October Enrollment Numbers
Seattle Schools, like other Washington state school districts, has to deliver an October 1st student count to OSPI for funding. I have been hearing from several schools, especially elementaries, that they get their schools geared up with services only to suddenly see a loss of students because of some kind of change/switch that the district does so that students leave their schools. Apparently this has happened to some schools last year and it appears it will happen again this year.
Naturally, if you are planning around X number of students and 25+ leave, you'll lose a teacher or other staff. That throws the entire school budget off.
For example, this is an issue at Sand Point Elementary where they have a large number of ELL students - some immigrant but some from UW grad students from foreign countries. When OSPI put forth a directive this summer to SPS about their ELL services, SPS had to scramble to provide ELL services at all neighborhood schools. That meant moving students from one school to another.
Naturally, for programs like ELL, Special Ed and Highly Capable, it would be a great thing to have kids attend their closest school AND get the services they need. But the true fact of the matter is that, at any given school, having a critical mass of kids who need those services. It lowers the cost tremendously for the district.
I heard about this issue this weekend at Rep. Gerry Pollet's community meeting. He pointed out that SPS is in a bind.
On the one hand, if you put a program at one school in order to meet a critical mass of students for one kind of service, they may not be in their neighborhood school (and all the benefits of that association.)
On the other hand, if you move all these students to their neighborhood schools, you do two things. One, you take a child who may be happy at their school out of that school. Two, SPS could still find itself out of compliance with OSPI (the original issue to start with) if they can't supply the services the student needs at the new school.
Is this happening at your school?
Naturally, if you are planning around X number of students and 25+ leave, you'll lose a teacher or other staff. That throws the entire school budget off.
For example, this is an issue at Sand Point Elementary where they have a large number of ELL students - some immigrant but some from UW grad students from foreign countries. When OSPI put forth a directive this summer to SPS about their ELL services, SPS had to scramble to provide ELL services at all neighborhood schools. That meant moving students from one school to another.
Naturally, for programs like ELL, Special Ed and Highly Capable, it would be a great thing to have kids attend their closest school AND get the services they need. But the true fact of the matter is that, at any given school, having a critical mass of kids who need those services. It lowers the cost tremendously for the district.
I heard about this issue this weekend at Rep. Gerry Pollet's community meeting. He pointed out that SPS is in a bind.
On the one hand, if you put a program at one school in order to meet a critical mass of students for one kind of service, they may not be in their neighborhood school (and all the benefits of that association.)
On the other hand, if you move all these students to their neighborhood schools, you do two things. One, you take a child who may be happy at their school out of that school. Two, SPS could still find itself out of compliance with OSPI (the original issue to start with) if they can't supply the services the student needs at the new school.
Is this happening at your school?
Comments
HF
Parents are blaming local school staff when the problem is downtown. As support staff we are sick of this issue. At least I am. There is a suspicion among families that not moving the wait list is a way for JSCEE to keep personnel costs lower at certain schools or to keep a leash on principals who are unpopular downtown. At the local level I am starting to believe conspiracy theories. If students are on a wait list but JSCEE holds the list for weeks, then students get settled in to one school or have gone private and JSCEE doesn't have to deal with paperwork or neighborhood school funding changes. Then our schools with long wait lists bear the consequences. And frontline gets to handle upheaval. Thank you JSCEE.
Frontline
SavvyVoter
Frontline is right about bringing in the waitlist issue. I truly don't know what the directive is from Central but I know it seems that they hold waitlists a very short amount of time and sometimes schools take their own initiative. I think it's probably true that the district wants the fewest numbers moving on their own.
Are you sure kids are getting yanked out of schools and sent to other schools? Wouldn't they be grandfathered at their current school if that school continued to have ELL services? Are they losing assignments, transportation, or both?
I was under the impression that kindergartners and new students would be affected by the change in how ELL is accommodated. I didn't realize that students already at a school would be forced to change schools. That is a lot of disruption!
A lot of these kids have already gone through at least two different schools due to their ELL status, since some are assigned to Elementary Bilingual Orientation Centers first, before they are assigned to a school providing ELL services (technically now this is supposed to be at their neighborhood school). ELL staff develop relationships with the kids. It would seem extremely counterproductive to make these kids switch schools again!
As for ELL staffing...if I remember correctly, under last year's staffing formula, a school had to have something like 70 ELL kids enrolled to qualify for an ELL teacher. Do you know if there have been any strategies put in place to deal with smaller cohorts of ELL students that may result from the recent change in ELL assignments?
- North-end Mom
The other big group of kids that seems to prefer Hale, are the Salmon Bay graduates who are assigned to Ingraham or Ballard for the most part.
HP
I haven't heard what the district's strategy is on ELL services.
North School
Of course this state of affairs continues for the time being for special education students. The Special Education Task Force came up with a compromise that did provide for some clustering of programs. This wasn't done to make things easy for people downtown, but for all the right reasons - to provide sufficient staffing to support students who would spend their whole day in self-contained rooms (because that's easy) to access general education courses, rigor, and enrichment with peers.
We've heard reports that there is some game-playing going on before the ink on the CBA is dry. IAs are being moved around and teachers are being over-loaded. X number students increase to Y, meanwhile low enrolled programs in some schools may just go away and the kids shipped off.
The ELL (and SpEd) reforms are to comply with Federal law. Will SPS follow through?
You'd just be pushing the problem down to the middle school level. Fifth graders want to go to middle school with their friends too. I think the transition to middle school is hard enough without doing it on your own.
The high school waitlists are odd. Are they really frozen unless two kids at the top of the lists want to switch places?
Again, it's our 2nd year in a row, and is extremely detrimental to our school. It is simply wrong that the District removes teachers in October, rather than accurately forecasting or (for example) simply sticking with forecasts and adjusting the following year. This yearly process destabilizes schools, angers parents, and impacts kids. It has to stop.
I am very interested to learn which other schools in the District are hearing rumblings of this at their school (thus far I've only heard about B.F. Day and Sand Point). We should work together to daylight this annual event. And if it isn't happening this year to your school, it may next year. Even schools with higher enrollment are in danger - it is not the overall enrollment that matters, but grade-level. One year with too few kids in any grade can make you eligible for an "October surprise". Please chime in...
- Steve Albertson
President, B.F. Day PTSA President
North School
I would much prefer schools occasionally get "windfalls" of small class sizes one year in one grade than have this sword of Damocles hanging over all of us every single year. The cost savings of shuffling teachers to get just precisely to the edge of the WSS just cannot be worth the harm and disruption to students(and of course I think any extra money needed to pay for extra teachers should come from the downtown portion of the budget.).
-sleeper
In a nutshell.
HP
I disagree. I think it's much harder to go out on your own for middle school than for high school. Fourteen year olds are much more independent than eleven year olds.
QA Dad
HP
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