Tuesday Open Thread
District enrollment and school tours information here.
What do most speakers at tomorrow night's Board meeting want to talk about?
Approval of the Student Assignment Transition Plan for 2019-20 as it pertains to Graham Hill's Montessori program
I'll have a separate thread on this one because there are some notable issues.
From NBC News: While teenage girls attempt suicide more often than teenage boys, according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, boys are more likely to die by suicide.
From Education Week:
What do most speakers at tomorrow night's Board meeting want to talk about?
Approval of the Student Assignment Transition Plan for 2019-20 as it pertains to Graham Hill's Montessori program
I'll have a separate thread on this one because there are some notable issues.
From NBC News: While teenage girls attempt suicide more often than teenage boys, according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, boys are more likely to die by suicide.
From Education Week:
In February, educators will gather outside a massive detention camp for migrant children and stage a 24-hour "teach in."Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is in the news again. From NPR:
The upcoming protest at the Tornillo, Texas detention camp is organized by Mandy Manning, the 2018 National Teacher of the Year, who teaches newly arrived refugee and immigrant students in Washington state.
A federal commission led by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos recommends rescinding Obama-era guidance intended to reduce racial discrimination in school discipline. And, DeVos says, it urges schools to "seriously consider partnering with local law enforcement in the training and arming of school personnel."OSPI says:
While student survivors rallied for gun control, DeVos said early on that would not be a focus of the commission's work.
The final report highlights a single concrete gun control recommendation, pertaining to the expansion of "extreme risk protection orders," which allow household members or police to seek the removal of firearms from a mentally disturbed person.
Some of the federal safety commission's new recommendations, like directing resources toward mental health and social-emotional learning, actually echo the views of education experts who support discipline alternatives. The question now is whether the government's latest reversal in direction on civil rights might bring a return to the days of zero tolerance.
The bottom line is this: Rescinding the 2014 guidelines will have no effect on Washington’s laws and rules related to student discipline. In addition, this will have no effect on the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction’s (OSPI) enforcement of civil rights laws that prohibit discrimination in the administration of student discipline.Also from OPSI:
Under state law, Washington school districts must adopt and follow the student discipline rules released by OSPI in August. The rules encourage schools to use best practices in discipline, and prohibit schools from excluding students from school for absences or tardiness, among other things.
For the fifth year in a row, the 4-year statewide graduation rate has grown, breaking another record, the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) announced today. The 4-year graduation rate in the 2017–18 school year was 80.9 percent, an increase of 1.6 percentage points from the previous year.What's on your mind?
The graduation rate for students who graduated within five years also hit an all-time high at 82.7 percent in 2018.
Several groups of students in the Class of 2018 increased their graduation rate by more than the statewide average. The highest were English learners and Pacific Islander students, who increased their graduation rates by 6.4 percent and 5.9 percent, respectively.
Comments
Sate Nilver
I suspect we'll see some ed reform types running as Gates Foundation has contracted with a consulting firm to find such people. It might be important to check how long new candidates have actually lived in the districts they want to serve.
The district continues to see the negative repercussions of using program placement to fill empty seats in neighborhood schools. Programs like Montessori and HCC should not share space with neighborhood schools.
110 of the 358 students at Graham Hill have choice seats at the school. I did not hear any plan for dealing with the potential loss of 30% of the school’s students and staff.
Fairmount Parent
- Interesting Meeting
That said, the racial segregation between the programs is unsurmountable and must be addressed. By and large, most families feel it needs to be addressed by joining programs; other means were attempted and deemed unsuccessful by a highly committed group of educators at the school.. Other families have already left who didn't agree with the plan and most likely, the school will have a drop in enrollment as incoming families will choose not to opt in to the program and therefore, school. It's too bad, because the "contemporary" program has amazing teachers and have yet felt for years they are looked down upon as a "less than" program. It's gross. It's imperative the change occur.
