Times Tees Up Another Batter, Coming to the Plate - Danny Westneat

The headline is - Seattle's School Closure Plan Slashes What Works, Not What Doesn't.

In his column, he starts in a good place which is 50 years ago in Seattle when parents were trying to piece together "a free school." What was then called an "alternative school." 

It was for “the dropout, who is turned off and cannot make it in the structured classroom,” said a 1971 Seattle Times article. (Really, they described the kids like this back then.) “And for the child — usually of well-educated middle-class families — whose parents reject the ‘lockstep’ regular education.”

“We’re doing an experiment,” one parent told The Times. “Whether or not an alternative school, per se, that can be run by parents or community can survive within the bureaucracy.”

Eventually, the bureaucracy comes for all.

That school, which was called “Alternative Elementary,” was so successful they started another, “Alternative Elementary II.” Both are still rejecting the lockstep today, under the names Licton Springs K-8 and Thornton Creek Elementary.

Westneat takes the time to write about data points.

In one of its proposals released Wednesday, the district incredibly moved to close or repurpose all of the top 10 most sought-after schools and programs in the city, as ranked by the number of families on waitlists.

This includes Seattle’s most popular school, TOPS K-8, in the Eastlake area, which is slated for closure. It had 140 students on its waiting list in August.

No. 2 most popular is Hazel Wolf K-8, a tech school in northeast Seattle themed around environmental science. It had 124 on its waiting list. A proposal would convert it to a regular neighborhood K-5.

Slated for closure is another tech-oriented school, Boren STEM K-8 in West Seattle. It’s the No. 7 most popular school, as 61 were waiting to get in.

The two most sought-after language immersion schools would also be converted to regular neighborhood schools. It isn’t clear what would then happen to the language instruction at McDonald International near Green Lake (No. 3, 79 on waiting list) or John Stanford International in Wallingford (No. 6, with 68 waiting to get in).

Catherine Blaine K-8 in Magnolia ranks as the No. 5 most popular school, with 73 on its waiting lists. The district is proposing to close it.

Thornton Creek, in northeast Seattle, today features a type of instruction called “expeditionary learning” that is so popular, among a certain set, that the school had 74 kids on the waiting list in August.

He then says:

It’s as if officials drew up a list of what their customers are clamoring for the most. And then, instead of doing more of that, they said “let’s ax it all.”

Making everything equally great is a utopian goal. But the 50 years of experimentation suggests it isn’t human nature for everyone to even want to walk the same path.

One parent comment points out a big issue - what EXACTLY is the district trying to accomplish? Because it would seem it is NOT just about money nor academics (in fact, academics aren't even on the closure criteria list). 

“Why is SPS destroying schools with high enrollment that work for kids?” said one frustrated TOPS K-8 parent, Stephanie Rood. “This is a surefire way to offer less choice to students and families and to wreck what works.”

Is it because choice is too expensive (everyone doing something different)?

Or

“You can’t have differences in schools or unique instruction programs, because then that’s inequitable — that’s what they’re saying,” said MacDougall, the Thornton alternative school parent.

Entirely possible thinking in SPS and the Board. 

The explanation offered by the district is that so-called option and alternative schools “draw enrollment and resources from neighborhood schools.” Which is another way of saying: People really, really like them.

The district also says: “Option schools disproportionately serve students who have traditionally had additional access to additional educational resources.”

This is the rub. Because you have to choose to go to an option school, and then apply, many families don’t. Rather than help them navigate this system, or open up additional intriguing options, the district appears to be heading instead toward uniformity.

Two former well-respected Board presidents weigh in (joining Michael DeBell who had an op-ed earlier in the week in the Times).

“The district has not been that supportive of our option schools, of any alternative programming,” said Sue Peters, a School Board member from 2013-2017, speaking on the Seattle Hall Pass podcast. “The Montessori schools, the gifted program, alternative schools, advanced learning, Walk to Math, all those sorts of things, one by one, the district has been targeting and getting rid of.”

Leslie Harris - “Are they [the option schools] too white? Some of them absolutely are,” she said. “But what’s your problem statement? If they’re too white, what are we doing to increase that diversity as opposed to killing them?”

He warns of what may come if these schools of choice disappear:

If the district’s response is to go bland, by sanding off all the quirky, interesting edges, there’s little doubt that risk-taking parents with the same adventurous spirit of the hippies 50 years ago will split off and form their own schools. Only now it’ll be charter schools, maybe, or private co-ops.  

"We talk about being a world-class city, a city of the future,” said Erin Combs, who has a second grader at the Thornton Creek alternative school. “So how did we get to where we’re about to roll back 50 years of educational experimentation and innovation?”

 I have always said that Seattle didn't need charter schools because SPS supported alternative education decades ago. Those alt school WERE charter schools in a way and Option Schools were just an update.