Growth Boundaries: More Info
Two interesting items about growth and boundaries from readers.
Kellie LaRue's e-mail to the Board:
Next September 2017, the Lincoln cohort starts high school. That is why parents are beginning to flip out. The kids that start next school in 2017 are the kids that will be split in some way. In a perfect world, they would have addressed that change for 2017, but they missed it.
From Reader47:
From Not sure what exactly these tell you, but there's an interesting series of maps on the SPS site, dated in Late Sept 2016, detailing where both "eligible" and "enrolled" HCC students live - the maps included are:
Elementary School Highly Capable Cohort Pathway
Middle School Highly Capable Cohort Pathway
High School Highly Capable Cohort Pathway
Advanced Learning Opportunities for Grades 1-5
Where Spectrum Eligible Students in Grades 1-5 Live
Where Spectrum Enrolled Students in Grades 1-5 Live
Where Spectrum Eligible Students in Grades 6-8 Live
Where Spectrum Enrolled Students in Grades 6-8 Live
Where HCC Eligible Students in Grades 1-5 Live
Where HCC Enrolled Students in Grades 1-5 Live
Where HCC Eligible Students in Grades 6-8 Live
Where HCC Enrolled Students in Grades 6-8 Live
Where HCC Eligible Students in Grades 9-12 Live
Where HCC Enrolled Students in Grades 9-12 Live
And all can be found on this page under Enrollment Planning - HCC maps listed above are at bottom of page
Maps
There's also this data set from 2015 that gives HCC enrollment in various breakout charts
Highly Capable Cohort
Kellie LaRue's e-mail to the Board:
Dear Directors,
The current intention is to establish boundaries for Lincoln during the process for the 2019 Growth Boundaries. I
strongly urge the board, during the implementation for the 2017
boundaries to establish the boundaries for Lincoln as part the 2018
Growth Boundaries (or sooner).
Bottom Line
There are many reasons for this but the simple reason is
that the students who will be geo-split to create the new Lincoln,
deserve to know this information at the time they enroll in high school,
so that they and their families can make critical decisions. This
becomes even more complex with the implementation of Core 24.
Geo-Split Students
The current plan has at least two grades and likely three
grades to be geo-split from their high schools when Lincoln opens in
2019. This means that the 2019 boundaries will directly impact the
incoming classes of 2019, 2018 and 2017.
At the moment, the opportunity for informing the entering
class of 2017 before high school has most likely be lost, unless the
concludes by Spring of 2017. However, there is still the opportunity to
have boundaries in place for the entering class of 2018.
Hiring the Lincoln Principal
Opening a NEW COMPREHENSIVE high school, with 2-3 grades
under Core 24 is the most COMPLEX capacity endeavor SPS has undertaken
in decades. It is critical that the planning for this starts
immediately.
There will be significant migration needs to honor core 24
with students geo-split from multiple programs. The sooner the planning
for the master schedule happens, the less expensive it is likely to be
in mitigation money.
The Lincoln principal is going to need time to organize
all of the various departments and hire "planning department heads."
While this could be done quickly at middle school because of the
relative simplicity of the middle school department structure, this is
much more complex for high school. For example, it is most probably that
students would be geo-split from the HCC, the ballard Bio-tech program,
the Roosevelt drama program, etc. This makes for a very complex puzzle with the very high stakes of college and career readiness.
Dr. Jill Hudson has been given time to help “consult” with
the design process for the Lincoln building. However, has made it clear
that she is not the person who is working on the instructional design.
Families have questions now and the hiring of the long term principal
for Lincoln is critical. In a perfect world, that person would have
started already but … the hiring process can start now.
Next September 2017, the Lincoln cohort starts high school. That is why parents are beginning to flip out. The kids that start next school in 2017 are the kids that will be split in some way. In a perfect world, they would have addressed that change for 2017, but they missed it.
