Friday Round-Up of the Week, October 21-27, 2024
A shortened election season and yet it's still pretty exhausting. Did I tell you - I'm going to be an inside poll observer for the Democratic Party in of all places, Tombstone. It should be an interesting day and I'll be writing about it.
Naturally, the biggest news of the week for SPS is Superintendent Brent Jones' announcement of four schools up for closure. As you may recall, it started with 17-21 schools, then 5 and, for whatever reason, Jones went with four schools. Two regions of SPS remained untouched - SE and QA/Magnolia.
The district's Communications - in a PR manner I don't get - has labeled this action at the SPS website as Budget Updates and Next Steps for SPS. Is not saying the word "closure" really going to make the district look better?
It is estimated that each elementary or K-8 site closure would result in savings of $750,000- $2,500,000.
I also found this sentence interesting from what was said before about criteria.
We chose these schools based on factors like building condition, space, and the goal of minimizing disruption to students and families.
Here's the list of elementaries and their building condition and learning environment as well as capacity. Some things don't make sense like under capacity, it says that North Beach has room for 186. Huh? They have 387 right now so something is off there. Looking at Stevens, they have a pretty good score for both building condition and learning environment.
Also to point out, there are STILL buildings already rebuilt that need to be filled. Those include James Baldwin (formerly Northgate), Kimball, Olympic Hills, South Shore, and West Woodland.
My money is on North Beach Elementary to put up the biggest fight. They have nearly 400 students and a strong school community. Again, I say that NO school is responsible for its building condition and I wish the district would acknowledge that.
And I missed this yesterday:
In addition, we are advocating for an extension of our interfund loan and seeking to fully utilize our levy authority.
The latter is not new but they took money ($27.5M) via an interfund loan that they KNEW had to start being paid back next year (with interest) and now they want an extension on paying it back. Kinda like they knew that the teachers' raises could not be sustained. Hmmm. Still making bad mistakes?
I am seeing chatter in the comments at various media stories that the district should sell off properties. The district should NOT sell properties. They did this with Queen Anne High, did NOT sell for a good price and it is a mistake that has had ramifications to this day.
The district can, of course, lease the buildings for use. As mentioned before, existing charter schools have right of first refusal to any closed school buildings. But there are only three of those in Seattle and two are high schools. I rather doubt this situation will happen but it could.
The district is having "information sessions" for BEX VI, having the first last Tuesday. The other two are here:
- Wednesday, Oct. 30, 6:30–7:30 p.m. More information is on the Levies information page.
- Thursday, Nov. 7, 6:30–7:30 p.m.
Another piece I missed from yesterday's announcement:
In February 2025, we will ask voters to renew two critical levies—the Educational Programs & Operations (EP&O) Levy and the Building Excellence (BEX VI) Levy—which provide vital funding for school operations and maintenance.
I do dislike revisionist history. BEX has NEVER been a maintenance levy - it is the building renovation levy with some upgrades and athletic field upgrades thrown in. (And now it funds most of the Tech Department including salaries.) I'd love to know what they think the BTA levy is - THAT had been the maintenance levy.
Here's how they described BEX V:
The six-year BEX V Capital Levy continues the district’s long-range plans to upgrade and renovate aging school facilities and address enrollment growth. It pays for school construction and building improvements as well as technology investments.
See, no mention of "maintenance."
At the same time, as all this, the district is finally getting around to using the $100K allotted to them by the state to conduct a study on enrollment.
This study, expected to be completed by December, will guide our efforts in recruitment and retention, helping us build a stronger, more vibrant school community.
As I previously reported, Director Gina Topp will be having her regular community meeting on Sunday, October 27th from 11 am to noon at High Point Library. Remember the Jaws line "we're gonna need a bigger boat?" I think Topp will be saying, "I need a bigger room." Because I suspect that people from the schools on the closure list will join parents in the West Seattle to advocate for their school.
Comments
Our resistance to school consolidation has forced us into an inevitable crisis: district-wide staff reductions that will impact every educational facility in our jurisdiction. Had we embraced logical consolidation measures, the majority of our educators could have maintained their positions, with impacts limited to specific grade-level instructors. The timing of Seattle Education Association negotiations only compounds this precarious situation.
The convergence of these factors—impending staff reductions, likely labor disputes, and probable delays to the academic calendar—stems directly from our community's misguided attempt to create exclusive enclaves within the public education system. This unsustainable model cannot persist.
To echo the impassioned words of Howard Beale of Network: "I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell, 'I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take this anymore!'"
The time has come to confront this educational segregation masquerading as choice. We must prioritize sustainable, equitable solutions over the illusion of exclusivity.
- Balcony Yeller
Sins of our Fathers
Perhaps the time has come for the board to reinstitute committee meetings. Not only is the board failing to provide oversight, but there is clearly insufficient time to discuss important topics. The board should be scrutinizing special education funding which amounts to $74M per year, and why the board accepted a contract that would push the district over a financial cliff with deficits of $100M per year is a mystery. Some may wonder whether the board wanted to use the deficit to close "option schools" which certain board members seemed to want. And why did the School Board approve a $30M loan from capital fund to cover an operational gap via intro and action one meeting?
The board has dug itself in a hole with a levy pending, school closures and a pending levy, and no guarantee that school closures will actually save money- especially when you see a school with 387 students being slated to move into another area that has been slated for growth.
The time has come to confront this mess with a new board.
-Sigh
"...neighboring districts maintain elementary schools with student populations three times our current enrollment numbers." There's a district with 3X elementary population than SPS? Which ones?
You are entitled to your opinion but nope - "..stems directly from our community's misguided attempt to create exclusive enclaves within the public education system."
"...if you don’t want parents giving Amazon cards to teachers, I’m sure the district could issue guidelines against it," Hell, the district could have said no buying staff by PTAs but they never got to that, did they? That's a lot of hypocrisy on the part of several directors who loved to call that out.
Sigh, bravo. Well-stated. There will be a majority of the Board up for election next November 2025. No idea if Hersey or Sarju will run again (especially Hersey who has been there longer). Sarju may have some issues that might preclude her from considering running again. (It's a story I'm working on right now.)
Seattle is Lost, that used to be a plan. But then John Stanford saw the very real split in community when Highly Capable used to be at Mercer. He said that HC should be in its own building. It depends on the program but frankly, more STEM or music would definitely draw in more people.
One issue that I think is nuts is that the district is creating this much larger elementary schools with 600+ students but without guaranteeing a full-time nurse at each larger elementary OR an assistant principal. My understanding is that Bryant is filled to the brim but even they have no assistant principal.