Which Schools Might Close?
One item - A reader said that the district really should use clear language in what is happening.
The message to parents talks about “consolidating” five schools, without actually saying what “consolidation” means. Closing? Merging?
Good point as San Francisco Unified School District is even considering co-locations (although that has not been mentioned in Seattle Schools at all).
I believe, legally, these will be closures. But the dispersement of students from a closed school is key along with the transition plan for the receiving school (s). It would be great to keep students together but we would know if that's possible once they name the closing schools as well as the possible receiving schools.
In fact, keeping students together may influence which schools are picked. The district tweaked the list of criteria to include this factor.
I do want to point out that the district - and the district alone - is responsible for the condition of every single building. That is not something any school community has control over except possibly their playground.
I do believe it will only be K-5 elementaries as the district said K-8 and Option Schools are off the table.
Preliminary ListNW - There was just one K-5 on the list and that is North Beach Elementary.
NE - On the other hand, there are many in this region. Green Lake, Decatur, Sacajwea, Laurelhurst
Central - John Hay, McGilvra, Stevens
SE - Dunlap or Rainier View
SW - Sanislo or Lafayette
One wild card will be if the district tries to act in every region to look fair or be ruthless with the criteria and let the chips fall where they may. I suspect the former.
Enrollment numbers from 2023-2024.
Predictions
NW - North Beach. They are in an old and tired building that long ago seemed poised for a remodel. But my intel is that it's a close school community; they may fight back. They have 367 students who would likely go to Viewlands which is newly renovated for 650 and currently has 267.
NE - Decatur. Only because it is so very close to Thornton Creek. Decatur is currently at 231 and Thornton Creek is built for 660 but has 455.
I note that this map updated 6/26/2024 doesn't even have Decatur on it.
I could see them also closing Cedar Park (272) or Sacajwea (229) and moving one into the newly rebuilt John Rogers (currently 188). I also saw this notation about the rebuild of Roger which is due to be done by summer 2025:
Once complete, the school will provide an equitable learning space for up to 500 K-5 elementary students and an area to expand the school in the future as enrollment grows.
So they could expand it even more.
Central - Stevens (152) or McGilvra (216). Why? Because they sure can't fill that newly renovated Montlake Elementary (168) on their own. I think John Hay is off the hook. I think the district is taking a big gamble on renovating Montlake, seemingly on the premise that "if we build it, they will come." Because putting current Montlake enrollment with say, McGilvra, you get 374 students. That's not filling that space.
SE - Dunlap. That's simply because RVE is so isolated. There are schools all around Dunlap. And, if they can't get South Shore K-8 to fill (and they never have), it's likely to change to a K-5.
SW - Sanislo. I say that ONLY because I cannot believe that the district would close Lafayette and send their kids in multiple directions. If they closed Lafayette (505), where would all those kids go? Alki Elementary's rebuild won't be done until 2026. You could send some of Lafayette's students to the interim site at Schmitz Park with Alki kids but they couldn't all fit. The other nearby school is Genesee Hill but they appear to be nearly full.
It just wouldn't make sense and cause a lot of pain.
But even though Lafayette is near full and has a strong community, again, the district is not rebuilding Alki (271) for nothing. I think the rebuild of Alki will turn out to be folly and they should have redone Schmitz Park.
Thoughts?
Comments
Option schools may be off the table, but Licton Springs and Queen Anne have both gotten quite small. I don't know if this is due to how the waitlists are handled, but it seems like it would be ideal if they could figure out how to better enroll these two schools. Licton Springs has a nice new building but only 92 kids in the whole K-8; perhaps it could be a candidate with co-location.
SE- Rainier View
SW- Sanislo
Central- Stevens
NE- Cedar Park
NW- Licton Springs (90 students, seriously?)
Agree that Sanislo should be closed. The students could easily be served at the lovely WS Elementary or Highland Park Elementary, or Pathfinder or Roxhill at EC Hughes. SMH that the district just let's Schmitz Park sit there empty while forcing Alki into a neighborhood that has outgrown it.
NB Mom, I had indeed heard about your community and I'll try to put that website on Twitter and front-facing on this blog.
Sped Mom, Licton Springs. The district has buffeting this school around and around and discouraged parents from enrolllment for years and years. So they have a small enrollment because of the actions of the district.
However, I like that idea of incorporating it into Viewlands or Baldwin. What is fascinating is the district spent real capital dollars on the Webster building that houses Licton Springs. What was the motivation for that because it surely wasn't really to help LS?
-NE Mom
Once you realize that building Sand Point up to a larger capacity makes almost no sense from an acreage and road access perspective, you're left with Laurelhurst, View Ridge and Bryant to absorb the few students from Sand Point - depending on what happens with Thornton Creek/Decatur**.
