Seattle Schools Community Forum

Seattle Schools, like other Washington state school districts, has to deliver an October 1st student count to OSPI for funding.   I have been hearing from several schools, especially elementaries, that they get their schools geared up with services only to suddenly see a loss of students because of some kind of change/switch that the district does so that students leave their schools.  Apparently this has happened to some schools last year and it appears it will happen again this year.

Below is a letter I dropped off today - in person - to each City Council member.  It details what I believe is a pattern for the Mayor - via his Department of Education and Early Learning (Families and Education levy and the City Preschool Program and, more recently, the HALA report on housing, in trying to insinuate the City more and more into the workings of Seattle Public Schools. Dear City Council Members,

Have you been on a tour yet?  Where and how was it? Had a friend who went to an IBX meeting at Ingraham and said it was absolutely packed to the rafters.  I recently got a private tour of Sand Point Elementary (which I had never been to and had wanted to check out).  Very impressive.  For those of you who wondered how well a new start-up school can do, here's proof.  And, it's a team effort with the principal (Dan Warren), staff and parents.  Principal Warren had done his homework in checking out the Sand Point of former years.  It was opened in 1956 with 13 (gulp) portables as the school and with a K-6 enrollment of 309 students.  (Actually checking district archives, Pontiac Elementary opened in 1890 by the Yesler School district and was annexed into SPS in 1911.  The land was then sold to the federal government in 1926.  But in early 1941, Navy parents at Sand Point Housing wanted a school and staged a one-day strike and out...