Friday Open Thread
end of update
Let's just get some quick blog business out of the way first. Do NOT name-call here. Ever. And especially don't even think of calling any child any name. Any word that is pejorative to a child is strictly off-limits. You are adults, you know what I mean and you know better. If you don't, this is not the blog for you.
From Washington's Paramount Duty Facebook page:
Cecelia Lehmann
#specialsession Day 12, a math lesson for you.
(98 House members +49 Senate members) * $120 per diem *12 days =$211,680
Tickets for the Seattle International Film Festival are now on sale. I'll do a thorough review but here's an early one to put on the calendar.
Backpack Full of CashInteresting idea for rural/poor regions - a school bus study hall.
Matt Damon narrates this incredibly timely warning about America's public schools, which have fallen into a growing, greedy, and woefully under-regulated system of privatization that is having a heartbreaking impact on our most vulnerable children.
For some students in Berkeley County, South Carolina, going to school means a 90-minute commute each way on a yellow school bus. Now, Google is helping those kids make the best use of that time by providing free wifi and internet connections on 28 of those buses, turning each into a “Rolling Study Hall.”Great and moving story about long-time Roosevelt drama leader, Ruben Van Kempen. From the Times:
But now that he’s retired, he can’t convince the feds he belongs here at all.
“I haven’t thought of myself as an immigrant for decades,” Van Kempen told me. “Now that they’re talking about me as an alien, I do feel a little like a stranger in a strange land.”
Ever wonder about your parenting skills? Don't worry, there's this couple.“The Department of Homeland Security is unable to verify the immigrant document you submitted as evidence of your lawful alien status,” reads the letter. “Please contact us when your alien status changes, or is renewed, so you can work in the U.S.”
In other words, he’s a man without a country.
When is this coming to the U.S.? My guess? Soon.
Comments
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/05/nyregion/school-choice-new-york-city-high-school-admissions.html
- KT
No, you can’t.
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/its-fcking-racist-watch-black-teen-confront-his-white-teacher-who-insists-using-n
Students angrily confronted a white New Orleans teacher who insisted he could use the most notorious racial slur because it had been drained of its meaning through overuse.
Video recorded Thursday by students at Ben Franklin High School, recently ranked as Louisiana’s top public high school, showed the permanent substitute teacher explaining his position as students angrily and profanely challenged him, …
-McClureWatcher
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmtZR0eRFms
The pain that hearing the n word coming out of a white man's mouth causes the student is indicative of the crushing weight that racism still places on people whose ancestors were enslaved so brutally in our country.
Ike
It doesn't sound to me like they're following the rules in the Student Assignment Plan. It sounds like kids who are assigned to a popular school have more options than kids assigned to an unpopular (high poverty) one. Is this the superintendent's definition of equity?
That is not following the rules. That is not even one of the critieria, losing staff. That makes it about the adults in the building, not the kids for whom the school exists. That is protecting one particular school because kids/families DON'T want to go there. If Nyland and Flip really wanted to help that particular school, it would be over to Tolley for him to show that school the love and have families beat a path to gain entrance. If Tolley can't do that, or doesn't know how to do that, or worse, won't do that, then, he should be fired for cause. The answer for a school isn't to shove unwilling kids into the building and lock the doors behind them, that is never, never going to succeed.
If there is a school parents are desperate to avoid, fix the school, or fix their misperceptions, but don't lock down the kids and gate them there, because guess what: that is not going to be a successful long-term strategy for either the school or the larger school district.
Use the feedback the market is giving you to improve things for everyone, not to pretend you can control people's children's lives to that extent. You can't. When ed policy gets this bad, people who can flee, and then what is left over, and, how does what remain work for them?
Maybe take a look at what Hazel Wolf is doing. Their secret sauce? Simple: they really, really pay attention to and actually care about advanced learning, something that parents are desperate for, (hence their 90+ student waitlist) given the decimation of Spectrum and the pretend cluster grouping. It may be politically correct and the ed glitterarie rage to slam advance learning geared to high ability students, but guess what, parents, all parents, want their kids to learn at school. So, if a child can't read, they want their child taught to read that day and everyday, and, if their child gobbles up books far, far advanced relative to their age, they also want their kid to get a fair shake at learning that day too, and not sit while listening to a lesson totally inappropriate for their needs, (Oh, but, you can go deeper into the text --- not).
Please, what is needed is not bigger gates, but,
BETTER SCHOOLS
A new building would signal to the community that the district is serious about Rainier Beach as a school (and not just an athletic sub-department). That students there - who will not benefit from any new building - are stepping up to beg for a new building for other students is wonderful.
Don't tell me RBHS is underenrolled when you have a sub-par building and won't support the IB program on your own, SPS.
2) Madrona was underenrolled because SPS allowed a principal to reject efforts to have more neighborhood kids come in. A smart principal would have found a way. A smart district would have stepped up. But no.
