Latest District Answers to School Boundary Questions
FAQ: Growth Boundaries
This on high schools:
This on high schools:
We will begin discussions of high school boundaries in 2018. No additional high school capacity will be added until the renovation of the Lincoln Building is complete. The estimated date for Lincoln to open as a high school is 2019. High school attendance area boundaries will need adjustment in order to assign students to the renovated Lincoln High School when it opens.I'm wondering if they can really hold off discussion of this topic until 2018.
Comments
The only thing that could be useful to have as a discussion item is whether Lincoln will be geo-split or roll-up. Even that would get pretty well muddied up by discussing early, since both ways to decide that have pretty significant drawbacks.
I'm sure other people have other opinions, though. :)
Also, a brand new school is just not the same as a school with established programs. The "planning process" for the new school needs involve volunteers and the creation of a PTA board. When that has to be done in just a few months, the first year of the new school is, at best, challenging. Ask the people who got JAMS up and running -- missing textbooks at the beginning of the year, no locks for the lockers, no coaches for some sports, little music equipment....
Time is important for creating a community.
Scars
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_High_School_%28Seattle%29
http://lincolnhighlynx.org/
"Current planning includes the reduction in size of the auditorium to allow for spaces to prepare for theater productions. Another possibility presented involved a playing field on the west side of the northern black top. Discussions about parking ensued. The outdoor spaces between the main building and the big gym and auditorium building will be designed for outdoor eating and learning (not a smoking area!) and "sunny" places to enjoy the outdoors (You know, on those two days during the school year...). The results of the Design Advisory Team will be presented at the All Classes Luncheon on June 18."
Will Lincoln be a roll-up, and if so, which grade levels will be pulled from their current high school to help open Lincoln (e.g., 9th and 10th only, 9th-11th)? Will students only be pulled from more traditional neighborhood high schools like Ballard or Roosevelt, or would they also be pulled from Nathan Hale, Ingraham and/or Garfield? If a student started the Ingraham IBX program in 10th grade, are they guaranteed the option to remain there and finish it out in 11th, even if other 11th graders are relocated to Lincoln? What about if they've been doing the pre-IB work in 9th-10th, and were planning to start the IB program in 11th?
What about language immersion students who choose Ingraham for the advanced language offerings?
Or how about students who selected Ballard or Roosevelt for their more advanced math options? Hamilton, for example, has a lot of 6th graders taking Algebra I, which puts those kids on track to take AP Calculus BC as 11th graders. Would Lincoln really be in a position to offer that class it's first year, if it didn't also have a bunch of seniors?
When students make their high school selection, they do so with a particular path in mind. HCC students, for example, will be asked to choose between two very distinct pathways (AP vs. IB/IBX)--and these pathways are NOT easily transferable should students be forced to move in the midst of their studies. While fine-tuning the boundaries may have to wait until closer to Lincoln's opening, families need clear information about who will be impacted by the Lincoln roll-up much, much sooner--by January 2017.
ECC
ECC
"Also, a brand new school is just not the same as a school with established programs. The 'planning process' for the new school needs involve volunteers and the creation of a PTA board."
More importantly, planning should involve the Building Leadership Team, as mandated by board policy and by Collective Bargaining Agreement. See other thread for discussion on these, but parents (including those not in PTSA, perhaps)should first and foremost involve themselves on BLT. This is the planning committee for the school. PTSA is adjunct.
http://www.seattleschools.org/UserFiles/Servers/Server_543/File/District/Departments/Records%20and%20Archives/Building%20for%20Learning/lincoln.pdf
And to chime in about whether it makes sense to discuss HS early, I understand Eric B's point, and I get why the district wants to solve Problem A before moving on to Problem B. But...
The Garfield capacity issue alone will force their hand before 2018. Those deck chairs either have to be rearranged or stacked on top of each other. You can bet there will be a "discussion" that comes along with that.
For the families wondering with each passing year if their 8th graders will graduate from the same HS they start in, this is happening now, not 2018. So whether the district likes it or not, there's going to be discussion. They can say they have no answers, but our questions and concerns are not going to take a two-year break.
good fit
School director Rick Burke has indicated his willingness to contemplate a grandfathering for 11th and 12th graders. I think this is most appropriate.