From Reader47:
From Not sure what exactly these tell you, but there's an interesting series of maps on the SPS site, dated in Late Sept 2016, detailing where both "eligible" and "enrolled" HCC students live - the maps included are:
Elementary School Highly Capable Cohort Pathway
Middle School Highly Capable Cohort Pathway
High School Highly Capable Cohort Pathway
Advanced Learning Opportunities for Grades 1-5
Where Spectrum Eligible Students in Grades 1-5 Live
Where Spectrum Enrolled Students in Grades 1-5 Live
Where Spectrum Eligible Students in Grades 6-8 Live
Where Spectrum Enrolled Students in Grades 6-8 Live
Where HCC Eligible Students in Grades 1-5 Live
Where HCC Enrolled Students in Grades 1-5 Live
Where HCC Eligible Students in Grades 6-8 Live
Where HCC Enrolled Students in Grades 6-8 Live
Where HCC Eligible Students in Grades 9-12 Live
Where HCC Enrolled Students in Grades 9-12 Live
And all can be found on this page under Enrollment Planning - HCC maps listed above are at bottom of page
Maps
There's also this data set from 2015 that gives HCC enrollment in various breakout charts
Highly Capable Cohort
Comments
gooseorgander
Where Seattle Public Schools Students (Grades K-12) Live
Where English Language Learner Students Live
ELL Grades K-5
ELL Grades 6-8
ELL Grades 9-12
Where Special Education Students Live
SpEd SM1g Grades K-5
SpEd Access Grades K-5
SpEd Access Grades 6-8
SpEd SM2 Grades K-5
SpEd SM2 Grades 6-8
SpEd SM2 Grades 9-12
SpEd SM3 Grades K-5
SpEd SM3 Grades 6-8
SpEd SM3 Grades 9-12
SpEd SM4 Grades K-5
SpEd SM4 Grades 6-8
SpEd SM4 Grades 9-12
reader47
L&E mom
Number Bondsforever
-KH
Bait nSwitch
I have the same fear. With a freshman at Ballard right now, I am already stressing about what happens if they try to move seniors to Lincoln their last year. Given SPS history, anything is possible.
QA parent
Projection Oopsie?
http://www.seattleschools.org/UserFiles/Servers/Server_543/File/District/Departments/Capital%20Projects%20and%20Planning/Capacity/task_force_meetings/MiddleSchoolChangeAreaCounts_10.4.2016.pdf
KT
In the absence of official boundaries, that is a reasonable way to approximate, because it is simply shifting kids between Ballard/Lincoln/Roosevelt as a placeholder for total enrollment.
However, as Lincoln was open concurrent with Queen Anne High School and QAHS is long gone ... it would make a lot more sense to use the historic QAHS boundaries plus the Hamilton Service area to have a more realistic approximation.
And as the future Lincoln cohort is starting school next year, it is probably time to update the high school numbers to reflect that reality.
I would suspect that question #1 from families is going to be about how many grades will be included when Lincoln opens. A lot will depend on how Ballard and Roosevelt are doing in 2019. That said, it seems that people are only talking about geo-splitting 2 or 3 grades, not 4.
IMHO, because of the Running Start option and the complexity of graduation requirements, I don't think it makes sense to try to geo-split either Juniors or Seniors. The master schedule will be very complex for the first year of a new school. It is simply too high stakes to try to get seniors what they need to graduate in a schedule that will already been cumbersome and require significant mitigation.
Whitman/Hamilton/Eagle Staff mom
However, in the 2015 projections they list about 350 HCC students leaving Hamilton for Eaglestaff and that number represents HCC for both Whitman and Eaglestaff.
Area 11 and Area 84 are also missing from the geosplit. Area 11 is a part of Bagley and Area 84 is a part of Northgate. These areas were amended. Area 84 was Whitman to JAMS and is now Whitman to Eaglestaff. Area 11 was Whitman to Hamilton and is now Whitman to Eaglestaff. So my best guess is that there is probably another 40 students who will be split from Whitman to Eaglestaff.
How is that for promised pathways? It really feels like "take what you get and don't complain or you'all lose the little you get"
Not Okay
Is there a plan to move Ballard students out of Ballard high?
WTH
Of course, FTE will certainly be cut so class sizes will undoubtedly remain huge.
(Then in 2021 there will undoubtedly be a bump in Ballard attendees back to 1800+- so there will be a mad scramble to hire FTE October 2nd, 2021...)
Melissa- Thank you for attending meeting today. With the exception of Rick, I am guessing the board may not be aware of the issue.
-NW HCC parent
However, the document can not be trusted because they say in the planning assumptions that that are not actually projecting Lincoln, only estimating.
What's the difference ... The estimate is just pulling students from the old assignment area and as such is taking the largest percentage of students from Roosevelt and only a small percentage from Ballard. However when the boundaries actually are projected, then Lincoln will be taking more than 50% of Ballard area and only a small part of Roosevelt. Lincoln is expected to take 100% of QA/Mag plus Wallingford in order to make a geographically continuous boundary.
That is one of the many reasons why high school boundaries need to be worked out sooner rather than later.
The Ballard attendance area will be effectively split in half. Approximately half will go to Lincoln. This will create fair bit of empty space at Ballard.
Most likely the North Ballard area will lobby to get back into Ballard as they are in the walking distance to Ballard. This would then open up more IB seats at Ingraham. But could also result in a geo-split between Ingraham and Ballard.
The Roosevelt area will only be reduced by Wallingford. Since Roosevelt is equally over-crowded, the next most likely change will cause part of Roosevelt to be reassigned to Ballard. This will most likely include students East of I5 and North of either 45th or 50th.