Do NOT blame parents for their choices - it's on you, SPS.
Bad Choices
On a whim, and also out of concern about the lack of transparency, I emailed the Public Records Officer of SPS for enrollment numbers, asking for the number I am most interested in, Ballard and Ingraham. I got a very fast response, with exactly the information I requested, which is current enrollment number for the 2017-18 school year, by grade, for each school, and the total capacity for each school. Kudos for the service provided. Getting movement off the waitlist for Ingraham, where my son wants to go next year is another story. But I'll take the progress.
Here is are the numbers:
School Grade 9 Grade 10 Grade 11 Grade 12
Ballard 552 502 477 432
Ingraham 389 367 301 338
So, current total enrollments are Ballard (1963) and Ingraham (1395).
Total Capacity, per Capital Planning, are Ballard (1607) and Ingraham (1194).
Marmauset
5/5/17, 1:23 PM
reposting
Let's start with a basic fact. The "older siblings" on the waitlist at Steven are not there because the younger student got in on a new boundary. If that was the case, then the older sibling would be admitted automatically. This is what happens in the cases where siblings are split and the families want to keep everyone at the same school.
The "older siblings" are on the list because Stevens families have reported that "some Stevens students" were reassigned during the enrollment process. Steven's families are reporting this on this blog, the Soup for Teachers page and at the board meeting. In many of these cases, younger sibling are remaining at Stevens while 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade siblings were reassigned.
I have to assume that this is a clerical error of some sort, related to the middle school geo-splits. However, this report to the board is not correct and there is no logical way it could be correct.
In our time of severe district wide capacity issues, there are only a handful of under-enrolled schools. That vast majority of these schools have well documented needs and requests. Not permitting students to exit, based solely on their home address, is a cheap and easy way to fix an enrollment issue without doing the hard work of providing leadership, vision or real fixes.
"Better Schools" post above is in the right zone but missing a critical component - staff retention.
The first few years at Hazel Wolf were very challenging. The school was assigned a very high needs population (many from out of district), families that never picked the school and were displaced by overcrowding at local elementariness and did not want to be there (can you imagine that now?) and not given any meaningful mitigation dollars to manage this.
But what causes the success? A devoted and talented principal who wanted to shape a new school. That principal has been in place since day one. That stability has generated staff stability and incredibly high staff retention. It is no surprise to anyone that "good teachers" want to work for "good principals." The ability to retain staff AND families is what changes a "school" into a learning community.
We have many schools in this district that have a new principal every year and where half of the staff are first year teachers. This is a major challenge and a real source of system inequities. At Wednesday's board meeting, Maple was given well earned credit for their remarkable results. I was not at all surprised that the principal and most of the staff have been very stable.
But here is the important part, stable schools are NOT the source or the cause of unstable schools. In fact, every stable learning community provides more resources that can be re-directed to creating stability and these schools with rotating staff.
Some people downtown have mixed up the distinction between 'stable staff" and "stable enrollment." They are trying to create stable staffing at some schools without mitigation dollars by DIS-ALLOWING CHOICE, if your home address is located inside the boundary for a less stable school.
This is not the same thing as excellent and stable building leadership. In fact, this policy is making this worse. The attempt to stabilize Madrona and Rainier Beach is CREATING additional communities that needs mitigation - Stevens and Franklin. Now you have made things worse for ALL students, because you have fewer stable schools holding the system together. Eventually this ratio can tip the entire district as happened in the 80s.
Stevie
IMHO, there seems to be relatively "new" component in this conversation. Over the last two years, every time a parent or learning community raises a budget/enrollment issue that seems illogical or nonsensical, there seems to be a new answer, that is not really an answer - we need to think about ALL students.
Why can't Enrollment move the waitlist at Stevens, when it is certainly not only possible, but simple, easy and logical to do so? Plus there is the added bonus that moving the waitlist complies with the Student Assignment plan and keeps the promise to "keep siblings together whenever possible." The answer is that the district needs to think about "all students" and that somehow moving the Steven's waitlist, which is in alignment with district policies, is going to hurt some student somewhere in the district.
Therefore, because some mythical student somewhere, is going to be hurt by this decision, it is not just OK to violate policy, but it is now REQUIRED that they violate policy. That is new to me.
There is no evidence of any sort offered to prove that some community has benefited from the sacrifice at Stevens. The sacrifice to Stevens of losing multiple long time community members is known. The BENEFIT to the system is UNKNOWN and unproven.
It is my opinion that there is an additional KNOWN HARM to the system because of this policy and that ALL students are being hurt by this plan.
In the Stevens case for the 2016-2017 school year, there were TEN siblings on the waitlist. None of these siblings were admitted. Four families chose to the leave the district and removed their sibling from the waitlist, in the hope that with only six siblings remaining, enrollment would admit the remaining six. These six were also not admitted.
