District Website Not Working (7:58 am)

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Comments

Anonymous said…
This is absolutely ridiculous. The website was down the week before Spring Break as well. I can't believe this is happening in SEATTLE, of all places. Get it together, people!

Eyeroll
Anonymous said…
Still not working, our District web site, at 1pm ?

User
Anonymous said…
According to the district calendar, Open Enrollment results will be posted online beginning April 16.

just fyi
3:10 pm - no website access

I am at the JSCEE; I’ll try to find out what happened.
Ed said…
Can't Strategies 360 do ANYTHING right?
Anonymous said…
Waitlist summary report now available (posted this AM). Some of the higher waitlist numbers (Gen Ed):

Ballard (Gr9) 57
Ballard (Gr10) 33
Beacon Hill (K) 28
Cleveland STEM (Gr9) 124
Cleveland STEM (Gr10) 24
Franklin (Gr9) 34
Garfield (Gr9) 68
Hazel Wolf (K) 128
Hazel Wolf (Gr1) 34
Hazel Wolf (Gr2) 36
Hazel Wolf (Gr3) 27
Hazel Wolf (Gr5) 23
Hazel Wolf (Gr6) 51
Ingraham (Gr9) 32
JSIS (K) 65
Lincoln (Gr9) 53
McDonald (K) 97
Mercer (Gr6) 27
Pathfinder (K) 71
Roosevelt (Gr9) 87
Roosevelt (Gr10) 30
Salmon Bay (K) 43
Salmon Bay (Gr6) 37
STEM (K) 42
TOPS (Gr6) 35

Cleveland and Hazel Wolf have some of the highest single grade waitlists. Many of the K-8s have high waitlists for K and 6th. No surprise that RHS and BHS have waitlists for 9th and 10th. How is it that Lincoln and IHS have 9th grade waitlists?

just fyi
Eric B said…
OK, someone has officially gone absolutely nuts at JSCEE. I expected waitlists at Ballard and Roosevelt 9-10 as students who were geosplit out to Lincoln want to stay at their prior schools. But a 52-student waitlist at Lincoln?! At a school that needs every single body it can get to have a decent range of offerings? Really, people?
IngMom said…
Ingraham's 500-seat addition is not opening all at once. They are phasing in year by year so that they don't fill it next year with 500 extra freshmen and then end up with 500 extra sophomores next year and no space for more freshmen.
Anonymous said…
And IHS has a new *500* student addition opening for 2019-20, plus there is some attrition to Running Start in the upper grades (Lincoln will likely experience the same if they have limited course offerings 11-12).

(full waitlist report is linked on bottom of Assignment Lookup Tool page)

interesting


Sped Waiter said…
Here's the wait list info:
https://www.seattleschools.org/UserFiles/Servers/Server_543/File/District/Departments/Admissions/School%20Choice/2019-20_Waitlist-Report/WaitlistSummary201920_0416.pdf

Pretty sad to see how many sped students across the district are parked on waitlists.
Anonymous said…
So, the schools not mentioned in the above Wait-list report have no wait-lists? Huh, that is a first ...for some.
-Curiouser
Anonymous said…
The official waitlist report has more schools listed. The condensed list posted here is highlighting those with 20some+ on a waitlist.

just fyi
Anonymous said…
Thank you. Now I can anticipate a better admin report during our BLT meeting.
-Curiouser
Just FYI, thank you for this information. I'm glad for Lincoln that there is a waitlist; it appears people have faith in the school. That Cleveland is so popular and yet the building is not full is a crime.
Anonymous said…
Lincoln waitlist could be those not wanting to go to Rainier Beach. Similar to when Hamilton use to fill with students from Aki Kurose area. Just a guess.

History
Anonymous said…
I don't understand all the north end 9th grade waitlisting. How does every HS GE program except Nathan Hale have a decent sized 9th grade waitlist unless everyone is jumping ship from Hale? If it's a matter of students wanting to swap places, shouldn't the district, you know, swap them? It actually sounds like a fun game to me, trying to shuffle students around to maximize the desired placements. Maybe I'll contact the district and see if they'll let me spend a day in the office moving cards around to get a reasonable outcome. The current results don't seem like a reasonable outcome to me.