And I also think people are going to be making defensive enrollment decisions until this is decided, probably messing with the district's projections (I don't know why they so thoroughly fail to understand that parents will change actions based on district decisions, that we aren't just pure sheep, easily herded from one pen to another). To be honest I am surprised as many HCC kids went to Garfield as did this year, and I can't imagine they will next or the year after. Good for overcrowded Garfield, but the places they'd choose instead can't handle them either...
-sleeper
HP
My assumption is that the district may do away with the guaranteed spots at Garfield for HCC students, since that is driving a lot of the problem, except that I'm not sure where else they could send those students instead. They could shrink the attendance area by pulling the southern boundary really close to the school, but I have no idea if that would resolve the problem. And in that case they would probably need to move the boundaries for Franklin as well and enlarge the Rainier beach area, so it would affect a LOT of people, many of whom I suspect would not be happy about the change. Moving the northern boundary seems less likely as the schools to the north are equally crowded (although from our house one can get to Roosevelt by bus in 15 minutes, while the trip to Garfield is 45-50 minutes with transfer downtown, so it would be fine with me if they moved the northern boundary).
This is one of the reasons I am really telling my kids to plan on Running start, but I expect that program will be bursting at the seams as well in another 4 years, and of course it won't help during 9th & 10th grade at all.
Mom of 4
Maybe "focus" is the wrong word? I didn't mean something like whether it would be an arts school or a STEM school--I was referring to the need to determine the programs and curriculum of the new school. Will it be a regular neighborhood school, or it will it also be a pathway school (e.g., for language immersion, highly capable, etc.)? Will it provide AP classes, and/or IB classes? Will it be an international school? Those are important decisions, and may have huge impacts on students who are pulled mid-stream to open Lincoln. They are also major factors in determining boundaries, since neighborhood schools are impacted by pathway schools.
As to what the district is planning, nobody knows. Notes from the 2/25 SDAT planning meeting, under "General Comments/Priorities/Themes" say "clubs and learning at heart of the new school: Robotics, STEM." Is this just a random comment? Or a direction in which the planning committee is headed?
Why wouldn't Lincoln be like Roosevelt or Franklin? My guess is it probably will be. But why wouldn't it be more like Ingraham, if people want more international ed and given the apparent recent success of IB and given it's the high school in a zone with 2 int'l elementaries and an int'l middle school? Or why wouldn't it be more like Nathan Hale, given that the current Hale principal was selected as the planning principal? (Personally, I think that's the wrong model for this school.) Or why wouldn't it be an HC pathway school, given Garfield overcrowding? Or a combo of these and others?
I guess the big question is this: does opening it as a traditional neighborhood school with your basic AP offerings meet the needs of the the north end high school capacity crunch? Is Lincoln only intended to take the pressure off traditional north end schools like Ballard and Roosevelt, or is it also supposed to help with overcrowding at Garfield and the insufficient IB/IBX capacity at Ingraham? If it's supposed to also help with those pathway schools, that likely means determining new pathways (or eliminating them altogether, which causes a whole lot of other problems), and then planning to provide the supports those pathways need.
ECC
SeeYa
I have a 5th grader who will likely have to switch middle schools when Eaglestaff opens - and I would not be surprised if he has to change high schools when Lincoln opens as a high school.
The longer SPS is silent on the issue, the more parents' anxieties are going to increase and the more dire their imaginings will become. I don't agree with waiting until 2018 to start boundary discussions, whether Lincoln will have an IB or AP focus, etc.
Jane
-shocked
ECC
-how ironic
I don't mean to pick quite so hard on you. I really do think this is a danger, and it happens every time. But I also think high school is so much more high stakes. We've got to put away the pitchforks and find a way to make it good for these kids. I am genuinely worried about what is going to happen to those 10th, 11th, and 12th graders. Colleges are not going to understand the political machinations of Seattle Public Schools (who does?), and are just going to see individual discontinuity, dropping off leadership, etc.
-sleeper
-how ironic
Whichever way they go, I hope they pump extra money in for the first two years, and place some kind of exciting program(not hcc, or if they do that doesn't "count."- that is just a hot potato. International or environmental or bio or stem) there so that people actually want to go and don't have to start a new school feeling like losers. It takes so much effort. People have to be excited about it. They can't be focused on repairing the damage done to their kids, or they won't have enough left to get it all going. Music and theater alone exhaust me to think about. And in our huge high schools you need so many different things.