So here is the net impact to the system. A 10 student waitlist, caused a minimum of 8 students to leave the district and take their funding else where. That is a staggering number and a staggering hit to the total district budget, if that ratio is even remotely repeated for the other 200 siblings that were waitlisted last year. I doubt the number is this high but it means the 200 waitlisted K siblings could have generated up to 160 students of last October's enrollment shortfall. That shortfall hurts a lot of students.
But it gets even more complex and harmful to the whole system. Because the waitlist did not move, rather than have two FULL K classrooms, Stevens had two K classrooms of 16 and 17 students. This means that system paid for very low class sizes at a school that didn't need it, didn't want it and could have been full. Every building that is not full is a drain on the system. This policy CREATED an additional school that needs above average resources. That was wasteful, unnecessary and unwanted. The Stevens community would prefer that they had retained their siblings and not received mitigation money.
To the best of my knowledge, only one of those schools, Fairmont Park, was truly unable to handle split siblings. Most of the schools had 1-3 siblings on the waitlist. 1-3 sibling would never make or break any school.
So this policy designed to protect "all students" rather than comply with known policy, is most likely causing the loss of at least $1M from the budget each October, creating unnecessary mitigation dollars to be spent, and destabilizing learning communities that require less than average resources.
What is the benefit to the system? Does anyone have an answer to this? Is there a real measurable benefit to schools that is greater than these negatives? I am hoping that someone in the great internet brain trust has some insight into what I am missing here.
Yes, I actually believe that a plan that commits to provide Rainier Beach with a new building and commits to year over year funding for IB would do more to improve Rainier Beach than, breaking policy and not admitting students to Franklin.
I believe that a plan to work with Madrona on what would help Madrona is better than not following policy and destabilizing the adjacent school and causing the SPS capture rate to decline further.
It seems on this blog as if those two sides (as there are two sides to every issue) are being ignored in favor of one. I absolutely want children to go to either neighborhood school or the school of choice if both are possible. But stable staffing must be considered if teachers and good teaching are part of the equation.
Kellie, how do those two things factor into your equation? Or is it all about pleasing the client? I believe there are some government services that cannot always please every client. It is simply not possible and leads to the tyranny of certain clients over the well being of all (including SPS in-school personnel).
Alternative View
In my opinion, this is the reason the school cannot attract families in its neighborhood. Can you imagine being told you must move your 3rd or 4th grader away from their friends and the school they've happily attended for four or five years into this environment?
AV
Competing Needs
AV, of course, there are two views and, in my experience in education, more than two. But I think Kellie does a good job of showing that trying to shore up some schools destabilizes other schools. And, because the district isn't giving the resources to schools with struggling populations, those schools aren't shored up much.
As for Lynn's point, well, I don't think of education as a business so I wouldn't call parents "clients." From my research on charter schools, many parents who want stable, strict learning environments for their children (for many reasons) welcome these kinds of restrictive schools. However, many of them soon learn that their child will be held to account for many things like a shirtail hanging out AND parents have to pay fines for that.
I am all for a respective, positive learning environment; I'm not for schools that seem to resemble a more prison-like tone.
"But we can't do it because children must be happy." I do not understand this sentence. Are you saying teachers/principals must provide structure because the child needs it and whether or not they like it?
Thx!
Ah. No. Exactly the opposite. 'No you can't' meaning 'you can't name call'. Exactly your position which I tried to support.
-McClureWatcher
You ask a really great question and I will do my best to answer it.
As I wrote in my post, staffing retention is critical to create a learning community. I never wrote anything about "pleasing clients" or "making anyone happy." As a systems engineer, I am well aware that neither of those strategies are silver bullets for creating a system that works.
IMHO, this is NOT and us vs them situation. Enrollment, Budget and Staffing go so hand-in-hand, that sometimes it is challenging to discern where one issue begins and other ends.
As such, it is critical to be as realistic and objective as possible when analyzing enrollment, staffing and budget and make decisions that truly create the intended result. That is just not happening with this policy.
What I am highlighting here is a "mythology" that somehow doing the right thing at one school hurts teachers. If the point of this waitlist manipulation is to "protect staff," then let's see some evidence of HOW staff was protected. We know for certain that staff has been displaced at other schools because of this.
For the last several years, there has been an abundance of staffing displacements and adjustments in October. Does this policy reduce the total number of displaced staff? I don't think so. From the information, I have been able to examine, I suspect that not only have many families been directly impacted by this policy but ADDITIONAL staff have been either displaced or cut. Far more staff have been displaced as a result of NOT moving the waitlist, than would have bene displaced if the waitlist moved.
In the example I am highlighting, both families AND staff are being hurt. If there is any evidence of benefit, this benefit needs to daylighted, because the evidence of harm is clear and unequivocal.
One of the comments is about this "50 fewer teachers" next year and about how some schools want the waitlist moved so that they don't have to lose a teacher. This remark was interpreted by both Dr. Nyland and the Friday memo, to mean that about half the schools are losing staff and want to prevent this, by causing a different school to lose staff. I think this is NOT correct.
