Board Work Session on Capacity Management, May, 2018

All the directors were in attendance at the Work Session on Capital Projects Annual Report and Capacity Management Annual Report.

Noted capacity expert (and SPS parent) Kellie LaRue was there.  She let me know that surrounding district like Northshore and Bellevue no longer accept out of district students.  They, too, are overcrowded.  What's also interesting is that they have created new high schools or high school space and she suspects that SPS had been pushing off enough students to Running Start to not have started on that until the reopening of Lincoln.

The first portion of the meeting was on the Capital Projects Annual Report and the latter was the Capacity Projects Annual Report. 

Highlights and director comments


Richard Best, head of Capital Projects, ruefully stated that they wished they could have done all of Lincoln (they are doing the west side of the building but not the east).  I note this was one comment that came up at the Levies meeting at JAMS.

Director Burke asked for a list that had sub-projects like how many are capacity projects versus seismic issues.

Head of Enrollment, Ashley Davies, told directors they are forecasting 280 new students next year.  

Director Burke said that he did not believe using capital dollars for class size reduction was the best use of the money.

Director Mack, who was chairing the session, asked why some service areas are combined with K-8s but not others.  The answer given was that some schools are attendance areas schools and some are not.

Director Geary stated that it was her understanding that the district could control Option School enrollment but had to take anyone who lived in an attendance area.  Burke noted that Option School students don't always come in neat class-sized bundles. 

The district again says that high school enrollment is increasing and even with Lincoln, reopening in 2019, they will be short by 2021.  West Seattle High School is projected to grow with southend high schools staying steady.

Director Patu, who seemed off her game at the session, kept asking about Rainier Beach's building when the discussion was not about BEX but about capacity.

Director Harris chimed in that saying the SE will stay steady for high school felt like "Groundhog Day" with all the building going on in the city including the SE. 

(I note here that when I wrote to the directors recently about high school capacity and noted the opening of a charter high school soon, one director brushed that right off.  I think that the Board and the district should keep a careful eye on the situation.

The Washington State Supreme Court is to hear oral arguments on May 17th for the lawsuit against the charter school law.  I suspect the plaintiffs might not win and that will open the floodgates for more major players like KIPP.  I attended the Washington State Charter School Conference last Saturday and I think many people are ready to go, based on the outcome of the lawsuit.)

Director Burke concurred with Harris, saying that it does seem "counterintuitive" because the real estate you can purchase for the best price is in the southend.

Director DeWolf said that not all schools were accounted for and should be.

Staff talked about the City building 5,000 new units of housing.  Ms. Davies said the district had data from the City "broken up by age bands so you can see the increase for SPS."

Director Mack pointed out that there seem to be some issue with boundaries and feeder schools.  One example she gave was if Broadview-Thomson students were assigned to Whitman. 

There was then an odd interlude as it came to be explained how Nova is not an Option School (as Director Harris said it was) because Middle College and Nova are service schools with alternative learning in order to NOT in their enrollment in August.

Director Mack then said that she had read the Assignment Plan several times and that she felt like the Option versus the Service school was "nothing with what was being offered but more about assignment."

Mr. Best referenced a new tool that the district is developing that will further drill down on capacity management data.

Mack also asked - along the lines of Burke's earlier question - for complete information on BEX projects, what did and didn't happen, costs, etc.

One interesting item came up as a result of a question by Director Pinkham.  Davies said that students can apply to either middle school in their region.  If they wanted their assignment middle school, they didn't have to do anything but they could try for the other middle school via Choice Application.  I didn't know that was possible.

Davies stated that the waitlist dissolves on August 31st.  It appears they are continuing to move waitlists but how they are doing that is unclear to me.  But directors pressed them on that point.

Mack noted that many schools do not appear full and why not move their waitlists?  For example, Olympic Hills, in a brand-new building, is only half-full.

Ms. Davies gave a somewhat convoluted answer about schools creating configurations around enrollment numbers and staffing follows that.  It makes sense but it didn't answer the question.

Harris asked about the practice of not moving students from one school to another school that had room in order to not hurt the first school.  Davies said they do look at that.  Again, not really answering the question of why and who gets that choice.

Director Burke asked a simple question; Do we ask schools if they want more students?  Davies said no, they don't go school by school and ask.  She said some principals do want more kids and others don't.  (Yes, I can hear your reaction from here and I don't think this policy works for an overcrowded district.)

Let's use Hale as an example.  It was rebuilt to 1400 and yet, from the data, it appears they are somewhere between 1100-1200.  Now, they want to be about 1,000 for their "philosophy" but again, in overcrowded times, why would one school get the luxury of staying smaller?  It's a mystery.

And apparently the portable situation has changed with Garfield now getting zero portables but Robert Eagle Staff Middle School getting 3-4. It was stated that Mercer Middle School has 19 (!) portables. Amazing.  Staff also wants 8 portables "as contingency." 