-sleeper
-shocked
I understand this sounds impossibly lavish in our system, but that is why starting new schools is so awful here. Other places it is actually kind of exciting! I wish we spent a little less money on fancy buildings, and a little more on the experience of students. As it is we think of new schools getting literally nothing extra, so all we can hope for is economy of scale- as many kids as possible so we have a better random chance of some motivated parents to lead booster clubs or packets of 30 kids who want the same classes.
-sleeper
http://wwwnew.nsd.org/cms/lib08/WA01918953/Centricity/Domain/235/4th%20HS%20Grade%20Rec%20Analysis%2010_10_14_Final.pdf
-sleeper
The JAMS principal was hired about 1.5 years before the school opened. But I think the boundaries weren't decided until Jan/Feb. before the school opened. It was tough for watching those families get things going (PTA, music boosters) in such a short time. With the complexities of opening a new high school, let's hope families will know farther in advance if their child will be attending Lincoln. I can't imagine a PTA, booster groups, etc. forming in a few short months.
NW mom
I don't think what Flip says is always necessarily what happens. Many things are possible right now, and no one has secretly decided. I do think it will probably be a full geo split because the other high schools are too far over capacity to allow anything else. But I don't think it has to. Reading the analysis posted above I think they placed too much emphasis on athletics, but I do see they planned on extra staffing costs in any eventuality. I think that is the place to focus any energy we can muster.
-sleeper
-ChangesinNNE
Another curious thing to me, back east, junior highs were sometimes only 7th and 8th grade.
HP
-sleeper
All the more reason to figure this out NOW, not a year from now. If you might get pulled from an IB school and relocated to a non-IB school, maybe you'd want to choose to start at an AP-focused high school in the first place. And vice versa. But you need to know what will be available at the new school in order to guide that decision in January.
One thing that may come into play: for identified highly capable students, WAC 392-170-078 requires that "once services are started, a continuum of services shall be provided." I have a hard time seeing how pulling someone out of an IB program midstream and plopping them into an AP-type school instead would satisfy the "continuum" requirement. The same goes for access to advanced AP classes. When they pull kids from neighborhood schools, some of those kids will be HC kids who were already in advanced classes--and since the district will need to provide a continuum of services for the HC kids, that should result in greater access to advanced courses (which could benefit all).
ECC
-watching
It extends pretty far, ironically to the parking lot of Maple Leaf Lutheran, which originally was Maple Leaf elementary which was closed in the '80s...
Are there other cohorts that split like this after Middle School?
--ChangesinNNE
N by NW
@sleeper: Just make sure it doesn't cost anything. Because if it does, Lincoln will spend the rest of it's existence trying to fund raise enough money to keep it going.
Feeling cynical tonight...
"Since Lincoln doesn't open until 2019 and Ingraham doesn't open its new wing until ~2020 at least, there's nothing to change other than re-arrange the deck chairs."
I looked online & the estimated completion date for Ingraham addition to be Fall 2019, not 2020. See this SPS RFP document : https://seattleschools.org/UserFiles/Servers/Server_543/File/District/Departments/procurement/RFP02658_Const%20Mgmt%20BEX%20IV_3.21.16.pdf
-Jane
Can the high schools truly absorb all the students in these projections? Why isn't the district planning a temporary solution if not? Why aren't parents organizing to demand they work on a solution if not? Does anyone think the district has a plan but is not revealing it yet? Please share. I have not heard anything about working on a plan. Perhaps district does not feel the enrollment projection report is accurate?
According to the Oct 2015 5 year enrollment projection many high schools will be hundreds over their defined "right size capacity". My child is at a middle school that is 125 over capacity and they are completely maxed & having a hard time, all rooms scheduled at all times, 32-36 to a classroom etc. I cannot imagine the high schools being hundreds over capacity, but maybe I am missing something.
-perplexed
split shifts or extended days
-HS parent
Plan? What plan? Ingraham will be demolishing some classrooms as part of the addition, which most likely means portables. Maybe the plan is a portable city at Ingraham. What's happening to the John Marshall building once Hazel Wolf moves?