Here are some of the data assumptions that I think are happening in this conversation.
1) This statement implies that we are losing 1 teacher at 50 schools. I highly doubt that anything that evenly distributed is occurring. It would very helpful and in the best interest of the district to be very clear about staffing reductions. There are limits to this naturally but as transparent as possible
2) We are expecting yet another enrollment INCREASE next year. Per the most recent enrollment projections on the website, SPS is expecting an additional 1,063 students for the next schools year, with about 50% of that growth occurring at high school (500 students). This means that the LOSS of 50 teachers is over and above the additional staffing those 1,000 students would have generated. This most likely means that there are closer to 100 missing teachers than 50 missing teachers.
(note: it is possible that the 50 lost teachers net of enrollment growth, but I have not been able to get a conclusive answer)
3) This budget cut is enormous. Every single school is going to be taking a hit of some sort. Everyone is being asked to do a whole more, with a whole lot less. As such, it is in the best interest of ALL schools, that TOTAL enrollment is being considered in every decision. After all total enrollment is what drives the total budget.
4) 2017 is a major forward investment year with FIVE brand new schools opening. This is NOT the year to have a 500 student shortfall in October. There are over 3,000 waitlisted student and for more than 50% of these students there is physical space at the school. Every 100 students is about $1M to the total budget and at least 3-4 teaching jobs. We can't afford that instability this year.
Re Madrona: There are examples of successful schools with stringent demands on posture, eye contact, and other respectful behaviors. Kipp has a fairly good reputation according to the literature I've read of working with at-risk students. Children who need that guidance should be getting it. To call a place where such expectations exist a "prison" is histrionic and unproductive. I don't know the situation there but undue judgements without understanding is characteristic here. I think that is a shame.
Melissa, I believe I've read Kellie refer to parents as "clients" and I presume their children would be included in that. What would you call them? Products? I'm comfortable with "clients" and I think that focusing on semantics is divisive without cause.
Kellie, you are the one voice here I respect. I have always considered you erudite and reasonable and I've trusted your words. I agree that both families and staff are hurt by the procedures currently used. So, again, what motivates the district to decide issues so erratically? Any clue at all?
AV
To put this structure into a neighborhood school, where a family has few choices at all,
is malpractice on the part of the district and board.
FWIW
Thank you. I appreciate your words.
I do not believe there is any malice in the motivation. In fact, I think staff is motivated by their stated outcome. They truly believe that this action (violating their own policy on enrollment and not moving waitlists based on student's home address) will protect the staffing at the assigned school. The problem is that it is circular and fallacious thinking, that worst of all, prevents actual support from coming to the schools that need it most.
The same exact thing happened during the closures. Meg Diaz did one of the best pieces of analytic work I have ever seen in advance of the 08-09 closures. Meg analyzed a large batch of enrollment data and she was able to demonstrate that the 04-05 and the 06-07 closures DIRECTLY caused the district to lose MORE students than the savings the closures generated. In effect she was able to illuminate that talking about closures caused the enrollment drop that then justified the need for school closures.
This made no sense to downtown but parents get it intuitively. The negative environment generated during the closures chased families to other options.
But Meg documented this intuitive understanding. Her work was so crisp and so elegant that I really thought, "this is going to work." Meg's analysis will clearly cause everyone to stop this runaway train of closures. But no. The "pressure" of the recession, caused the 08-09 closures to march ahead and cost all of us severely.
As we all know at this point, school closures were never needed and was a huge distraction for almost a decade. Not only have we re-opened all but one closed school, we have added new schools and hundreds of portables to deal with growth.
During the closures, the theme was "We need to close schools. Why? Because we need to." We are right back to that circular argument. Helping this school, hurts that school. It is just not that simple, but yet the argument has legs.
I am trying to create a distinction that penalizing successful schools is NOT the same thing as support. We have a handful of under enrolled schools that truly need support. The not moving the waitlist creates the "look and feel" of support for these schools, without actually being support.
What is our staff retention?
What is our principal retention?
What is our student retention? (As distinct from progression rate. The district uses a year to year progression rate that is net of new students and departing students)
In all the different downtown departments, what is the retention rate?
High retention rates, tell you things you are doing right and low rates, alert you to a challenges, both internal and external. If you tracked these numbers over time, you would know if you were making systemic progress and where you were making that progress.
Fix AL
AV
KIPP has a good reputation for a number of things. One is their very strict system which works for the kids it works for. Meaning, KIPP schools are largely minority with low-income and that's admirable for KIPP to do. However, many parents shun the schools because of the uniforms and strictness of behavior expectations. As I mentioned, some parents get fines for the behavior issues which I don't think should happen in public schools. And KIPP is famous for its attrition rate, very much due to this.