Do we need an external audit of the assignment/waitlist process? It seems broken.

unclear
Anonymous said…
@ History, it would be really interesting to see where all the Lincoln waitlist kids were coming from. Does the district make that info available?

unclear
Anonymous said…
I agree. What up with no wait list at Hale? That has never been the case.
-huh?
Anonymous said…
Enrollment has been publishing annual data on choice assignments, with summary tables of students in schools by attendance area. For 2017-18, for example, 44 IHS students attended BHS, 144 BHS students attended IHS; 81 NHS students attended IHS, 44 IHS students attended NHS; and 47 NHS attended RHS, 106 RHS students attended NHS. Current numbers are not available.

data watcher
Anonymous said…
unclear,

The problem is that if the first person on the waitlist for Lincoln is assigned to Rainier Beach, that student will not be offered a seat at Lincoln. Because the first person on the list can’t get it, no one can.

Fairmount Parent
Anonymous said…
@ Fairmount Parent, they need to think about it beyond that level. Say #1 is assigned to RB but wants Lincoln. You put them in the "on deck" or "holding" spot, then move on to #2 on the waitlist. If #2 also wants Lincoln, they go into the 2nd "hold" spot for Lincoln. Then maybe #3 is a Lincoln student who wanted to go to Ballard, so they go to the first BHS holding spot. That opens up a spot in Lincoln for that #1 waitlist kid, who makes it IN and then the #2 Lincoln-hopeful moves up to the #1 hold spot. And so on. It's not perfect, but it's one way of doing it--and way better than the "we can't move #1 without any effort, so nobody gets to move" approach.

They would probably also want to start off with looking at the highest waitlist-ranked students who want OUT of an overcrowded school. Say #s 1-9 are at high schools that have room, but #10 is assigned to Ballard but wants Lincoln. Move them to the "hold" spot for Lincoln, freeing up room for 1-9 at Ballard if they, in order, wanted it. They may not end up as 1st on the Lincoln hold list (if any of the 1-9 above them also wanted Lincoln), but they'd be in position to get in if some of the other Lincolnites with lower numbers were ultimately able to move elsewhere.

After going through everyone re: their first choices, you could restart the process with those who were at least hoping for their 2nd choice. (Although I'm not sure how the waitlist is supposed to work. If you're in the #1 slot, are you supposed to get priority access to any of your choices, or just #1? If it's any, if would be much harder.

It sounds like a fun puzzle to me, but maybe I'm just strange that way.

unclear
Anonymous said…
It's not that there is not room at Lincoln. It's that they don't want to let anyone *out* of Rainier Beach specifically. I am not sure if they are protecting other schools this way now, too, only moving waitlists until it would let an extra child out of this or that unpopular school. I agree it is a terrible way to run the system and is being fully exploited by charter schools now.

Enrollment watcher
kellie said…
@ unclear,

The SPS's current practice of halting wait list movement, based on the presence of students from Rainier Beach is abhorrent and inequitable. That practice was championed by former SPS staff members Michael Tolley and Flip Herndon. The practice was advertised as "protecting Rainier Beach's enrollment" by not allowing students in this attendance area access to the choice system.

IMHO, this practice is indefensible. Rainier Beach families do have choice and they exercise this choice by enrolling in public charter schools and other districts. This practice is direct cause of lower total enrollment in SPS.

That said, the approach you are suggesting is direct violation of students assignment rules. Students are placed on the wait list in a specific order based on the assignment rules and tie breakers outlined in the Student Assignment Plan. The order of the wait list needs to be respected.

There are few jobs that the school board needs to do every year and one of them is approve the Student Assignment Plan. The Student Assignment Plan can be anything but it must be public and approved by the school board. This is the because the SAP is the way that that tax payer funded services are delivered to the public and as such public oversight is required.