However, the leadership at the school must be addressed. It wasn't evident last night because people needed to come together to support the one program, but the principal did not clearly communicate the process to become involved in the equity team as they made the choice to move forward over the last three years. One teacher spoke about it taking three years but most families were only involved in it last spring, when it was announced at small language group meetings and then one large meeting. There's been no interest in actively engaging families to solicit feedback, organize excitement about standing up for what's right and doing it in a way that's inclusive and caring for one another's perspectives. Did the principal communicate at all about it this fall? Any new K families probably had no clue when "one program" was even mentioned on a bulletin board or one flyer. The principal did the least you could do, frankly- she sent a few robocalls and emails and one letter in late November. She updated the website that is rarely checked in the community anyway. At the PTA meeting, she said she didn't want to share plans since not everyone was there? She said she would solicit involvement in some kind of team to help plan and then never did- the school was told a community organizer wold come help with the communication and family engagement and it never happened. Families didn't know and I am not confident teachers knew the process either.
I don't know- the school needs to lose it's Montessori program because the racial segregation is atrocious. It's evident in all choice programs, frankly, or most of them, and when they are in one building, you cannot NOT face the reality of what choice programing does to our city. But in order for the school to move forward positively and hopefully not lose families, we need leadership that can take this on, and wants to. The weak leadership was lost on the Board last night but it's very evident in the community- not just with a small group of parents but with lots of parents and with faculty and staff too. There is concern there will be both teacher and family flight, not because of the loss of the program, but because of the leadership that is needed to lead with a strong, caring and clear vision for the school.
Toure
Toure, I agree, the inequity can get "worse"- families, particularly the white families attending Montessori from outside the neighborhood zone, will no longer go to Graham Hill and will try to get into other option schools (or try to get into better academically performing nearby neighborhood schools). Then what happens-segregation begins to exist not within programs within the school (HCC like Thurgood Marshall -Neighborhood school/HCC program, Montessori/Contemporary at Graham Hill ) but by whole school buildings (ex. Graham Hill becomes predominantly families of color, since all the potential white families who currently come from outside the neighborhood zone don't have preference and they no longer want to go there because the draw of the Montessori is gone, PTA money decreases dramatically, etc.) within the South End Schools. Then a program such as STEM or Montessori needs to be created in a school as a way to get families to come back to a school. Or you have to build a brand new STEm school like Renton recently did that has total community excitement! Seems like the School Board/district should first require Graham Hill to have a desirable, thought out curriculum plan with the Graham Hill Community support (like Leschi did) before they agree to remove the "choice Montessori program"so as not to have yet another struggling south end neighborhood school.
And why didn't the committee that was tasked with this item mention that the 110 of the 358 spots at this school are choice spots? That's almost 1/3 of a school that might be gone! I thought I heard one of the Board Directors on the committee that was tasked with this document say quietly something like it only impacts 1 class or something minimal. There are I think 6 classes at Graham Hill that are considered as Montessori. !/3 of a school is a lot!
-Don't Understand
You are right. Rosa Parks wasn’t arguing for the end of public buses, but she was protesting enforced segregation on those public buses. In the same vein, the Graham Hill community, confronted by the segregated reality of their school, are no longer willing to condone or ignore it. They want to be one school, not a school divided by options, the exercise of which is closely tied to race and privilege. And not just at Graham Hill, but thoughout the district.
Institutional memory
Fat Chance
So options are a bad thing for kids of color. Hmmm.
Interesting that the Montessori program at Bagley seems to be thriving.
I am hearing this stepping up meme that Option schools are part of the problem of inequity in the district. I'm not really buying that.
Odd, years and years back, no one wanted cookie-cutter schools and now it seems that may have changed for some. Because if you dilute Advanced Learning and cut out Option schools, that's what you'll get.
Fed up
I'm not hearing that people think Montessori or choice programs should be cut out, but since these programs can only be funded by PTA fundraising or organization to find matching gifts, grants, etc, then its seriously inequitable and needs to be evaluated at large. There's white flight to the option programs. You and Opting should look at the numbers of white students in these schools and how they compare to schools in the area and our city at large. This is especially true in the southend (not Southshore, which I imagine is because that school is funded somehow by a large foundation so has a ton of extra money not raised by a PTA) and in West Seattle, where are larger numbers of POC. The choice programs are by and large white, as are HCC programs, and these students are leaving schools with more kids of color.
It also doesn't sound like the Montessori program at GH is not thriving, its just inequitable. I am confident Bagley doesn't have the racial diversity that GH has.