I agree with whoever said that you will not make Madrona a neighborhood school with the model it is now. Maybe it should be an Option school. And yes, the AAA operated like this and did not succeed with parents or outcomes.
I would venture that the district has a very narrow mindset and they do not believe they are ever wrong. It has not left them in a good place.
AV
Madrona and Emerson are quasi-military schools, replete with (at least Emerson) required uniforms and an authoritative approach to teaching and learning.
These schools should not be the default for families who just happen to live in the neighborhood.
Melissa, I'm "whoever".
FWIW
For progress
Again, I think it interesting that race is being brought into this when that is not what the discussion is about. It's about following district policy and keeping sibs together.
What is the "politicised racisl slander: that you see here because I have not seen one parent raise it except outside parents (non-Stevenson or Madrona parents)?
Madrona is probably a warm place; it was when I visited some years back. It was also very prescriptive and I think since that is not the norm for the overall majority of attendance schools, that probably why many parents may not want to be there. Not race but a very different kind of school (I note there are very few SPS schools that have such prescriptive rules).
Of course words have meaning, Melissa, but using words to divide can be nit-picking for no good purpose. The word "client" clearly fits perfectly well especially if you are asking administrators to make decisions in a professional way. If you prefer partners, that's your right and choice. I wouldn't take issue with it.
AV
Did you also see uniforms, atypical emphasis on rule-following, and highly atypical amount of prescriptive teaching and learning--all in a "neighborhood school" that actually has the potential to be less segregated than many schools under the SAS?
Apparently, many of those speaking out are trying to avoid the issue of sibling splits. But the question remains: What does underenrollment at Madrona have to do with its model?
Moreover, what do the attrition numbers look like in such a quasi-military school? The numbers at Emerson have been horrible for staff retention?
Again, if this model is in high enough demand, advocate for an option school. Forcing children to wear uniforms with an intense emphasis on authoritarianism, when classmates in higher income enclaves are not forced to and never would be, is discriminatory. If the test scores for low-income kids were soaring through the roof then, hey, maybe...but that ain't happening.
This kind of "make up your own neighborhood school model" would never fly in a district that didn't create such high FRL schools or allow them to persist.
But I'm beating a dead horse.
FWIW
KIPP "works" in large part because they kick out or "counsel out" those who don't fit their defined mold, even after choosing to get in. Neighborhood students and families are stuck.
FWIW
NE Parent
Have you recently visited Madrona and do you have personal experience there of what you reference? I am not advocating for repressive environments but with the exception of uniforms, of which I am not a fan, I believe that many of the charges against Madrona could be applied to other schools, some extremely popular, throughout the district. However those charges are not applied because the demographics are different. I am suggesting that there is a racial component to the Madrona profiling. One previous poster even charged that Madrona was a junior prison and was not called by the moderator on such an egregious charge. This kind of insensitivity is harmful and attention needs to be called to it.
For progress
Lynn's posting from the handbook doesn't look encouraging and is surely out of step
with most neighborhood schools. The Emerson saga lifted the lid on that place, which was a case study of dysfunction.
The entire SAP is based on maintaining "boundaries" under the guise of neighborhood schools. If you want to advocate for justice, that would be a good way to go.
Defending these repressive schools is inexcusable, no matter why families are avoiding them. I believe those who enacted this KIPP-type approach had good intentions. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
FWIW
K.S., who did visit Madrona, expressed that "junior prison" as an opinion and it was clear that it was. You can think it is insensitive but it was based on their experience.
I find it interesting that For progress keeps trying to bring this up as a racial issue when there is no evidence of that. Except for his/her opinion. Which he/she is entitled to.
Bad Choices
In my experience, the lower the average family income level at the school, the more authoritarian the school environment, the more the school attempts to maximizing learning (more of a nose-to-the-grindstone attitude, etc.), the harsher and more frequent the punishments, the less outdoor time, the more rote the learning, etc. The more affluent the school's families, the more time for lunch, the more relaxed attitude toward learning (less need to maximize learning since there's a relaxed sense that the kids will all learn it eventually, who cares if it's today), way more lenient punishments for the very same behaviors, etc.
It's alarming to me that a family's income determines how the students are punished for regular sorts of child misbehavior. Or whether the school feels it can afford to not focus every instructional minute on maximizing MAP results. Or whether the kids can play outside when it rains.
It's alarming that the district has an SAP that says one thing, but families experience something different on the ground. The authoritarian treatment of my child at our lowest price point school was absolutely unacceptable. I remain livid at how they treated my child. The principal told me he was worried my child would end up in jail one day. Meanwhile, same kid, not one behavioral problem at the new richer-neighborhood school.
