Seattle Schools and City of Seattle and the future of Memorial Stadium
Below is the one-pager on this ongoing process of developing an MOU between SPS and the City of Seattle per today's Operation Committee meeting. It does have some important and revealing thoughts.
Memorial Stadium
Seattle Public Schools and City of Seattle
Status of Planning for SPS School Board Operations Committee March 17, 2022
Overview. With voter approval of the BTA V levy renewal, the district and the City of Seattle are exploring the potential to partner on a new Memorial Stadium, consistent with and informed by a 2017 partnership agreement between the district and the City.
2017 Partnership Agreement. In 2017, the City and the school district entered into a partnership agreement that envisioned collaborating around development of three potential projects:- a new Memorial Stadium;- district acquisition of land parcels as part of the Ft. Lawton Redevelopment Plan; and- siting new school facilities, including potentially an elementary school downtown.The 2017 agreement was delayed in 2018 by transitions of a new Superintendent and Seattle Mayor and complications to the proposed site acquisition at Ft. Lawton and evaluation of alternatives for a high school beside Memorial Stadium. As demographic trends driving the proposal for a new high school and a new elementary school seemed more certain in 2017 than in 2022, this report is limited to discussions around the future of Memorial Stadium.2021 Letter of Intent (LOI). Last fall, the City and the district signed an updated LOI that lays out a vision for rebuilding a new Memorial Stadium in collaboration with the City, with the City and other partners contributing to capital funding, and an option for the district to obtain land for an elementary school at the Battery Street tunnel site.While the LOI is not legally binding, it lays out a framework for more detailed agreements as the basis for a contractual Memorandum of Agreement (MOU). The MOU would need to be approved by the Mayor, the City Council, the Superintendent, and the School Board.Status of planning. Since approval of the BTA V levy, representatives of the City, the Seattle Center Foundation, and the district have identified guiding principles that must be reflected in process and product. Those principles include centering students, their families, and our SPS community. Non- negotiable features include preservation of the memorial wall and prioritizing an athletic field for student use.Three tracks of work are moving forward simultaneously.- The City, the district, and the Foundation are developing partnerships to ensure student voice, Urban Native American, BIPOC, and people with disabilities are part of the process.- The City is engaging stadium design firm Populous and the Seattle Center Foundation has engaged a facilitator to lead community conversations developing a vision for how an enhanced stadium could foster enrichment experiences for SPS students and how a facility design could support those experiences.- The City and the district are exploring engaging Shiels Obletz Johnson (SOJ), a firm specializing in complex urban developments, to identify capital and operational issues foundational to an MOU that would allow a shared-use facility to move forward.
Analysis
1. This project would have been a minor facelift for Memorial Stadium had the most recent BTA levy not passed. The passage showed the City that there was good seed money for a revamping of Memorial Stadium. (Because anyone who thought $62M - the amount in the BTA levy - was going to be enough to renovate the stadium was wrong.)
2. That third paragraph - "The 2017 agreement...." - is quite the word salad. Yes, demographic trends have changed including the loss of about 3,000 students thoughout the district. And, in the materials for the Operations Committee meeting which includes this document, the minutes from the previous meeting include a discussion of a renovating to Montlake Elementary:
Mr. Best provided background on the selection process and the project. He noted that Montlake Elementary School is a landmarked building. He clarified for the committee that the expansion of the school was so provide additional capacity for the area surrounding downtown, as the neighboring schools are over capacity.
I did find this somewhat confusing because Montlake is on a small piece of land so expansion doesn't seem possible (even going up). But if they are expanding Montlake AND Lowell Elementary is under enrolled, I'm wondering why they need yet another school just for downtown.
I'm thinking that the idea of land at Fort Lawton is probably not going to happen.
3. The 2021 Letter of Intent - I'd have to go back and look but I don't recall what other "partners" that the City would be working with to find capital dollars. Anybody else?
4. Status of Planning - I would like to see ALL the guiding principles among the three groups - the City, Seattle Center Foundation and SPS.
Also, see #1 on the three tracks of work? I urge anyone with a stake in any of the named groups to make sure you are heard and I would say particularly those with disabilities.
On #2, why is the Foundation figuring out community engagement for SPS students?
Again, I hope the close relationship between the Mayor and Superintendent Jones does not cloud this discussion. The Superintendent needs to think of SPS student first and foremost.