"since these programs can only be funded by PTA fundraising or organization to find matching gifts, grants, etc, then its seriously inequitable and needs to be evaluated at large."
No, that is not the "only" ways those programs can be funded. That is what SPS has chosen to do, but such an approach is not necessary. No public school should have to rely on outside funding in order to exist and offer programs. That is not a failure of the parents, it is a failure of the district, which ought to provide the necessary funds.
I get that there is rising concern about PTA funding and rightly so. But we must remember that PTA funding is not the *source* of inequity. The source of inequity is financial decisions made in the state legislature and in the JSCEE. When either the state or the district rely on PTA funding, they are creating the inequity. PTA funding should not be necessary. Eliminating it, however, *does not eliminate inequity.*
I think that point needs to be stated again: eliminating PTA funding does not eliminate inequity. All that would happen here is elimination of programs, many of which serve kids of color. People are focusing on a symptom and not only neglecting the problem, they will make the problem worse.
Option schools are a great way to get around the residential segregation patterns of Seattle. The district mismanages the availability of and access to option schools. They mismanage the funding of option schools. But option schools make a ton of sense for desegregation and for meeting the individual needs of all kids, especially kids of color.
The focus should be on getting sufficient funding to make option schools and specialized programs exist without any need for PTA fundraising or outside grants or such. That is how you make equity happen. Eliminating those schools and programs is inequitable and needs to be called out and opposed.
Toure
-Very Interesting
Census tract 102 (Graham Hill and part of Hawthorne) has a Median Household Income of $85,240 and 4.0% of families below the poverty level. 40.3% of the estimated 4,605 residents in this area consider themselves to be non-white.
Population by Race and Ethnicity:
• White: 2,748, 59.7%
• Black or African American: 694, 15.1%
• Asian: 744, 16.2%
• Two or More Races: 288, 6.3%
• Hispanic or Latino, any race: 131, 2.8%
And census tract 111.2 (Graham Hill, southern part of the assignment zone) has a Median Household Income of $74,474 and 9.1% of families below the poverty level. 59.5% of the estimated 4,390 residents in this area consider themselves to be non-white.
Population by Race and Ethnicity:
• White: 1,776, 40.5%
• Black or African American: 605, 13.8%
• American Indian and Alaska Native: 13, 0.3%
• Asian: 1,219, 27.8%
• Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander: 23, 0.5%
• Some Other Race: 21, 0.5%
• Two or More Races: 239, 5.4%
• Hispanic or Latino, any race: 494, 11.3%
Those sure don't seem very segregated!
Graham Hill 248 students
South Shore PK-8 34
Thurgood Marshall 20
Orca K-8 18
MLK 14
Hawthorne 8
Dunlap 7
Van Asselt 6
Kimball 5
Dearborn Park 3
Leschi 3
TOPS K-8 3
Wing Luke 3
Adams 2
John Muir 2
Pathfinder K-8 2
Emerson 1
Maple 1
Rainier View 1
STEM K-8 1
Stevens 1
So, there's 383 elementary age public school students who live in the Graham Hill attendance area. 248 of them attend Graham Hill and 135 of them go to one of 20 different public schools. Of the 135 who go to different public schools, 58 go to other assignment area schools, 57 go to option schools, and 20 go to HCC.
And where the students attending Graham Hill live (2017-18):
Graham Hill 248 students
Emerson 25
MLK 19
Hawthorne 18
Wing Luke 14
Dearborn Park 8
Dunlap 5
Kimball 4
Rainier View 4
John Muir 3
Van Asselt 3
Out of District/Unknown 2
Bailey Gatzert 1
Beacon Hill 1
Lowell 1
Maple 1
Montlake 1
So, there's 358 students who attend Graham Hill (well, last year). 248 of them live in the Graham Hill attendance area and 110 of them live in other assignment areas. So 110 students from out of zone commute to Graham Hill for school and 135 commute out of the Graham Hill zone for school. So, actually Graham Hill is a net exporter of students.
And that's not even mentioning the 30% of the overall Seattle population who attend private school. If 30% of Graham Hill attendance area students attend private school, that would be another 107 students going to private school. Which would mean Graham Hill is importing 110 students from other attendance areas and exporting 242 students to other schools.
