What Next for Seattle Schools?
There was an interesting column from Seattle Times' writer Danny Westneat. It's called:
School closures were another swing, miss for Seattle progressivism
Now that the plan to close schools in Seattle has failed, the district needs a new plan.
Here it is: Do exactly the opposite.
Seriously, everything about this botched effort was backward.
Pursuing an upside-down approach that utterly fails is becoming a distressing hallmark of progressive governance.
The proposal to close some schools had a gloss of legitimacy. Some schools have gotten small enough that they can no longer support wide-ranging services, such as counselors, nurses, art classes and so on. This is arguably true, and still needs addressing.
But the real motivation was revealed the day the district released its first school closure lists back in September.
It’s still hard to believe, but they specifically targeted the best, most popular elementary and K-8 schools in the city.
The district incredibly proposed closing or canceling all of the Top 10 most sought-after schools or programs, as ranked by the number of families on waitlists.
And, the district announcing that they would close buildings even without a budget gap should tell us something. My belief is that, long ago, a plan was made to quietly shrink the district including closing schools.
The district insisted it could build up the remaining schools to do everything that was being canceled, from alternative education to language immersion. Maybe, but that needs to be put into practice and proven first. Otherwise the public won’t buy into it.
The second hardest thing to do - after closing schools - will be this complete overhaul of where kids go to school AND how they get there. Boundaries, buses plus the breakup of the cohort system of Highly Capable AND bringing more Special Education students into General Education classes.
Take that all in. How massive a task is that especially since the district will have no new resources for classrooms. I'll bet they use consultants for the boundary work but spend money on figuring out how to support teachers in classes? Nope.
And....
Five years ago, a task force that had been set up by the school district to find ways for students of color to get more access to advanced learning, issued a warning about all this.
“Do not remove any current service models until there are a set of systems and structures in place that have been shown to effectively serve students,” an Advanced Learning Task Force of 21 teachers and parents stated in a January 2020 report.
The district ignored this advice. It rolled back the advanced program, even as that did nothing to advance academics, and may have undermined the goal of equity as well.
Here's his example:
In the past five years, since the 2018-19 school year, Asian enrollment has dropped by a whopping 17%,state data shows. While much of that came in the pandemic years, it’s more than double the overall 8% decline in Seattle schools.
That said, it’s clear families of all kinds are clamoring for more choices and options. The 10 top schools the district had once slated for closure had combined waiting lists totaling 777 students — suggesting they’re so popular Seattle might grow enrollment simply by copying them.
It’s flabbergasting that the drive instead was to get rid of them.
It’s good that all this failed. It means it’s not too late for a total reset.
The district needn’t give up on fostering diversity. It could pursue this by focusing on equal opportunity and aggressively expanding access to its best programs (the same ones it just sought to close down).
He also has some thoughts on closing the budget:
There’s still a budget deficit. Why not try joining academically struggling schools into new option programs? That’d be a way to close school buildings, creating efficiencies, while also giving displaced families something positive to look forward to. Rather than sameness.
It's not a bad thought except that most Option Schools are full. But maybe it might be possible to switch out/copy successful Option programs at new buildings.
Moving on, there's a wrap-up of the closure process from Director Gina Topp at the West Seattle Blog. Interestingly, it appears there were multiple tv crews there as well as other media.
The regional media was looking for reaction to what had happened just an hour earlier – the full School Board had officially voted to both accept superintendent Dr. Brent Jones‘s withdrawal of his school-closure recommendations, and to withdraw the direction that had led to his recommendations, while clarifying that this all doesn’t mean they’ll never consider closures again. (The motion, voted on remotely, passed unanimously.)
Discussion
Topp said the next board meeting should bring information on other areas from which budget cuts could be made. They’re also expecting longer-term budget stabilization info by next June. “We still have a LOT of work to do – where this $100 million is going to come from – plus a loan we took from ourselves … that we have to pay. … Over the years we’ve taken the low-hanging fruit (regarding cuts) … ” Topp said she had been willing to consider school closures if they could have factored into long-term stabilization.
She also offered more regret that “if we had started by saying ‘we have a $100 million budget deficit, so how do we solve that?’ we’d be in a different place right now.”
Topp seems to be advocating for a Budget Taskforce. I would second that but ONLY if their work will be supported by the Superintendent and Board. It won't work any other way.
Other topics:
- 3-bell schedule that have some schools with a 9:30 am start.
- provide some options for parents and not just one
- Another attendee: As the district figures out how to address the budget deficit, where will the information come from? How will the community be informed? Topp said those questions are yet to be answered.
- Another attendee noted that school-board meetings’ important info seems to all be stuffed into the “consent agenda.” Further discussing how the board works, Topp then tried to explain “student-outcome-focused government,” which the board is supposed to be embracing, saying it had to do with goals and direction, rather than micromanaging – it’s important “that we are trying to achieve the same thing,” she said. She added that no one on the board is against SOFG as far as she knows.
What about staff? All in for SOFG?
- One attendee thought the Board was "dysfunctional."
- What people are asking for is more information, distilled Topp. And engagement. Topp said it was imperative to be intentional about how you “set up” conversations and moments.
- A school employee observed that there’s a big question about who gets to be heard during “engagement” – and again recalled the Sanislo playground meeting, which sought to reach out to everyone.”
- A Sanislo parent said she’s “deeply disappointed” that the school-funding situation has been going downhill for 30 years and hasn’t been fully fixed yet. She and another speaker agreed that state leaders have failed them. “They shouldn’t keep their job” if they can’t properly fund education,” the other attendee declared. “It’s not the Legislature, it’s very specific people IN the Legislature who have let us down.”
- “I am concerned that the school district has lost the trust of the community,” one of the Sanislo advocates declared. Topp agreed and said the district must work on rebuilding that trust.
Topp plans another meeting in December. That led to praise for Topp for having community-conversation meetings – something other directors aren’t doing.
As opposed to:
Brent Jones has presented three plans to fix the budget problem. All have failed. We’ve no reason to believe a fourth plan will succeed. He’s facing another teacher contract negotiation next year, and it’s going to be ugly, because he’ll offer no raises and maybe ask for givebacks from the teachers to balance the budget.
The community doesn’t trust him. The board has undermined him. He should resign, and let someone else clean up the mess.
Two takeaways for me:
- The district has really built distrust throughout the district.
- No matter what media, I am hearing consistent statements from parents that they will not support the levies in February.
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