Comments
Belltown
1) It's not a WWI memorial, it's a WWII memorial to all the young men who died in WWII who were SPS students. The district did NOT take care of the memorial itself for many years and that can never happen again. It matters.
2) Just a piece of land. It's probably the most valuable 9 acres in downtown Seattle. There is good reason to be VERY careful with it.
To note, the district decided to get rid of Queen Anne High and that folly not only saw the district making a very bad deal where they didn't gain anywhere near the amount they should have AND that they needed the high school not long after. Queen Anne/Magnolia parents took SPS all the way to the Supreme Court over trying to get access to Ballard High, because of a racial tiebreaker that made it hard for their students to get in. And they won in court but, in the end, they STILL didn't get a comprehensive high school which is what they wanted all along.
3) The district only gets to keep the land as long as it is used for student educational purposes. It serves as the home field for both football and soccer for at least three high schools plus its use for graduations. The district should NOT get rid of land that they can't get back. They need that property for those purposes. I would be okay with the City managing it but not any kind of swap. The parking lot makes SPS $1M a year so if there is a land swap for that, the district needs to see that same kind of money.
4) Center School is a small boutique high school, not a comprehensive. And, in fact, their enrollment is getting smaller. When Seattle Center itself is revamped, we were told by the City that yes, Center School could stay but the unspoken statement is that the lease price would go up. I could not support paying more to keep the school there for such a small group of students.
5) The issue of whether we "need" downtown schools can be argued both ways. Lowell Elementary which is fairly nearby is not full and they are expanding Montlake Elementary. I'm not sure there is a population to fill those schools and a downtown one. I do agree if they do open one, it should be a K-8.
This is not a "manufactured controversy."
It has always had a small enrollment because SPS does NOTHING to market it to families. In my opinion, the district has always dismissed it because it serves white families in Q.A, some of whom successfully sued SPS at the Supreme Court. It may get phased out in a drive to eliminate option schools. That would be a shame for families like ours whose child thrived in a smaller high school. Our son may not have added racial diversity to the school but he was considered a student leader there some years ago.
If SPS created a comprehensive high school at this location it would make sense to fold Center School into a better facility. But a downtown location further away from Seattle Center would probably be considered an unsafe location by many families. Capitol Hill and Montlake are not convenient to Q.A.
It would be nice for Queen Anne to get a larger high school since we lost such a beautiful location years ago. I doubt the social warriors at the Stanford Center will ever make it happen.
Thanks so much for this detailed response. Despite my reading your blog for years, some of these details in fact weren't clear to me, so let's blame it on my poor reading comprehension and bad memory, with my thanks for your long-term efforts.
If I say more directly what I think it all comes down to: we're ripe to be scammed. The Memorial Stadium site is at risk of getting someone very rich at the expense of the school district. Scammed, as what happened with Queen Anne High School. A developer or several have their eyes on that land, and with the district's new and better connections to the city and developers, there's a real concern they'll scam the district's students out of a ton of money with the help of a compliant staff and board ineptness. Is that about right?
If so, it seems to me the district should only consider leasing the land, with a restored memorial as part of the deal, the way the UW does with its downtown property. Barring an authentically good deal that ensures the long-term financial interests of Seattle's school children, the district should never be in the business of selling land like this, only leasing it.
I wish The Center School could be grown not just into a comprehensive high school but a destination school. The Millennials were a birth rate echo of the Boomers, and now we're heading into a smaller generation or two of Zoomers and Alphas who echo the smaller GenXers. This means demographically enrollment will be down for a decade or more just because of lower birth rates. See my other post about attracting and keeping families downtown, though.
But Seattle is growing, so it's strange we don't have swelling schools. We all know why this is.
Anyway, The Center School could be a regional high school for the arts the way Aviation High School is for STEM. We could be attracting enrollment from OUT of the district! Easily! It's right by Benaroya and the ballet, there are museums and public art venues everywhere, lots of theaters big and small. This would require long-term planning and thinking, something I don't think the district is that good at even with a talented board, our current board underwhelms.
Belltown
Some do find SFH, but so many moving elsewhere once their kids are school age.
They look at sites like this to decide where to move to.
https://www.niche.com/k12/search/best-school-districts/s/washington/
Before we start talking about building new, how about maintaining old, that have been passed over by so many levies?