They say families have some degree of choice, but my family had no choice. The schools around us had wait lists that most years barely accommodated siblings. And then only at the last possible minute. It was like a sick game of chicken. We're not in the preferential zone for any option schools and the ones near us have monster wait lists anyway. We had to move to get access to a less authoritarian geozone school. Most of our child's former classmates have also left that authoritarian school, some to private, some to option schools, some moved, some managed to make it off a wait list and into a neighboring assignment school. Retention of everybody is LOW at the authoritarian school (principals, teachers, students--they all come and go).
Took the words out of my fingers at 10:39 PM.
We come to this blog as a safe place to share opinions.
K.S.
Look at the per-pupil funding at Cascadia and tell us how those children are a financial drain on the system.
There are so many technically and factually incorrect items in your post, it is challenging to pick a starting point. So let's start where you started.
"We are so overcrowded" - In some places, yes, in others, no.
2017 is the year the BEX IV pushes into the system FIVE new schools. This is enough capacity that the entire system is no longer overloaded. This is both because of new added capacity and because we are about 2,000 students under projections.
One of the reasons all of the geo-splits for middle school have been so challenging is because we have EXTRA space and that extra space has not been well distributed.
High School is a real problem. High School is so overcrowded that the primary relief has been running start and that solution is pretty darn invisible, except to the families that never wanted it, but had no other real choice.
There are still hot spots of elementary over-crowding, but many areas have reached saturation and there is new space in the plan.
So creating all this new spaces, creates a commitment that now we do NEED more students in certain grade bands and parts of the city. There is no blanket answer about needing more or fewer students, in it nuances based on the capacity already in place and the capacity coming on line.
Looking ONLY at the largest aspect of system is just as likely to lead to bad conclusions as looking at the smallest. To get a true picture of system, you need to look at it from as many angles as possible and then compare and contrast what those angles have in common and in contrast.
The larger view that you present is very distorted. While there many be a few pennies that are saved by encouraging families to not participate in public and go private, this is a great example of penny wise, pound foolish. There are many politicians who believe this. That doesn't mean that this is in the best interest of the public system, which then includes all public services.
Time and again, studies prove that money spent on education serves the entire entire economy and the entire system. So the "system" you say is better when people leave is just another sub-system.
The infrastructure for public education is incredibly expensive and it the use of tax dollars when that infrastructure is used efficiently and in the services of the most people. Plus if you believe that a public education system is the foundation of a democracy, then no amount of money spent on education is too much.
There is a tipping point for all systems, including public education. Nationwide private school attendance averages about 10%. So once can reasonably assume that 10% is the minimum for a large urban area like Seattle with a lot of private options.
28% is well above that number and it means that Seattle is always on the edge of the middle class just "quitting" on public education. This is what happened in the 80's. The bizarre and impenetrable assignment system, drove middle class families to the suburbs. Eventually enough of the middle left, and the education levies failed and then everyone suffered.
It is the middle class that tends to leave when a system is starting to spiral down. It is not a surprise that those with the means to make other choices are the first to do so. When the middle leaves, you wind up with a system that is more stratified with fewer resources. That is not a good plan, in case you were curious.
So, yes, from a systems point of view, I think 28% private school enrollment seems to be enough to ensure that the public levies all pass nicely. But a couple of points higher and a little more middle class migration to the suburbs and those levies are not a sure thing.
Kellie, they'll all be in high school soon enough.
Stevie
Also, tacit racism is frequent on this blog as are covert and overt put-downs to posters who do not share the predominant view on whatever the topic may be. However, that will invite strong denial so be it.
If the population of Emerson is mostly minority, then a principal needs the freedom to install practices that have been shown to help that population. I don't know the population of the school. No one here has talked about it. If, on the other hand, it is a generally middle class white or middle class minority school, perhaps bloggers can in an informed way talk about the practices at that school.
What I'm reading in this thread seems to reflect a white middle class perspective. If other viewpoints are not welcome, it's your blog. I'll refrain from posting further.
AV
Stevie's inflammatory arguments might gain traction, were it not for the simple fact that Madrona has a wait list. There are families that want to attend Madrona and are being denied that opportunity, despite newly created homerooms in the building.
The waitlist issue this year is race-blind as far as I can tell. There waitlists at the ever popular schools, but there are also waitlists at every type of school in every part of the city.
The typical argument that if we add this student, it might cause a split class, is no longer relevant this year. While the WSS was restored, there is ZERO dollars for split class mitigation. Every school is going to have split classes, so why not utilize space in a way that is efficient and supports school.
Why not support Madrona with families that want to be there?
I can't follow your comment. What do you mean by they will all be in high school? Are you now agreeing with me that chasing away families is not a great plan? I doubt it, so what do you mean?
We have two years of a space crunch in high school. In 2019, Lincoln opens as well as an an additional 500 seats at Ingraham. In two years, there will be plenty of space at high school. How well that space is divided is another question.
Actually, Kellie, that is revisionist history.