So 248 students living in the Graham Hill attendance area are attending Graham Hill and 242 have voted with their feet. Ruh roh!
In recent memory, bussing was both the "solution to" and the "cause of" inequity. I remember when SPS was adamant about "door-to-door" bussing being a moral imperative for equity and then 10 years later blaming the cost of bussing as the excuse for not enough resources in the classroom to create equity.
Choice is neither the cause of, nor the solution, to inequity.
However at the moment, there is a much better question. Do we want families to have any Seattle Public School choice? OR do we want the ONLY choice to be leaving SPS.
Public charter schools are in Seattle now and likely to be here for the foreseeable future. As such, families have choices. They can choose to leave the district, change addresses, or they can choose a PUBLIC charter school.
Right now SPS does not look very much like the City of Seattle. The nearly 30% opt out rate creates more problems than anything else. Seattle has a poverty rate of 13%, while SPS poverty rate is 20 points higher.
Replacing options schools, that work within the system, with charter schools that work outside the system will only create substantially greater inequities and most likely cause the poverty rate in SPS to skyrocket.
https://www.seattle.gov/opcd/population-and-demographics
Public option schools tend to shift enrollment away from private schools and out of district enrollment and improve the financial health of a public school district. They do this by enrolling students who would otherwise NOT enroll and typically tend to enroll students who are less expensive to educate than the median. This means that there is more revenue for students who need it.
Public charters operate on a similar principle. In order to be profitable, public charter schools target students who are less expensive to educate than the median. However, they target students who would otherwise be enrolled in Public schools. This then concentrates poverty in a way that option schools do not.
While option schools tend to add revenue to a district, Charter schools remove revenue.
You also said public charter school students tend to be less expensive to educate than the median, so if they leave it concentrates poverty in the schools that serve those who remain. Again, same question. Where can we get data on how expensive such students are to educate? Presumably parents leave for public charters because their students are not being well-educated at the public non-charter schools, so is it possible they need something more expensive, or at least something different? The fact that public charters don't spend more on them doesn't necessarily mean they are less expensive to educate--it may just mean they are not getting the education they need. Isn't that part of the problem with charter schools--the lack of accountability?
I guess what I'm really asking about is a possible disconnect between how much is spent and this idea of how expensive a student is to educate.
unclear
And responding to Kellie "Choice is neither the cause of, nor the solution, to inequity." I couldn't agree more. The people making the choice are the only people who can solve the problem. The institutional problems started a long time ago with Jim Crow laws, redlining, Japanese Internment camps, the list can go on. As a white student growing up in the south end of Seattle in the 90s, I was not bused anywhere. I went to south end schools. By the time I got to middle school the segregation began: “Horizons” at South Shore and “Humanities” at Franklin. North end white kids were being bused into south end schools, where they were then placed into special programs rather than integrated into the south end school population. Talk about a waste of time, money and a huge carbon footprint, all to create the original “choice programs”. The district can’t force people to send their kids to public school; if people want to opt out and pay for private school, then so be it. What this city can do is educate parents and communities to start looking at the real issues of institutional racism and ask our city to battle our segregated legacy head-on. We could become an example for the entire country: Imagine a city flush with money, ambition, power, ingenuity and unparalleled intelligence; Now imagine that same city figuring out how to give every child within its boundaries the best education available. Full stop.
Lastly, I would like to ask for the name of the Anonymous poster who started their comments with "Did the district/board actually make a final decision yet? It's not the role of the teachers/parents/admin who presented to the board last night as also being responsible for making considerations related to enrollment, is it?" I would love to know who you are so we can meet and discuss how to help GH a move forward. If you are a GHPTA member I imagine you have my email. ;)
Thanks, all! I look forward to the journey ahead.
-O'Hara Jiménez Graham Hill PTA Co-President
A retired principal’s opinion is just that, an opinion. It has no more value than anyone else’s.
I’d love to hear what effect you think this change would have on enrollment at Graham Hill. How many teachers do you anticipate losing if the option program is removed?
Fairmount Parent
You are of course free to throw aside any opinions you want. The heaviness of the retired SPS principal’s words, spoken to me in an honest conversation about our city and the state of our public schools, will always stay with me.