There was also noted that some principals decide they don't need an art or music room and it becomes a classroom. 

Director Mack pointed out that it is odd how the district is adding City pre-Ks while taking out CBO pre-Ks.  She also said Sped placement was "opaque."

Geary wanted to know how many community centers have pre-Ks.  And that's a great question given that at the last Families and Education Committee meeting, staff there said they were going to start looking into space there.  Wait, what?  The City didn't look into their own space first but went right to the district for free space. Hmmm.

Director Mack asked why, if Cedar Park is half-full (not even 100 students), why are they adding rooms (per staff's slides).  Oh, that could just mean adding furniture of technology - "space" is just a catch-all. I don't think the directors liked that.  Stunningly, Mr. Best said when they opened Cedar Park,  they gave them furniture "but we didn't give them technology or curriculum." 

Going back to RESMS, Director Pinkham pointed out that the murals that would be covered would be Chief Joseph and Chief Seattle.  He is clearly not happy about this.  Mack asked if parents couldn't be asked, "Hey, we see you go assigned here but there is space over there? Would you be interested?" 

Davies said that they have the ability to look at waitlists "backwards" and may be able to use Mack's suggestion.

On next steps, apparently there are to be "community meetings on potential boundary changes" sometime between now and early June with more meetings in the fall.  Final changes would be okayed in December 2018/January 2019 to be implemented in Fall 2019.

My Thoughts

Look at slide 56 and we see these two stark sentences:

- Nearly half of all schools have reached or exceeded the operational capacity of the building
- About 48 schoools have not yet reached their 
operational capacity.

So in a district of about 100 buildings, half are totally maxed out and half aren't.  That's a lot of space that isn't being utilized.  Of those 48 buildings;

31 are attendance area schools,
 7 are Option schools,
5 are middle schools and
5 are high schools. 

So it appears that Hale is being kept small by its own wish but Cleveland is not fully enrolled  (it has over 100 kids on their waitlist which is the largest one for any high school) and yet I have heard they want to grow.  Both West Seattle high schools are underenrolled with Chief Sealth holding steady and WSHS going up some.  But Sealth only has 3 students on their waitlist and WSHS has 57.  (My thought would be that the movement of popular Roosevelt High principal, Brian Vance, to WSHS may have something to do with that.)

It looks like Ballard will now be the biggest high school in the district with about 2,000 students and the district wants to add four portables to enlarge their 1700 student capacity. 

Meanwhile on the middle school front, Whitman is woefully underenrolled.  Some of that has to do with the assignments to Robert Eagle Staff Middle School but, from reader comments on this issue, it appears that Whitman has both a lower-quality facility AND not weak offerings.  You won't get parents into a school that has both those issues.  And now they want to put portables at RESMS (and block some of the murals that are central to the identity of the school.)

I hope everyone who chimed in about this issue tells the Board, "I told you so." So many parents KNEW that RESMS was going to be overenrolled and warned the district and now, here we are. 

Interestingly, Eckstein is no longer overenrolled but now it's Hamilton's turn.  Mercer looks like it's going to be about 100 kids over capacity.  But it's JAMS with the largest middle school waitlist at 47.

For elementaries, there's Thornton Creek at 131 on their waitlist (which they can't fit).  John Stanford International has a waitlist of 125.  Then it drops down to Fairmount Park at 84 and McDonald International at 65 and Thurgood Marshall at 50. 

But boy, it does look like Option Schools are fairly popular.  Harris made a comment about this and "replicating" them which is a great idea AND would stave off charter school competition.

But Geary spoke up and said that they needed to be mindful that the choice to leave a less desirable school for an Option School is something not all parents know or understand and leaves some students in schools with higher poverty.  I do not agree with her on this point for two reasons.  One, Option Schools are open to everyone and no one has an advantage on getting in (except for a geo-zone).  Two, Orca and Cleveland have about 80% F/RL status and they are very popular.

Waitlist numbers for Option Schools
Boren STEM - 133
Pathfinder - 181
Hazel Wolf - 341 (not a typo)
Salmon Bay - 107
TOPS - 77

Then there's the strange case of South Shore which is very underenrolled and yet has 48 kids on the waitlist.  It is yet another newish building that we were told had to be done and yet here we are.  

Even Licton Springs is bringing up its numbers from 164 to about 180.  That's great but still low and apparently, RESMS and LS are chafing over the shared spaces. 

This is yet another place the district did not listen.  They should have put Licton Springs in at Cedar Park (where hey! they are going to get more bathrooms in 2019). 

In fact, on slide 64, here are the thoughts on what they might do for that complex of three schools.

- boundary change
- move or add additional site for the Highly Capable Cohort

You could have predicted that because HCC gets moved around all the time.  Problem is, where could they all go?  I have no idea.