Seattle School Board Meeting This Week - Waitlists

An oddity in the SPS calendar; two board meetings in two weeks.  There will be a couple of special board meetings in July - both about the budget - and then not another one until, well, I don't know because neither the district calendar nor the Board calendar reflect when the next one is.  I would guess late August or early September.

Here is the agenda.   

I will be writing a separate post on the comments on ethnics studies curriculum. 

According to the agenda, the Budget and Waitlist "updates" will come at 4:30 pm and the next part of the meeting at 4:55 pm.  

I suspect that, on the budget, sadly for staff, that there is not really a lot of good news coming from the final day of the last legislative session in Olympia.  That leaves them to probably have to be very conservative on the amount of money SPS will receive.

As for waitlists, will staff present an Option 3?  We can keep looking at the agenda between now and Wednesday to see if there is a presentation that has that.  Right now, there is nothing.  

Of major interest -whether you have a student on a waitlist or not - is the final outcome for waitlists.  This is important because of several key issues that point directly to whether this Board is going to accept staff's wavering stance on waitlists.

1) The "practices" that staff say they use for waitlists is neither in the policy or the procedure about waitlists nor the current interim enrollment plan.

2) As parent Eric Blumhagen pointed out at last week's board meeting, the staff said one thing about capacity in January - "space available"  and now they are saying something else - "space available or staffing."

As to the discussion from the Board, there was first Q&A with staff but directors also made a few comments during the Board Comment section.

Q&A with Staff
Vice-President Harris asked about an Option 3 (as there are only two right now).  JoLynn Berge, Budget, was visibly unhappy with this question as was Superintendent Nyland.  She also stated that the analysis that Harris asked for might not be able to be done in a week.

Oddly, Berge said that there only budget implications for these elementary waitlists as Flip said no matter where a student was for elementary, they are automatically assigned to their region's middle school unless there was a Choice option made.  It seems to me that if a student is in a non-neighborhood assignment and wanted to follow the path of THAT school, you might then see implications of more kids trying to get into different middle schools.  Maybe staff thinks that won't happen.

Both Berge and Dr. Clover Codd of HR pointed out that some schools were just waiting for this issue to be resolve so they could hire and it's becoming problematic.  Somehow Codd was equating the 209 open staffing positions districtwide with just this issue and that can't be.  Staff had previously said that the number of kids/schools on these waitlists were not that many so how is it a major systemic problem?

Codd said she was worried about the first day of school and the waiting on hiring. Harris dryly stated that she didn't think many school hiring committees would be working during a week with a major summer holiday. 

(One slightly amusing aside came as Harris wanted to make a motion.  Blanford tried to cut her off saying, "You're the Chair."  She said, "I know and I know I can make a motion."  Her motion was to move this vote to next week and wait for more information.)

Burke said he would be supporting this motion because, although there had been a lot of work done, "I don't see what is the financial implication about schools and staff dollars."  He ended by saying he didn't "believe SPS should be in business to split families" and that they should keep siblings together and "it should be part of our standard practice."

Director Geary said yes to the motion but added that she would not be at the next board meeting for the vote (she'll be out of town).  She said she didn't like pitting schools against each other.

Director Blanford had an interesting thought about giving sibling preference to those who enroll out of area.  He said it might "open the floodgates" for "all those with siblings and what are the implications" especially around stability.

I would say in this case, sibling preference should be granted because those parents enrolled their first child when their school WAS their assignment school and then the boundaries got changed.  His point may be valid for anyone attempting to get more than one child into a different school on a choice application.

Director Comments (partial just about waitlists)

Director Blanford stated that the Board wanted the analysis done "so that we are making decisions with full knowledge rather than incomplete knowledge."

He said he had a "rambunctious" community meeting, largely about the waitlists.  He said he tried to say he had to consider all the schools in his region and in the district.

Then he said something that was truly silly - he said, " We don't want to close schools so we have to provide the resources to help them thru lean times."  

Wait, what?  The issues around the waitlists are not because of fiscal hard times - they are because several schools  are underenrolled.  The lack of students is what is impacting their fiscal bottom line.  All schools need more funding and certainly those with more students with challenges really do.  But the lack of enrollment is an issue that no one seems to want to say out loud or address.  That's not going to help enrollment and it's certainly not going to force any parent into enrolling in a school.

Director Burke said he had received many emails about the waitlist situation, noting that the Board and the staff operate at the 30,000 foot level but with the understanding of impacts at the school level.  He said the Board relies on families, educators, and students for input for common problems.