The District Either Knows and Doesn't Care or Didn't Consider Their Actions Carefully
From the Cascadia Elementary School PTA (Cascadia is an HC cohort school) - this via Facebook (bold mine):
Cascadia Parents,
We need your help with VERY important advocacy.
On November 15, 2023, the Superintendent of
Seattle Public Schools announced no school closures, no boundary
changes, and no programming changes for the 2024-2025 school year. This
is contradictory to the decision that the Advanced Learning department
took in the fall to stop identifying kindergartners as Highly Capable
(i.e., a program change), which means that there will be no Grade 1
Highly Capable cohort at Cascadia next year.
The Advanced Learning department's decision
to stop identifying kindergartners was based on the District’s OLD plan
(put forward for two consecutive years) that included a boundary change
for 2024 - 2025. The boundary change would have meant that neighborhood
children would have attended first grade at Cascadia next year. With
the Superintendent’s announcement that there will be no boundary
changes, we are now faced with a situation where we simply will not have any Grade 1 students in Fall 2024.
Allowing these decisions to proceed would
mean our new school building would be even less utilized, teachers at
our school will lose their jobs, and our funding will be negatively
impacted.
Our concern is that this is a result of one
hand not knowing what the other hand is doing, and we need to apply
pressure to get this remedied. Given the Superintendent’s announcement
(no boundary changes, no program changes), we are asking that the
Advanced Learning department:
- reverse its decision, send out consent forms to kindergarten parents ASAP, and start the process for identifying HC children to attend Cascadia/Decatur next year - and/or
- provide some other mechanism so some neighborhood or other students can attend Grade 1 or Kindergarten at Cascadia next year.
No matter what plan they go with, it makes no sense for a large, brand new school to have no first graders next year. Below
is the contact info for the Superintendent, Advanced Learning
department, and various school board members. Email all of them, as many
as you can. Our kids are getting lost in the shuffle and being
overlooked, and we need the District to pay attention.
Do I think this is the result of one hand not knowing what the other hand is doing? Nope.
They knew when they made that announcement what it might mean to some programs at some schools. But chaos is SPS' MO.
I suspect from the district's viewpoint that it just
hurries along their HC changes. If those kindergarteners who would have
been at Cascadia for 1st grade, just stay at their home school, well,
that's fewer kids to shift around later.
And the PTA is right - their school will really be impacted if this goes through.
The PTA urges parents to write to the SPS customer service/Advanced Learning/Board. Well, none of those people can or will do anything. Because of SOFG, this is a superintendent decision and the Board can do nothing. Even if it's just a bit of a sneaky sleight-of-hand by the district.
But let's just see what happens.
Comments
Charter Sharks
Almost Homeschooling
My guess is that leadership knows about the problem at Cascadia and it was a conscious decision.
I'm not being snide. That's what I actually believe. The district wants the HCC program gone. I don't think they will extend the program. And they are not redoing boundaries this year. This would appear to be the new plan.
Cascadia PTA: Let’s advocate for the district to show their work on why they’re shutting down services for advanced students
District Reformers: Not like that…
Weaponized bureaucracy is a bad look.
Daylight
- Save Money!
What I really cannot understand now is the current direction on facilities. The Decatur space is very old and clearly not needed now, so closing that out makes sense. But Cascadia is very new (for SPS) and does not make sense to underutilize. This goes along though with planned renovations and expansion. Rainier Beach is being massively overbuilt (are they planning to close Cleveland and hope those kids don't bail for charters/private schools?). Both Alki and Sacajawea are planned for enormous overbuilds despite the space restricted, very inaccessible locations. They're putting capacity in odd spots and leaving many areas still with schools in horrible condition. I think a lot is based on the way they did equity tiering, but it looks to me like it's going to create a lot of weird long term issues.
NE Parent