But the district (board & admin both) clearly has an ideological axe to grind towards affluent families which propels them towards eliminating the school in the rich neighborhood (Laurelhurst) even if it makes near zero sense to do so from a logistical perspective. To be sure, Sand Point's boundaries take in parts of Windermere & Hawthorne Hills but given the demographics in those neighborhoods coupled with the low enrollment and high free & reduced lunch percentage at Sand Point (71.4% vs 7.4% & 26.1% at View Ridge & Laurelhurst respectively per OSPI 2023), I'm going to speculate that an above average percentage of the kids from the two neighborhoods go to private schools already.
Here is where things get much more politically interesting and unpleasant. Sand Point has a tiny enrollment (217 from OSPI or even less per SPS) but does draw from Magnusson Park. Anyone that lives in the area has likely seen lots of bad news stories from in and around Magnusson such as the recent one about 5 kids who crashed a stolen car on Sand Point and disappeared into the park/housing. Fairly or not, parents read this and think to themselves, maybe those kids *live* in Magnusson and then it follows they probably don't want *those kids* influencing *their kids* at school. The reasonable objection to saying this out loud is that you don't know that about those kids - which is true, but also incredibly naive.
Which then sets off a scuffle between View Ridge and Laurelhurst school populations for who gets stuck with Magnusson Park at their school. But I think the district admin & board members would see that as a feature of a plan. It also would likely have the secondary "benefit" of driving even more affluent families out of the district, which at this point I have to believe is the actual master plan given how nearly every single action they have taken in the past few years has had that effect.
As to who wins that particular scrap? My money is on Laurelhurst since View Ridge currently has a lower percent of free & reduced lunch and while it forces the kids to cross Sand Point and up about 300 feet of elevation, View Ridge Elementary is closer distance-wise to Sand Point Elementary than Laurelhurst. But I suspect as the performance of View Ridge then drops, more of that neighborhood's parents opt for private. So another future win for the district and it's plan to reduce enrollment I guess?
Just Some Commenter Everyman
** Decatur is dead in any plan: HCC has been killed off, the school is decrepit, and it is literally next door to bright & shiny TC.
-Decatur dad.
https://laurelhurstes.seattleschools.org/academics/special-education/special-education-f-a-qs/
This is the same school community that couldn’t handle Aki Kurose at their school 50 years ago and threw a public tantrum about it. While it’s way more diverse now, there are plenty of families in the neighborhood whose parents and grandparents were in Laurelhurst during that era.
The school community is being very careful right now and is clearly being thoughtful about managing their messaging this time around, but I don’t know how they get out of a closure short of having the ability to run their own capital campaign to rebuild the school.
If the district could somehow magically raze Laurelhurst elementary and sell the land to developers, it would be well on its way to filling the $100 million gap. Maybe that’s why they want to rebuild Sand Point- the land in that corner would be far more difficult to develop.
-NE Mom
Selling the land would bring in a lot of money, but when it's gone, it's gone. If the enrollment projections are still not good, we might need the schools again. If we keep the schools, will they be paying a night watchman? Are there possible tenants who would pay enough to be worth having, who could also vacate on a year's notice if the school is needed again? I'd like to see the District's plan, and the numbers behind it. I suspect if they really take into account all the costs of closing schools and keeping them around if needed that keeping them open would look like a much better option.
Interesting. I had no idea that Laurelhurst housed that program or that recent principal history. (View Ridge had a similar principal issue a few years ago as I recall.) I definitely agree that if the district could somehow sell off that plot, they would do it in a heartbeat - even if it was just out of spite towards the neighborhood. And the district would NEVER allow the neighborhood to fund a new build in my opinion. Peak inequity.
I happened to drive past it yesterday and I can only imagine what that land could fetch considering you could probably fit a bare minimum of 20 new single family homes but I could imagine a scenario with those tall townhome-ish things where closer to 40+ units were placed there that sold on average for $850-900K+. That said, I'm sure developing it would be a nightmare for anyone as they would have to fight the neighborhood to do it.
What I could see in the event of a closure is a school like Villa - practically around the corner from Laurelhurst Elementary - expanding their enrollment and using the Elementary facilities. Though I've not been inside of the school so I don't know if the condition is up to Villa's standards or not. I just can't see how the Laurelhurst property gets sold because as Patrick says, once it is gone, it's gone and that is a decent swathe for Bryant & Sand Point Elementary to cover, even if you push some Bryant enrollment into View Ridge/Wedgood +/- whatever happens to Decatur/Thornton Creek. Then again, I wouldn't want to bet against this group deploying some nuclear-grade stupidity.
- Just Some Commenter Everyman