As for GH, if I had a crystal ball I would tell you exactly how it will play out. What I do know is that this fight for Graham Hill to desegregate is a litmus test for our city as a whole. Will we wallow in fear and point fingers? Or will we be brave enough to engage in meaningful and respectful dialogue about the baseline issues at hand? As the PTA co-President of Graham Hill, I am going to do my part to help our community have honest and open discussions, where we treat each other with respect and aren’t afraid to do the hard work of dismantling the racist history of our city.
Lastly, to whom ever runs this blog: Please follow the rules you have laid out in bold at the bottom of this blog “It is the policy and practice of this blog to delete unsigned and anonymous comments.” Full names should be required.
Thank you,
O’Hara Jiménez GHPTA Co-President
When you stop families from outside the Graham Hill zone from choosing to attend Graham Hill, that makes the Graham Hill assignment zone too small because a lot of your kids are choosing to attend South Shore PK-8 and Orca and TM and MLK and Hawthorne and Dunlap and Van Asselt and Kimball...). So, should GH-zone families be banned from making those choices, too? Surely those choices are also contributing to what you perceive of as segregation.
Or you get rid of the Montessori program altogether to stop those pesky out of assignment zone students from coming to Graham Hill from Emerson, MLK, Hawthorne, Wing Luke, Dearborn Park, Dunlap, Kimball, and Rainier View zones. Phew! Then "segregation" will finally be miraculously cured in the Graham Hill zone! Except that when those 110 students stop coming to Graham Hill, you either need to find another 110 students to come to Graham Hill or you're going to lose 1/3 of your teachers. If the kids aren't there, the district won't send the teachers there either. When the 34 Emerson zone students stop coming to Graham Hill and go to Emerson instead, Graham Hill will lose the teacher(s) for those kids and Emerson will gain the teacher(s). Same with MLK and Hawthorne.
Or you close Graham Hill altogether. Elementary schools with less than 250 students are really expensive to run. 500+ student elementary schools are more cost effective.
When families of different races make different choices (to attend Montessori or not), those are different choices, not segregation. All the families picked that, either by picking Montessori or not picking Montessori. When you get remove choices, this hurts all families. And it will hurt Graham Hill.
Thank you,
O'Hara Jiménez GHPTA Co-President
I am not following your question, possibly because you misquoted me a bit. So I will try a different approach.
I am highlighting the "dollar-cost-averaging" nature of school funding. The State of Washington pays a set amount per student. For simplicity, let's say $10,000 per student. The expectation is that some students will need more and some students will need less but that ALL students should be able to be served for the average funding of $10,000 per student.
There is never an expectation that any particular student would require $10,000 for their "free and appropriate education." The expectation is that AVERAGE cost of some students needing more and some students needing less can be managed the school district within that budget.
ELL students and students with IEPs get more funding over and above average amount, which is appropriate to provide additional services. But there are many categories of students who require extra services but do not receive extra money. Medical 504 plans can have substantial costs but there is no extra money. There is also no extra money for homeless students. All of those services are required to be provided within the AVERAGE per student funding
Public charters are well documented to exploit this system. Public charter are REQUIRED to generate a PROFIT to cover their operating costs. Even the "non-profit" charters, need to generate additional revenue to cover their overhead.
As such Public charters "target" or "market" their services to students who are most likely to be able to be served within the budget. This why special education is such a hot topic with charter schools. The money for Special Education is also generated on a "dollar-cost-average" basis. If a charter school is ONLY servicing resource room level sped, but they are still be paid the average amount, that is a lot of extra dollars to the charter school.
To be as direct as possible, when a charter school services a "less expensive" population, that extra funding is profit. Less expensive can be defined as LESS than the average funding amount. When an option school services a "less expensive" population, that extra funding is REVENUE that is then used to fund other district projects.
Hope that helps.
First I want to be crystal clear. SPS practice of placing "option programs," intentionally designed to attract primarily white middle class families, into attendance area schools is deeply problematic in more dimensions than a simple blog post can capture.
That said, it is important to note that this practice was considered the "equity" practice and the "desegregation" practice of a different time. It is a variation of the old "magnet school" approach, where you placed a program that would "magnetically attract" these "less expensive than average" students and place them into building that was challenge to fill either for geographic or academic reasons.