The bottom line is that this practice of artificial enrollment caps, artificial staffing capacity and stilted wait list movements needs to be brought into the daylight and re-examined.





Eric B said…
Unclear, that would be a rational approach. As would trading students on waitlists. I have to believe that some of the students on the Ballard waitlist are from Lincoln and vice versa. You could swap them without changing staffing levels at any school.

But that's not how enrollment rolls. Waitlists don't move because the system doesn't let waitlists move. I would like to believe that's accidental, but it's getting harder with each passing year of the same problems. With a little flexibility, dozens to hundreds of students could get their preferred choice of school. The last time I looked (spring 2017), you could move 250 to 300 students to their preferred school and every school was still above its budgeted headcount.

I have just requested the data to repeat that analysis for this year. Should be fun.
kellie said…
@ EricB,

Thank you for requesting that data. The last analysis you did was brilliant.
Anonymous said…
@unclear, There is a separate wait list for each school and a student can only be on one waitlist. The number one student on Lincoln’s waitlist must be offered a space there before anyone else. Trading seats at popular schools to get around the waitlist order disadvantages students from unpopular schools.

Fairmount Parent
Anonymous said…
@ kellie and Fairmount Parent, I was certainly not suggesting trying to "get around" the waitlist order. It was simply a matter of moving a little further down the list to try to unstick things so that the top spots could move, but all while still preserving the order (and putting the lower down the waitlist kids in more of a limbo placement until the higher-ups were placed appropriately). However, I mistakenly thought there was an overall waitlist order (not by school), which would have make it a little easer.

I still think much more could be done, though, still within the policy/procedural constraints. For example, if none of the #1s can move, you can still LOOK at what happens if you move some #2s. Maybe that will de-gum the works and allow the #1s to move. The key is to make sure the end result doesn't result in any line-jumping, but if both #1 and #2 make it in during the same shuffle exercise, it does't really matter the order, right?

The current approach is not student- or family-centered. At all.

unclear
kellie said…
@ unclear,

The current approach is not student- or family-centered. At all.

Yes, and that is the point that so many families keep raising to the board.

There is this notion downtown that the best way to create "staffing and hiring stability" is to hold the line on the choice system. That is what created this mysterious staffing capacity. Other districts get to set building budgets early in the year and do targeting hiring.

But the simple truth is that enrollment in Seattle is just plain challenging. Seattle will have 110 schools next year. That is 110 places where students can show up. It is virtually impossible to perfectly match students and teachers.

Most districts have less than a dozen places for students and teacher to land. Therefore it is pretty straightforward for other districts to do strategic hiring much earlier in the year.

Seattle has a lot of challenges, in large part because the state funding model is just not designed to support a district with "110 places.' Because of this, Seattle really does need to embrace more flexibility in the process and leverage the choice system.

The changes that have been made in the last few years to reduce flexibility and increase rigidity have made the system adversarial to families, without actually creating the hoped for staffing stability. IMHO, these polices are the direct cause of system wide enrollment decreases.

One hard to miss data point. The first year of the NSAP, there was a serious challenges with split siblings district wide. Right after open enrollment there were hundreds of split siblings in every corner of the district . But the district worked proactively with families and community volunteers and by the end of September there were only 7 split siblings. Two years ago, there was once again over 200 split siblings and there was no serious effort to reunite these families. How can anyone be surprised that split siblings lead to enrollment decreases???

The unfortunate result is that when families leave the district, teachers get displaced. Enrollment needs to be family friendly in order to create staffing stability. It is not an either / or situation.





Anonymous said…
It seems to me that unnaturally limiting choice more severely impacts the kids farthest from educational justice. This is not aligned with the new Strategic Plan in any way. The Board should look at the Student Assignment Plan through a racial equity/socioeconomic lens. If they do, and look at how many students who are underserved are left on waitlists, someone would take action. Maybe this would break up the idea of holding onto the staffing stability model (which would seem to be more about staff than students), and instead focus on empowering students and families to make choices that work best for them.

WSParent
Please note that I started a separate thread on enrollment and I did include several comments here that I thought important.

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