Seattle Schools Community Forum

Here is the Excel sheet for the options for the NE middle school situation.  My understanding is it is a combo of ideas from staff and FACMAC.  During the Work Session the discussion went as follows: - They were first discussing what appeared in the presentation and what FACMAC was recommending. FACMAC was recommending an Eckstein split - North and South Annexes.   Director Peaslee clarified that this was really a split and not a temporary annexation.  The answer was yes. - There was also this discussion about Jane Addams and beefing up its middle school offerings to fill the school.   (They called this "mitigation.")  But, as Director DeBell pointed out, how long could that go on and how could the district afford it?  (And, if they did this for JA, why not all K-8s?) - One interesting thing is how the district seems very committed to making sure that Eckstein North would have the same things as Eckstein South.  Phil Brockman spoke ...

Despite the weather, several of us came to last night's Work Session believing we would see some real progress in what the interim plan for capacity management might be for 2013-2104.  I left at 7:45 p.m. shaking my head. Once AGAIN, the district is a day late and a dollar short.  I know staff works hard.  I know they want to get input via the public both formal (FACMAC) and informal (community meetings).  But it's December 20th (and neigh the end of the world upon us) and NOW they have new ideas?  Even as they heard, for MONTHS, that they were not addressing the north end middle school issues? I guess I could say congratulations to all the NE parents who stood up and said, "You need to solve this."  But school starts up on Jan 7th with a "plan" to be presented at the Board meeting on Jan. 9th.   Once parents look at these new ideas (and there are five of them), how will the Board and staff know which one(s) parents believe will work best?...

Let's go through the Transition Plan amendments being proposed by Board Directors. Harium Martin-Morris I move that there be a one-year special program preference for Thornton Creek 5th graders applying to Salmon Bay as their first choice school, without transportation, with tiebreakers applied in the following sequence: 1.Sibling 2.Special program preference for Thornton Creek 5th graders 3.Geography 4. Lottery So this would keep TC students flowing to Salmon Bay. Of course, without transportation, how many will be able to make this choice? Maybe someone at TC could let us know what they think the rough numbers might be. Salmon Bay is less difficult to get into than it used and if more TC students didn't go, there'd be more spaces for other students. The accompanying chart shows that it truly varies from year to year where TC 5th graders go for middle school. Oddly, either the number got left off, but they give no numbers for how many TC 5th graders went to Eckstein f...