Seattle Schools SAP Eckstein Community Meeting

Update: I neglected to say that Director Rick Burke was in attendance as were school board candidates Eden Mack and Omar Vasquez.

end of update

I'll be brief on the SAP/Boundaries Community Meeting last night at Eckstein.  I thought it stank.  I walked into a room with several tables of staff from different departments.  There were balloons and candy, wee!  What you are to do is wander from table to table and ask questions.  Oh, and leave comment cards.

I think the only comment you need to make is this:

This process is silly, unhelpful and a dog-and-pony show so staff can say to the Board, "We did community outreach." 

Also,
This process - once again - is being rushed and a topic of vital importance to every single student and parent/guardian in the district should not be rushed. 

What did other parents say about the meeting?


Kellie LaRue

Staff closed Middle College in West Seattle as part of program placement. It looked like a school closure. It felt like a school closure. For the staff and students at that school, there was really no distinction between closing their school and "a shift in program placement." However, none of the legally required processes for closing a school were followed and Middle College's doors were shut.

If this plan is approved, the process becomes even more opaque. Enrollment planning could simply plan for ZERO staff at a school and Viola! The school is gone. No process. No oversight. No recourse.

While that might seem a touch extreme, for the families at both Stevens and Whitman (and likely other schools) this is their reality. Stevens' has had a wait list every year for the last three years. Despite this, the school is shrinking by one homeroom each year. Steven's families testified that they feared this process could result in the eventual closure of their school. 

I'll interject here to say that if you wanted to both save money, streamline your operations AND give a boost to charter schools, it looks like that is the direction the district is going.  But they will sacrifice much when they do that, not the least of which is the goodwill and trust of parents.

Every table was a silo on work that is deeply interconnected.

Staff is only presenting one side of the story and the side they are presenting is both more expensive in operation costs and backs the board into a corner. 

This anti-choice stance on the part of enrollment planning is very distressing. Nationwide there is an obsessive focus on vouchers and charter schools as the ONLY way to give families a choice. In many ways, Seattle has been a leader in promoting an alternative and a middle route.

Seattle's limited choice model is really different from the national conversation, because the choice model, gives families some flexibility while still ensuring that schools are staffed by trained professionals with access to a union and collective bargaining. In many ways, Seattle could be a model for other districts to adopt.

But instead, we are swiftly moving in this very rigid anti-choice direction, which will ultimately mean that families will start to push for charters and vouchers as the only way to get some choice. I have been pretty staunchly anti-charter, but I will likely soften that stance if all choice options are really removed.

Good Fit

We need transparency for everyone to minimize disruption in 2019. 

If they are making 2019/20 high school boundary decisions now, then they should also be approving a 2-year SAP transition plan, laying out what happens next year and then what changes happen the following year. As it stands, the current draft SAP for next year is CONTRARY TO assumptions underlying the proposed HS boundaries.

 Beyond Frustrated

Staff answering questions in front of an audience, even if they are selectively answering based on comment cards submitted at the beginning, might help bring those silos together. As a parent, I want to hear other concerns as well. When the crowd around the table grew, it was next to impossible to hear. My guess is that many parents had similar questions that could have been answered more effectively with staff on a stage with a microphone. I'm not sure what was worse - the Lincoln meeting where parents were asked to sit around tables and accomplish nothing, or this past meeting where it was a noisy free for all.

DisAPP

They also need to provide draft SAP language for 2019/20 at this time.

If they are making 2019/20 high school boundary decisions now, then they should also be approving a 2-year SAP transition plan, laying out what happens next year and then what changes happen the following year. As it stands, the current draft SAP for next year is CONTRARY TO assumptions underlying the proposed HS boundaries. 

Eric B

DisAPP, you are not alone there. The boundaries proposed make big assumptions and are based on very thin data. The boundaries approved in a few months will drive many program placement decisions, in particular one that may not be named in this thread.

NNE Mom

So, what's weird about this SAP is that as far as I can tell it's an elaborate, shady attempt populate schools by self-fulfilling "staffing" predictions instead of populating schools by running good schools that people want to send their kids to. That's as nuts as trying to close the achievement gap by holding down the top instead of raising up the bottom. I think the commenters who say a surprising number of families don't like being treated this way and just leave the district. So their solution perpetuates the problem they're trying to fix.

CascadiaMom said...

I went to the Eckstein meeting tonight. I felt like a pingpong ball. All the issues covered at the meeting are connected (area maps, SAP, advanced learning, SPED, 24 credit schedule, transportation) and each had their own table. But at every table, if you asked a complicated question, staff would say "that's not me, you have to ask that person over there" and would point you to another table. I felt as though every person at the meeting was in a silo and was refusing to engage in the cross-cutting questions. It felt like a giant bureaucracy where everyone was monitoring their cog in the system, but no one was running the actual machine itself. It's going to take real leadership to take these disparate units and issues and figure out a plan that can pull this together. I didn't meet anyone at this meeting who seemed up to that task.

I will say that everyone I spoke to seemed interested in the feedback, and I was glad that I went and gave them some. I encourage people to keep attending these meetings. 

NbyNW

Didn't SPS staff try to do this last year too? Present their transition plan as the SAP? They need to go back to the SAP and red-line it compared to their proposed SAP.

Crazy Making

Staff were not only asserting that the the decision to eliminate pathways has not been made, they were actively asserting that there would still be pathways in 2019, despite the exclusion of pathways in the proposed boundary maps. Either staff are lying and they know there likely won't be but don't have the courage to admit it, or they really think there will still be pathways, in which case they need to get their act together and work with their colleagues in other departments who seem to be convinced otherwise. Regardless, they need to all get on the same page soon. The board can't vote on any of this until there's a comprehensive proposal that's internally consistent.

Or Not

The next *2* years seem like they could be especially bad. This coming year, families will make unpredictable changes to try to buffer themselves from the yet to be decided assignments, while schools continue to struggle with overcrowding, then an unprecedented amount of disruption will occur with the new boundaries and opening of Lincoln in 2019. Enrollment will limit choice with their shenanigans around "space available" creating budget issues for schools, while teaching staff will be moved and displaced, wreaking havoc with course options and scheduling.

So sure, go to the other community meeting if you like standing around, straining to hear questions and answers,  and, if you can hear, you listen to vague answers or ones that contradict each other.