and I spent quite a bit of time on this last fall and in all honestly, I still don't fully follow the logic/accounting
For this school year, there are 55 students reported as running start. My understanding is that number of 55 students is removed from the overall enrollment at Garfield and therefore represents a full time equivalent as part time running start students are all combined into one estimated whole number.
This is why Garfield thought their enrollment was one number and the budget folks thought it was a different number. There are a number of students who are on the official enrollment for Garfield for services but not counted in the budget or capacity reporting.
The jump from 19 to 55, may only look like 36 students. However, because those 55 students do NOT appear anywhere in the capacity reports, it is impossible to accurately track the impact of running start on high school capacity management.
Also the 55 represents a 3x increase over the prior year. That type of doubling and tripling of a handful of numbers is what happens right before there is a hockey stick increase in enrollment.
Parents were very aware of the enrollment increases at elementary because we knew that the increases in Kindergarten were the sign. It took years before the district could see the impact of those K students rolling up.
When capacity management gets to these razor thin margins, the pressure on everyone begins to intensify.