The area that comprises QA, Magnolia and Wallingford would not be large enough to fill the school so that most likely means that there would be space to take some of the HCC kids from Garfield to fill out Lincoln. I don't even have a best guess on what that would look like.
The geo-splitting of high school student could easily apply to the following
* Ballard to Lincoln
* Roosevelt to Lincoln
* Roosevelt to Ballard
* Ingraham to Ballard
* Garfield to Lincoln
The boundaries needs to be worked out asap because this will impact the graduation pathways and the master schedules for 1,000s of students.
This is because high school is the Master Schedule. The master schedule determines everything and there will be massive changes to the Master Schedules at Roosevelt, Ballard and Garfield when Lincoln opens.
When Lincoln opens, in order to alleviate the crowding, teachers will also move from other high schools to Lincoln. This means that there will be staff reductions at Roosevelt, Ballard and Garfield to correspond with the reduction in students. The staffing reduction means that options on the master schedule go away.
What will those change be? Nobody knows and nobody can even being to project until the boundaries and the Master Schedule for Lincoln is created.
It is unlikely that Ingraham staffing will be reduced because the expansion for Ingraham is also scheduled for 2019. But that will also be a big change at Ingraham as it is very possible the IB will become more than 50% of the school and that take a lot of planning and potentially money.
- open to all but take no testimony or questions from the audience (I occasionally will go up to a Board member and slip them a question but that is rare and I'm not sure they like it)
- are usually an overly long PowerPoint that staff presents. Sometimes they break up sections with questions but Board members rarely have enough time to ask questions.
- One thing you could do today is email Board members (or the entire Board) with your questions.
- Yes, I will be writing up a report.
WTH
Re Garfield - Are you saying that some HCC students who live in the Lincoln zone will choose to go to Lincoln, or are you saying that the District will force an HCC geo-split with a new HCC program at Lincoln?
Wondering
I am stating the simple fact that because of Lincoln's geographic location, it is NOT possible to fill the school with ONLY attendance area students. My estimate is that QA/Mag plus Wallingford is about 800-1000 High Schools general education (not HCC) students. That means there is space for non-attendace area students at Lincoln.
I am also stating the simple fact that Garfield is crowded and expected to grow.
When you put those two facts together ... and you follow the history of how spliting HCC seems to be a recreational sport downtown ....
If Kelly predicts mayhem and chaos in the redistricting (upon opening of Lincoln) of the high schools, their feeder schools, HCC, their Master Schedules...then there WILL be chaos.
Wow. Yikes.
And kellie, couldn't the Lincoln boundary always be drawn a bit larger than the QA/Mag/Wallingford area? It could expand a bit toward both the Roosevelt and Ballard boundaries to pick up the additional bodies Lincoln needs and alleviate the additional pressure placed on Roosevelt and Ballard by those returning HCC students.
HF
You raise two good points.
1) HCC pathways. That is a mess. And because it is a mess, the conversation just needs to start.
2) Larger boundaries. My estimate is just an estimate but I highly doubt they can draw larger boundaries.
Even if they could draw larger boundaries, it doesn't change the math. Because if you make the attendance area bigger, then you are just pulling more students from Ballard and create an even bigger need to backfill Ballard.
Drawing the minimum size boundary will remove 50% of the students at Ballard. If you draw the maximum boundary and go almost all the way to Ballard itself, then you are removing almost 75% of the Ballard students. That is moving so may students, that a backfill is going to be necessary.
If you draw the boundary all the way to Roosevelt, then you simply are swapping student from Roosevelt - Ballard to Roosevelt - Lincoln. In either case, those students are moved somewhere.
That is the part of the math that makes this messy. There is a whole swath of students who will be moved in the Ballard-Lincoln-Roosevelt triangle. The only question becomes which students, move where.
I feel like the institutional memory on these topic and I am so grateful that this blog is such a powerful way to connect people to basic facts.
2019 seems a long way away and it would be very easy to think that opening Lincoln is somebody else's problem. But because capacity is all interconnected, it quickly becomes a problem for everyone.
Here is the map to the high school boundaries.
https://www.seattleschools.org/UserFiles/Servers/Server_543/File/District/Departments/Enrollment%20Planning/Maps/nextyearboundarymaps/pdfs/SD_HS.pdf
I don't get why they didn't start thinking about boundaries for high schools way back when someone decide to bring Lincoln back online as a High School - but then, that's just not the SPS way is it? Why plan when you can panic at almost the last minute and cause totally unnecessary chaos? Sigh... sometimes I'm just not sure if the powers that be at SPS are...well...utterly dense or Machiavellian-ly evil. Flip a coin. Either way some kid loses.
reader47
Magnolia is much closer in proximity to Ballard than it is to any other high school.