The belief at that time was that this practice would generate more resources for ALL students. It is a variation on the notion that a rising tide lifts all boats.
It's a good theory, but in practice this can create as many problems as it solves at the building level. It made a lot more sense in a 100% choice system where 100% of the Graham Hill families chose the school. It makes a lot less sense when it is truly two separate schools in one building.
Ms. Jiménez said:
"If option schools and choice programs weren’t a filtering system then they wouldn’t exist."
Yes they would and have for decades. The first "option" schools were alternative schools, mostly created by parents. And they were open to all. In fact, they were almost charter school-like in that they incubated new ideas in teaching and learning.
"When speaking to a retired SPS principal about the issue of segregation at Graham Hill she said, and I quote, “Montessori choice schools were racist at their inception, and designed as a holding place for the white kids that didn’t test into HCC.“
And that is that principal's opinion. It's not true. I'd be willing to bet that most of the kids in the two Montessori programs are not in Advanced Learning. (What is also odd about this whole thing is that in my post about waivers, Graham Hill is still on record for a waiver thru 2020 for Montessori.)
I absolutely agree that this city and this district could have the best urban district in the country especially if they truly used a multi-pronged approach to fighting racism and inequity instead of pitting parent groups against each other.
I run this blog. But 1)people do not have to sign their real names (but it takes courage to do that and I applaud all who do but I understand why teachers/staff would not). They have to USE a name/moniker. 2) I do have another life and I try to keep up but sometimes anonymous comments get by me. I delete as I can. Ms Jiménez, while I appreciate your inside comments here, it is not your place to tell my readers what to write in their comments.
Scooby said:
"Getting rid of one choice program is not a model for how to desegregate a city. The segregation you (and the retired principal) perceive in the Montessori program at your school is not segregation. It is different families making different choices. Why aren't more families of color choosing the Montessori program?"
And boom! there it is. The one thing this district NEVER likes to face down (or even figure out) - why do parents make the enrollment choices that they do?
Whether anyone likes it or not, parents make enrollment decisions for all kinds of rational or irrational reasons. It can hurt schools when the district doesn't track these patterns.
Thanks, Kellie, for your always helpful insights.
I don't attend Graham Hill and as you correctly perceived I'm far from done learning about institutional racism. But my school community did implode. And it was very sad and painful for those of us who were left behind. I hope Graham Hill has a better time of it. Good luck!
December 3, 2018: 321 Students
June 1, 2018: 347 Students
June 1, 2017: 370 Students
(this is basically a loss of a class and teacher each year)
With the proposed removal of the "Montessori choice program" the attendance at Graham Hill will drop by a considerable amount since 110 students come from out of the geozone and will now choose another option school, private school, or will just attend their neighborhood school. Sure, some might stay, but if there are 110 students outside the geozone coming and there are 6 grades that's about 18 kids a year. Take away 18 kids that will potentially not be attending from outside the geozone for K next year, if approved, then that's already 1 class and 1 teacher lost from the school (and 303 students remaining at the school). But more families will leave this fall- outside the geozone or not, because during choice enrollment in February, families frustrated by the continued poor leadership at the school, staff turnover, lack of transparency, whatever, will choose to apply to go elsewhere. And the 303 total enrollment drops into the 200's. When does the district step in to do something or prevent this from happening? It's not like the academics are a draw at this school. Families could go to their neighborhood school and shorten their commute.
-Some Thoughts
There is a critical piece of data missing from the numbers, because the district does not keep this information in the enrollment reports. The waitlist numbers.
Has Graham Hill had a waitlist for the last few years? If yes, the district has deliberately restricted access to the school. If no, then families are already avoiding the school and some sort of substantial change would make a lot of sense.
Scooby, I still disagree. Not being able to attach a name or context to a person gives me little faith in the conversation. I am of course sorry to hear about your experience with a failing school. I would like to know more and learn from your experience if you are open to speaking in person.
Kellie, I would love to learn more from you as well.
Anyone on this blog, please DM me on twitter if you are there @oharajimenez.