-also perplexed
Not necessarily so. If Garfield is the high school that "breaks" first, I have a feeling they'd rather just disband the HCC pathways and send incoming HC students to their neighborhood schools. That could provide a little quick relief for GHS, while spreading the overcrowding pain over several north-end high schools. The district already has a "schools will just have to deal with overcrowding for a couple years" attitude, so I'm sure they'd be happy to spread the pain for a couple years until Lincoln opens.
I've seen evidence to suggest the AL office is at least open to this idea of eliminating the pathway. Unfortunately, I haven't seen anything to support the idea that there will be a sufficient cohort size and sufficiently advanced course options available at all schools should that happen.
HIMSmom
Also, in general, what do people think about the pros/cons of going to a vastly overcrowded high school with better offerings v. an under-capacity/near-capacity high school with lesser but improving offerings? My child is set on going to Garfield, but I'm not sure what the options will end up being during open enrollment next year, and/or I'm not sure if going to such an overcrowded school is still the right call.
-SPS Mom
As we know, the District has re-defined HC as a service rather than a program, and, moreover, a service available at every school. Each school will draft their own fiction for their CSIP on how they will pretend to provide HC services. Once that's done, the district leadership will raise more questions about why we even have HCC at Garfield, they will note that there are no special classes for HCC students, and they will, essentially, argue that they have no program there and never have. This, of course, is in direct opposition to what they have been telling the public and the OSPI for decades.
The truth, the actual truth, not the official truth, is that in HCC and self-contained Spectrum the cohort is a big part of the program. The cohort has real value. Even in the schools and classrooms where the curriculum or the instruction fails to offer acceleration, depth, or breadth of content, the cohort carries enough value to make the program worthwhile. The students learn from their peers and are challenged by their peers to do more and go further. At Garfield, the classes and the instruction are no different from those available to every student, so it is the cohort alone that provides the difference. The District used to say that, at the high school level, the cohort IS the program. So, for them to break up the cohort is for them to dissolve the program.
They will claim to replace it with whatever the schools invent for the purposes of their CSIP, but whatever fantasy they spin it won't really exist and, in most cases, without a cohort it wouldn't be effective even if it did exist.
HP
Mom of 4
they were told by someone at the district. Isn't there still a capacity limit & don't they have to act if over due to fire & safety codes, class size limits etc? In support of HIMS mom's feeling, I spoke with NW director of schools Jon Halfaker at a meeting. He has a kid at Garfield and speaking about capacity stated "something had to change regarding HCC & Garfield". He said especially since "there are AP courses at every high school". I disagreed. I was told by an advanced learning rep that due to "critical mass" Garfield is the only school offering multiple sections of various AP courses to enable best scheduling. Not sure if we would reach that critical mass at the other high schools. Ingraham can't support all the north end HCC kids, neither can neighborhood high schools so that is not a solution.
-still perplexed
Split shifts would have some students in class from 6am to noon and others from noon to 6pm. (Not necessarily those specific times but something like that.) When I've read about schools that have done this in the near past, it's been the response to some kind of emergency that required renovation or repairs to a building.
There are alternative solutions we could put in place until Lincoln reopens. Ninth graders could stay at Washington. The empty seats in the Mann building could be used as a Garfield annex. This is less likely - Ted Howard has been pretty clear that he thinks the school should be reduced to about 1,500 students.
HIMSmom
-HS Parent
-MS
-just no
Keeping kids at middle school for 9th grade is likely to deny them access to higher level classes they need, as well as all sorts of club activities. Do you really think the middle schools would all add on genuine high school level classes for a year? Even now, HCC Biology in 8th grade is apparently weaker than the version provided in HS. Would all these middle schools add AP classes for kids who are ready? Honors classes? Calculus? World Language 4? High school is a chance for some kids to finally be able to access courses at the right level, but this would make that unlikely.
Plus, would they even fit? Eagle Staff might be able to retain its 8th graders for a year, but I doubt all the rest of the north end middle schools could. And adding a grade would mean even less flexibility in class configurations, so more space would be needed than the numbers suggest.