The "middle class" was white flight as a direct result of busing.
http://www.historylink.org/File/3939
I think, as a systems engineeer, you need to be careful about dismissing the realities of racism from the system since it is a pervasive variable and has a direct impact on on school decisions, as research makes clear:
https://www.google.co.jp/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://www.asanet.org/sites/default/files/savvy/journals/soe/Apr16SOEFeature.pdf&ved=0ahUKEwjEu6GHmN7TAhVLgbwKHVWLAvUQFgg6MAM&usg=AFQjCNGsih_l5jQhDxjQxwsDRlfcBMYDlg
AV, the Emerson principal had the right to try to help the students using research. However, the principal was replicating the failed approach at AAA and also had a documented record of harassing staff. The underlying issue is the fact that SPS creates high FRL schools when research proves that these schools almost always have much worse outcomes for students.
FWIW
Stevie
Yes, there were racist aspects to the whole mess. Conscious and unconscious bias are everywhere.
That said, the middle class did leave, the levy base failed and the system got worse. Every system has a tipping point. Systems tend to be resilient, until they tip and once they tip, you have bigger problems.
How all this relates to waitlists ... The current practice of waitlist management is hurting the very schools it is trying to help. This is not the first, nor the last attempt to make something better, that winds up making things worse.
My point is very simple. Do things that actually solve the problem you are trying to solve.
Look everybody knows that "choice" was an olive branch handed the middle class to implement the NSAP to help them over their basic racism. It was never going to be a lasting policy. How could it be? The NSAP: We promise a seat to absolutely everyone who could move to an attendance area at any point AND we promise to fill every building up with "choice" at open enrollment. Seems obvious that both of those can't be granted.
Stevie
And here is where our two points of view meet. SPS is opening FIVE new schools this year, including two new middle schools. SPS is adding 2,000 high schools seats in two years. This adds a tremendous cost to the districts minimum operating cost.
That is the change I am highlighting. Opening schools is a long term commitment. We are now at the point, where the minimum number of students to efficiently amortize costs across these buildings is now higher.
The last few years, as you point out, someone in the system, was quite relieved at the 300-600 students shortfall, because space was so limited. That is no longer the case. Enrollment policy needs to reflect this.
Stevens, Madrona and Lowell all have waitlists and those schools now have a new middle school. It is in the best interest of everyone that those waitlist moves and those schools are successful and retain students that continue onwards to fill Meany middle school
The SAP talks about Choice. If a school has open capacity then you may apply during Open Enrollment to move your student to a school with space available. Choice was one of the key selling points when the new SAP was rolled out. Predictability, to attend a school based on your address. And Choice, for those that wanted a different learning experience for their child than their neighborhood school provided.
Enrollment Planning has now in large part removed "Choice" by redefining capacity (space available) to equal their projected attendance numbers for a school. For example, if your school currently employs 20 teachers, but Enrollment Planning projects you will only need 19 teachers next year, EP ignores the actual capacity of the school and redefines it to their projection of only enough students for staffing at 19 teachers.
In addition to redefining capacity/removing Choice, EP has also added an additional criteria to moving the waitlist of, "without causing a neighboring school to lose staffing." This is nowhere in the SAP. Even more confusing is their definition about impacting other schools varies from region to region. Even in areas of "popular" schools where waitlist moves would just be swapping kids between one school that has exceeded enrollment projections with another school whose enrollment has exceeded projections (therefore no danger of staff impact), the waitlist still does not move.
It is not the role of EP to create policy. It is the role of the School Board.
Thank you Kellie for day lighting the harms to students, families and the District by EP creating their own enrollment policies.
-StepJ
I do think staff will try its best to handle the process professionally. However, based on the current mess that is waitlists, I also think it has neither the capacity nor the leadership and line employee brainpower to do so.
Our family is hoping to be out of the system by then, specifically because we do not want to be part of what we believe will be a very divisive neighborhood, racial and political slugging match. Our experience with the enrollment bureaucracy at the elementary and middle school level got us to this place. We are one example of Kellie's points above about families leaving and taking their student dollar resources with them. What she misses, and what has had a greater impact on our children's schools, is that we are also taking our volunteer time with us. Hundreds upon hundreds of volunteer hours in the benefit of all children in the system, not just our own. The volunteer hours of families and community partners keep the cracked and patched SPS system running. The entire system would already be a nightmare of urban decay without volunteer commitment, largely unacknowledged, when not outright met with hostility, by SPS administration and by legislators holding the purse strings. Parents are not just SPS's customers. We are its partners. When system-wide SPS procedures are not working, instead of pushing aside parents, it needs to embrace them and learn from their feet-on-the-ground perspective. Absolutely...some parents are huge pains in the rear and scream loudly for only their child's benefit. But that is the exception, not the rule, and it is only by working with parents that the middle class of Seattle will remain the glue that keeps SPS from falling apart. Did the district learn nothing from the closure debacle of 10 years ago? Some of the current board members certainly did. As far as staff? With a few notable exceptions, I believe the answer is no.