21 students in 2013
29 students in 2014
27 students in 2015
42 students in 2016
22 students in 2017
And "Historical Assignments by School: Kindergarten" (table 2c)
13 students in 2013
17 students in 2014
13 students in 2015
18 students in 2016
19 students in 2017
And "Historical Waitlists by School: Kindergarten" (table 2d)
9 students in 2013
16 students in 2014
14 students in 2015
24 students in 2016
10 students in 2017
From here: https://www.seattleschools.org/UserFiles/Servers/Server_543/File/District/Departments/Enrollment%20Planning/Reports/Annual%20Enrollment/2017-18/Section%202_Open%20Enrollment%20and%20School%20Choice%20Trends.pdf
This other report also breaks something out by grade level, but it's hard to tell what. I guess who's attending their assignment school vs. a different assignment school through the choice process.
https://www.seattleschools.org/UserFiles/Servers/Server_543/File/District/Departments/Enrollment%20Planning/Reports/Annual%20Enrollment/2017-18/Section%203_Comparison%20o%20fEnrollment%20and%20Attendance%20Area%20by%20Type%20of%20School%20and%20Level.pdf
There were 5 Non-Attendance Area Kindergarten Siblings on the wait list for Graham Hill last summer. Hard to tell from the district form if they were still on the list by Aug 31 when it was dissolved. It seems like they probably got in.
https://www.seattleschools.org/cms/One.aspx?portalId=627&pageId=14242
Summary from the table:
K Gen ed: 2
K Montessori: 3
1 Montessori: 2
2 Gen Ed: 3
2 Montessori: 1
3 Gen Ed: 1
4 Gen Ed: 3
4 Montessori: 1
5 Montessori: 2
So there is some unmet demand for both Gen Ed and Montessori seats, but not a huge amount, at least not at the later stages of the waiting list period.
LakeCityMom
I want to follow up on a few of your statements.
If option schools and choice programs weren’t a filtering system then they wouldn’t exist. ...a retired SPS principal ...said... “Montessori choice schools were racist at their inception, and designed as a holding place for the white kids that didn’t test into HCC.“
First, OF COURSE option schools are a filtering system--they filter by program type or approach. They exist to provide people alternatives to the traditional K-5 neighborhood school model--alternatives like K-8, immersion, Montessori. It's like saying mint chip and vanilla ice cream are filtering systems because they separate people by flavor preference. Second, are you suggesting Montessori programs are inherently racist, or just when in part of your school? Would it be racist if your whole school became Montessori?
All of the numbers...will never address the actual issue: Separate But Equal Does Not Exist. When Seattle Public Schools decides to take on the passive agressive [sic] liberalism of this city, and own the fact that our schools are segregated, then we will be getting somewhere.
Separate but Equal is not relevant here because the goal is to provide Separate And Different--as in traditional vs. Montessori. Equality could be the issue if you were talking about outcomes or resources or something, alleging that the Montessori program provides better outcomes (more growth) or is better funded. The latter shouldn't be a problem since PTA funding should be shared across the school. If the former is the real issue, why wouldn't you want to expand the Montessori program and get more/all of the neighborhood students into it?
The people making the choice are the only people who can solve the problem. The institutional problems started a long time ago with Jim Crow laws, redlining, Japanese Internment camps, the list can go on.
So parents choosing an option school are the problem, or the district officials who allow a choice system are the problem? Or are choices inherently the problem, and we should have a one-size-fits-all program for everyone? I get the feeling the latter is what you're really saying, without wanting to really say it... When you talk about "figuring out how to give every child within its boundaries the best education available," it seems that you actually mean the same type of model. However, the best education for each child might mean different types of programs based on learning styles, personalities, etc.
What I do know is that this fight for Graham Hill to desegregate is a litmus test for our city as a whole. Will we wallow in fear and point fingers? Or will we be brave enough to engage in meaningful and respectful dialogue about the baseline issues at hand? As the PTA co-President of Graham Hill, I am going to do my part to help our community have honest and open discussions, where we treat each other with respect and aren’t afraid to do the hard work of dismantling the racist history of our city.
