Tuesday Open Thread
The speaker list is up for the Board meeting tomorrow; not as packed as I thought with just four people on the waitlist. The majority of the speakers are speaking on high school boundaries (with several wanting to talk about Ballard High). There are only three of us speaking about the Green Dot resolution asking the City to not grant the zoning departures that Green Dot has requested. It's me, long-time watchdog, Chris Jackins, and the head of the Washington State Charter Schools Association, Patrick D'Amelio. (I knew Mr. D'Amelio when he headed the Alliance for Education and Big Brothers and Big Sisters; he's a stand-up guy.)
Comments
That sounds like wait till assignment shakes out, then assign kids with IEPs to the schools that are underenrolled.
Jane
Almost funny
Wallingford Mom
- 94 kids in a PE class
- Students w/o a science classroom
- Lost activity space for students during lunch
- Lost Instructional space for PE
- Core classes with 34,35,36 students in them
- Students who can’t find a teacher for help because their teacher doesn’t have a classroom but rather moves from room to room
- A stage that serves as a classroom and limits the capacity of performing arts
- A second lunch that starts after 1pm
- ...
Eagle Staff is adding more than 100 students in the Fall. This is going to take a lot more than adjusting a feeder pattern or moving a wait list to right size.
InGoodFaith
Helen
The motion to place AS1 (now Licton Springs) at the Wilson Pacific Campus (now REMS and Cascadia) was based on a few facts that are continuously omitted from this conversation.
1) AS1 needed to placed SOMEWHERE. The opening of JAMS as a comprehensive middle school, displaced Jane Addams K8 (now Hazel Wolf K8). Hazel Wolf then displaced AS1 from the Pinehurst building and the placement of AS1 was left to the board meeting. Cedar Park was the logical location and the desired location but Staff insisted Cedar Park would not be an option.
2) The decision to place AS1 was based on the 500 empty seats at WHITMAN. The amendment that placed AS1 also directed staff to redraw the boundaries to accommodate that change.
All of the pain around this problem is because the instruction to redraw the boundaries was never included in a work plan.
Additionally, at this same time, the oversight committee was dissolved and capacity management was removed from the top board priorities. By the time that families testified about these issues, last year, staff asserted it was simply too late to make any changes.
So the magic formula. Create a 200 page plan and then remove all board and citizen oversight of the plan, because the head of all things facilities, testified that Staff has this under control and does not require oversight.
Can you be more precise. The final Lincoln boundaries were pretty darn aggressive and is drawing students who live as close at 8 blocks to Ballard and 5 blocks to Roosevelt.
The challenge with Lincoln is that there was a very good reason why the school was closed in the first place. It is located extremely close to both Roosevelt and Ballard, making reasonable boundaries almost impossible.
While there is still a long way to go in creating a reasonable amount of transparency regarding how these decisions that have tremendous impacts to BOTH building staff and families are made, Director Mack did a very solid job of pushing the conversation forward and not backsliding into finger pointing.
I was very happy to see ONE document that included both assigned students and the building capacity. This made it possible to have a difficult conversation about the tradeoffs. There are no easy capacity decisions, because every decision is interlinked.
While it may seem obvious to direct enrollment to Whitman where there is plenty of space and families want to attend, it is also most likely that the decision to add FOUR portables to REMS, also included the staffing allocation of 4 teachers. These teacher may or may not have been hired yet. The work session ran out of time, so question like that were not addressed.
2) The decision to place AS1 was based on the 500 empty seats at WHITMAN. The amendment that placed AS1 also directed staff to redraw the boundaries to accommodate that change.
All of the pain around this problem is because the instruction to redraw the boundaries was never included in a work plan.
Additionally, at this same time, the oversight committee was dissolved and capacity management was removed from the top board priorities. By the time that families testified about these issues, last year, staff asserted it was simply too late to make any changes.
So it was known at the time of that decision that Whitman boundaries needed to be adjusted, yet staff didn't bother to follow up on that. Whether it was officially included in a work plan or not, it clearly needed to be done. Whether you're a big wig at JSCEE or in charge of capacity or even a lower level staff member working on enrollment or capacity or something related, isn't part of your job to make sure things that need to happen are happening? Who cares that capacity mgmt was removed from the top board priorities at that time--staff should have been on it, since it was a known issue. It should never have gotten to the point that families even needed to testify to the board about it, because it should have been obvious to everyone involved at JSCEE that it needed to be fixed. The board apparently knew. Staff at that meeting/vote knew. And parents posting here prior to and after the vote knew.