"Sadly Exiting"
Recently WA State Attorney General has been at the forefront in resisting federal actions. Chris Reykdal is WA State's recently elected Superintendent of Public Instruction. Would they together resist the current Secretary of the US Department of Education, Betsy DeVos, in her request for submitting a plan to her department for approval in regard to WA State's plans to fulfill ESSA,
When DeVos says, "Power has been returned to state and local entities to be able to decide what standards and what expectations they are going to have of their students," she is referring to ESSA. ESSA requires states to submit their ESSA plans to her for approval. How is that local control? It is a step towards federally mandated local control.
The US Constitution is very clear that many areas are reserved for control by the individual state. Education is such an area. WA State should assert its sovereignty and refuse to comply on constitutional grounds. Superintendent Reykdal should not submit education plans to Secretary DeVos.
WA State Attorney General Bob Ferguson has done a good job resisting President Trump, why stop now?
Did we learn nothing about the manipulation of education issues from 8 years under Obama/Duncan/King and the 2002 No Child Left Behind act? Time to ignore these Charlatans once and for all, because the US Constitution says we can.
AV, Emerson reference is in regard to what part of this discussion? You lost me. You are welcome to state your opinion, offer research/data, all of that. But words have meaning to me and I say that often. So I would guess we differ on that point.
Yes, it does kind of negate an argument when Madrona has the same issue and, they too, want more students.
Sadly Exiting, I agree. The fight over high school boundaries/assignments will make this all look very small.
"We're going private" is an absurd, and ineffective threat to use when making unreasonable and inequitable demands."
Ah, the dreaded "status quo." Nope, parents want an enrollment policy that is clear and fair. What is happening now is not clear and fair (as Step J seems to be saying). I'm not sure parents are making threats when the evidence is that yes, some have left and more will likely follow. That's not a threat; that's a promise.
China Daily | Updated: 2017-04-27 07:20
Zhang Haidong, a professor at the School of Sociology and Political Science, Shanghai University /
Here in 'merica you gets what you can buy or finagle under the guise of a gifted program.
lugnut
It's getting old to blame HCC for all SPS woes, even more so when the "program" is not much of a program.
beyond silly
It would be interesting to see a list of schools that have absolutely no wait list. The schools we could just traipse into. Which ones are they?
Stevie
You have done a beautiful job summarizing this whole waitlist thread. The SAP, as written and approved by the board, was very clear that choice seats were based on space available and that everything possible would be done to keep siblings together.
It appears that Enrollment Planning has written a new policy and that Enrollment Planning may have been implementing this other policy for some time now. Hopefully, this board will be able to further daylight this so that enrollment complies with the plan as written.
Your questions nicely encapsulate the challenge that families are trying to highlight.
The point of the limited choice in the NSAP was to counteract the lingering effects you describe by making available any open seat to any family. This is why this current issue is so mixed up, as it deliberately and directly denies choice to those families that live in Rainier Beach and other unidentified attendance areas.
It would be nice to have a list of schools with space, that families could just "traipse into." I suspect that with 5 empty classrooms, families thought Madrona was a safe bet. But yet, not. Olympic Hills is moving into a brand new building and will have at least 100 empty seats, nope, waitlist.
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- NP
Stevie, you called other people's children "anchor babies." That's name-calling.
-StepJ
Fix AL
2016-17 23 teachers for 495 students
2017-18 24.5 teachers for 526 students
Genessee Hill:
2016-17 31.5 teachers for 663 students
2017-18 37 teachers for 756 students
I took these numbers from the budget documents and didn't check to see how they compared to actual enrollment for the current year.
But, they have a lot of information and insight about what is actually going on here. Perhaps someone should ask them to share what they know with the rest of the class
Just Curious
Very interesting that Madrona is gaining teachers with a lower enrollment. No evidence of jeopardy to their staffing as Enrollment Planning states as their reason to not move waitlists.
Fix AL - The cuts to schools are certainly not transparent. I hope our suspicions are not correct, but also hope that by other posters on the blog sharing what is happening at their school, what is being hidden behind the curtain will be revealed.
-StepJ
Waitlist Parent
So yes private school students do return for high school. And having been in a private school, parents complain there too.
HP
That is a really great question.
There are ways to dramatically increase confidence in the "show-rate" for September. However, all of those ways are at the building level. People treat building-level communication very differently, that district-level communication.
Messages from the school where your child is enrolled, asking questions and sending forms and other things, will give schools a very good idea of who is actually attending in September. Additionally, schools that tend to get a lot of new kids in August and September, tend to get similar numbers year over year.
Most districts give middle and high school students their schedules in the Spring. This empowers teachers to be able to communicate with their classes over the summer. That also gives really great feedback on enrollment.
Back when we have a 100% choice system, there was so much movement in September that giving schedules in the Spring made little sense. However, now that we are six years into this new assignment plan, it makes a lot of sense to re-visit this.