While your intentions may be good, it does not seem that you are truly here to have meaningful dialogue about the root issues if you are going to refer to this as segregation and compare it to Jim Crow and Japanese internment camps. The Graham Hill Montessori program is open to anyone. This is a choice issues, not an assignment or discrimination issue. If the problem is that you think people of color find it harder to navigate the school choice system, let's see if the data support your opinion. As another poster illustrated already, there are higher rates of students of color in many other choice schools, so that argument doesn't seem to be well supported. SPS institutional policies do not seem to be what is keeping students of color away from your Montessori program.
Ima Parente
Also, I think it might be helpful if you explicitly stated what you would like to see happen. I'm not talking about big goals like "end segregation," but rather practical approaches to getting to where you want to be. Eliminate the Montessori program to stop out-of-zone white kids from coming to your school? Convert the entire school to Montessori, with the same mix of kids all integrated? Keep the same kids but integrate them into a non-Montessori program?
How do you plan to address the issues at the root of parent choices? Do you acknowledge that parents make choices for a wide variety of reasons, and that many choose programs for pedagogical reasons? How are changes to the instructional model likely to impact your school?
There are big-picture questions that you need to be thinking about and communicating as you go down this road. Every decision has consequences, and while the details of how individual decisions might shake out are hard to know, some of the general ideas are not. In the name of the honest and meaningful discussion you say you want to have, please be willing to engage in some of the big-picture thinking and discussion here.
Ima Parente
Thanks for expressing your outrage at the fact that racial segregation is a reality in Seattle schools, that children enter though one door and then proceed to highly segregated classrooms, that they are confronted daily with the knowledge that one program bares all the demarcations of privilege, while the other.........
It doesn’t matter whether this situation is permitted by choice or not. It’s morally wrong and it affects the practical education of all the children on a daily basis. The lived experience of the students is that segregation by choice exists. Do you not think they wonder why?
The Graham Hill community made representations to the School Board at its last meeting, which made the Board members hang their heads in shame. There is no justification for allowing any segregation within schools or as part of assignment plans to continue, and all the lengthy fake rhetoric won’t change that.
Institutional memory
Would it solve the problem if the Montessori program was in a different location, a freestanding school, so that GH students didn’t witness the “demarcations of privilege” each day? Or is the problem that there even exists a program that is, so it seems, of less interest to families of color? Are AP classes also bad, because they attract fewer students of color? Are leveled reading groups and walk-to-math approaches also bad because they also often break students into more segregated groups?
What if were, instead, to support outreach to help apparently underserved populations better understand the Montessori program at GH so its demographics could better reflect the surrounding area? What if every student at GH had to choose whether they wanted the traditional or Montessori program, even if that meant the Montessori program grew (and ultimately there were fewer spots for out-of-zone students)?
Why is there such hesitancy from you and those who think like you to answer basic questions about what people think programming and assignment should look like in practice, and instead you resort to casting alternate opinions as racist or fake rhetoric?
Ima Parente
2)This idea that somehow a school district can equalize for everything. They can't. There will always be kids who get more/different upbringing that includes more exposure to travel, arts, etc. You can try to make sure that kids across the board get some of that but equally? I don't see how.
3) Ms. Jiménez, you say GH has "“demarcations of privilege” - please explain what that looks like. It is just because the Montessori program is mostly white children or something else? Also, why do you perceive fewer parents of color choose the Montessori program? And if there are "two separate schools" at GH, what has been the role of the principal to unify the school?
4) I appreciate that Ms. Jiménez worries that closing the Montessori program - and discussing that - may see GH with fewer students. If you close down a program that is popular with some parents, I'm not sure what outcome you could expect. We heard the same from Madrona a couple of years back when they decided that there was only one way for their school to be. People vote with their feet and not much can change that.
I'll be ending this comment section by 5 pm today.
The reality is that segregation which privileges the well prepared over those who haven’t had historical access to the same insider tracks and considerations, is wrong, wherever it occurs. In addition it distorts the outcomes and experiences of public schools. And yes I include walk to math, AP and all the other quaint vestiges of privilege which masquerade as academic difference in this ambivalent city.
Programs and services which were explicitly designed to retain white students in the face of a nationally mandated desegregation order have simply replaced the old separate and equal systems. They need to be dismantled and a new and genuine floor of equity established.
Arguing for anything else and for maintaining the status quo is an argument in favor of segregation.
Institutional memory
Do not read your personal feelings into my blog decisions.