Staff messed up big time. Was it intentional, to get back at the board for their last-minute changes? Was it a big mistake? In either case, is there any accountability?
HF
Whitman Parent
Whitman Parent
It is my impression that this Board could care less.
I have been a member of this community for decades but can no longer happily withstand the abuse from SSD staff that we have been subjected to by taxpayer funded administrative staff. Melissa can put you in touch with me. Trust no others please.
We currently know some students who are spectrum who still don't like the school. The kids also pick up on the fact the school is in great need of repairs and renovation. I gathered from the kids with whom I spoke, it rubs off on them. In fact one student I know seemed to even suffer from feelings of low self worth and feeling of neglect, that I would attribute partly to going to school in such a run down place. We toured and the bathrooms had layers upon layers of wads of TP stuck on the ceiling. It does not help that the principal is not supportive of HC or advanced learning and that has been very well known for years to that community. Give the school a facelift, and make it the NW HC site and maybe it will improve. Although the current administration still may be a barrier to some.
NW mom
Flummoxed
Ballard Family
NW Mom
HP
Flummoxed
Ballard Family
@HP- I believe the portables are not meant to be permanent, but they need them for next year. They should adjust boundaries to include also at HIMS which is back to being severely overcrowded again for next year as projected. They only had a one year relief with opening of Eaglestaff.
NW mom
Combined with transportation that does not generally operate on half days' that really is not the way to make students who struggle, feel welcome.
But it is a vast improvement over Ballard high school who has decided in the past they were quick to say they were full, Ingraham was open to accepting more students with IEPs than Ballard, still is according to district data..
That's not much difference, is it?
At Hamilton the portables went away after one year. So, while a lot of portables are there to stay, they do get removed when not needed.
Wallingford Mom
I poked around at the Daniel Bagley BEX remodel to see that the eight portables are finally leaving the school—the remodel includes a wing of eight classrooms to replace them. So yes, I do see that portables sometimes do move on. My issues with portables— no running water, lack of security relative to the rest of the school, a sense of classes in the portables being considered second class to the rest of the school, a lack of communication from the district on an operating plan for how long the portables will remain —still stand.
Bagley's remodel has been pushed out, so fingers-crossed that it will actually happen. Portables are still on the premises and will be until the remodel moves forward.
-Former bee
>>>. Ingraham accepts [special education] students in 7 categories, Ballard in 4.
What kind of hogwash is that? And where did you hear it? Are you talking about IDEA categories, or SPS cost saving made up BS categories? Either wayyy, your information is wrong. All high schools accept students in ALL IDEA categories. And most specifically, BHS has students with every type of disability, including blind and medically fragile. If you’re talking about the made-up, SPS-only disability categories: Resource (garden variety), Access (access to general ed, but everyone is legally entitled to that aren’t they?????). Focus (the kindergarten for life self contained program, where of course you can Focus because so little is expected focusing is a cinch), SEL (oh yeah, jail prep with a nicer name) or, most baffling, “Distinct”. Whatever the made-up crap is, BHS and IHS... both have all of these. BHS doesn’t have the very specialized program for medically fragile students. But this is highly specialized and relatively rare. Ingraham also has an adult transition program, arguably inappropriate in a high school.
And really Seattle Citizen? If BHS serves 10% Sped and Ingraham serves 13%, then yes that is pretty significant. I don’t doubt claims that students are being chased out of BHS.
sped reader
Can you back up your assertion that Ballard is "chasing" special ed students out of the building? That is a serious accusation. Please demonstrate how BHS actively tried to keep sped students out.
Ballard 10%
Center 18
Cleveland 9
Franklin 10
Garfield 7
Ingraham 13
Rainier Beach 16
Roosevelt 8
Sealth 17
Fairmount Parent
sped reader made a claim about Ballard and I was comparing Ballard to similar schools regarding sped percentage. NOVA is an Option school.
Is the district asking why TCS and NOVA are attracting so many students with disabilities? If small schools are better for them, that’s one thing. If larger schools are choosing not to meet their needs, there’s a problem to be solved.
Fairmount Parent
And yes, SPS Mom, I forgot Hale. I was in hurry, very sloppy. My apologies.
But my point stands: sped reader called out BHS as "chasing" sped out, and I merely wanted to show that BHS isn't an aberration, it's in the middle of the pack. If sped reader has some information that shows BHS "chasing" students away, I'm sure we'd all love to see it.