Then there's the matter of the possible new schedule for high school in 2017, in order to meet the 24-credit requirement. MS will stay on current semester schedule, but HS could move to trimesters.
Notta Fan
As for portables, that might work. Wait for the howling though when people realize they'd have to be placed on the fields.
Flip Herndon and Shauna Heath are responsible for making plans for high school capacity management. Is it coincidence that she has found another job and he's been interviewing for other positions? The whole situation will blow up this fall when the board realizes there are no seats for freshman in 2017 and kids need more opportunities to earn credits than they have in the past and each school will be choosing its own weekly late start or early release day and transportation has to make that work.
-MS
In addition, we don't even know who exactly from HIMS or Whitman will go over to Eaglestaff when it opens Fall 2017. There is still talk of grandfathering. Flip said they would not announce for certain until Spring 2017.
-MS
-sleeper
Which 9th graders are people talking about? All north end 9th graders? HCC 9th graders? Certain schools only? I'm still not clear.
Notta Fan
Which school is using John Marshall in 2017? That might be a temporary solution for north end kids whose middle school is also overcrowded.
Look - I don't have a kid who wil be affected. I'm notta fan of huge disruptive changes being disclosed at the very last minute when it's too late for community input.
Notta Fan - what do you suggest as a solution?
I was thinking Eaglestaff would have room, so those 9th graders. JAMS might if it had tons of portables, but I have run no numbers at all. I know it would be complicated. I wish I could say Hale would be a good place to access advanced learning classes, but their model doesn't really work well with most significantly advanced students from what I have heard. If I thought the other option was just crowding and tons of portables for a year at several high schools I think I would prefer that, but I am afraid that is not an actual option.
-sleeper
-MS
For 2017-18 the current assignment methods will not work for the Central and Northwest regions.
In the Central region, Garfield will be over capacity by 476 while the other secondary schools will be under-enrolled. (NOVA 173, Meany 506 and Washington 438.) One solution would be to house all ninth graders at Washington and all incoming sixth graders at Meany.
In the Northwest region, Ballard will by over capacity by 296 while Whitman will be under-enrolled by 508.
The north end students currently being sent south are those who have the greatest need for high level classes. Garfield has a critical mass of HC students, allowing for access appropriately challenging classes. One option would be to continue GHS as the HCC pathway school for 2017 and 2018, diverting non-HCC south end 9th graders to other south end schools that have capacity. This would allow all 9th graders to have a comprehensive high school experience, and access to appropriate courses. Then in 2019 when Lincoln opens and the Ingraham expansion is complete, those HCC students could return to the north end, and south end students could transfer over to Garfield to finish up if they wanted. While it's not ideal to switch high schools a year or two in, they'd be doing it in large cohorts--and there's going to be a lot of high school switching that year already.
Notta Fan
-sleeper
Logically speaking, it seems to make more sense to have high schools continue to provide high school services if there's room, rather than have a few middle schools try to figure out how to do it (when everyone knows middle school is already the weak link) even while additional high school capacity sits unused.
Politically, though, I'm sure it's a non-starter.
Notta
SES
Does RBHS offer honors LA classes? Their catalog indicates no. AP Language Arts classes? No. How about Precalculus, which is what many HC students need in 9th grade? Nope. Calculus? Again, nope. Any AP math classes at all? No. Maybe AP science? No. AP social studies? No. And not really required, but important for many HC students, Orchestra? No.
HC students have traditionally been shipped off to Garfield in order to create a critical mass to be able to offer sufficiently challenging courses. Sending 9th grade HC students to RBHS in a year would mean trying to quickly recreate a GHS type program, hiring new teachers and training them in AP courses, all for a temporary solution. Would the idea be that many of the Garfield teachers would be forced to move to RBHS instead, since they'd lose 9th grade (and then also 10th grade the next year) HC students, and thus wouldn't need as many of the more challenging classes?
How many north end kids are likely to make the trek all the way to RBHS for limited access to challenging classes? I hazard a guess: not many. They'll opt for their neighborhood school instead, since many of the north end high schools currently offer a better slate of options. Not as rich as Garfield, but close. So they'd probably opt out of the HCC pathway and stay at their already overcrowded neighborhood school, so the problem we were trying to solve would still be there.
Notta