Seattle Schools Community Forum

Update: according to the Times some non-profits are already circling the building but I suspect that if the district got an application together, they might move up that list given they are a public entity. Apparently, though, (and this is just what I thought the district would say), the Times is reporting Flip Herndon as saying that it would take a lot of work as a school and at what cost.   He's right as the building has asbetos, seismic retrofitting and updating work to be done (the Times cites a figure of $40M). But honestly, is this looking a gift horse in the mouth?  Of course, nothing is truly free but compared to the costs of finding land and building, this may be the best chance the district has.  I felt certain the district wouldn't want to divert off its "Strategic Plan" for anything.  They truly need help in looking at the vast facilities and capacity problems - hello, City? End of update. I received what I believe is a fairly amazing pres...

There continues to be discussion of a downtown elementary school. The Downtown Seattle Association has released a new feasibility study and it appears to lend support to the idea. Downtown is proving an increasingly desirable residential zone for families with children. There are not a lot of school-age children there - not enough to justify the creation of a school, but the number is growing quickly. Of course a 300% increase from two brings us only to eight. That's not enough for a bus, let alone a school. The District included $5 million in BEX IV for " Planning for a downtown school ", but no money for construction. In the proposed changes to the attendance area boundaries, the downtown area, currently in the Hay/McClure attendance area, would be shifted to the Lowell/Meany attendance area. There are hundreds of empty seats at Lowell - plenty for all of the Seattle Public School students living downtown. The last report from the District demographer did not sugge...

 Councilman (and mayoral candidate) Tim Burgess has a regular newsletter that he sends out. Here's what he has to say about the South Lake Union development and a "public school." 3. Support our public school system. Two weeks ago, Seattle voters once again demonstrated generous support for public education by renewing two vital levies at a time when more parents are enrolling their children in public school. City government can do more to support the school district by encouraging the development of an elementary school for the growing number of families in the greater downtown area. With this up-zone of South Lake Union, we must craft language that specifies what a developer would need to build for a school (such as space suitable for classrooms, cafeteria and a gymnasium) to earn additional building height. As with any piece of land use legislation, the details of how we seek to accomplish these policies will be very important. The Council will meet on Monday in Ci...

The Mayor had organized an Education Leadership Team awhile back and I finally got to attend a meeting today.  The Team is made up of City staff, SPS staff, UW staff, community college reps, business reps and labor reps.  It's quite a diverse group (well, in what they do - not so much diversity in what they look like).  SPS staff there today included Pegi McEvoy, Duggan Harman and the Superintendent. Most of the meeting was about the legislative agenda for each group. The overwhelming talk was of McCleary and its enactment .  Basically it was stated that the McCleary decision said: - not spending enough on K-12 education - the way the dollars are received is structurally unsound - the outcomes are not good enough to create good citizens and a sound economy The final meeting for the legislative taskforce is Monday morning but no one is expecting any great news or outcomes.  What was suggested is the levy swap PLUS a tax so that NO district loses mon...

Publicola (yes, it's still around) ran an opinion piece written by the Downtown Seattle Association in support of a downtown school.

The Times and a bone - more on the district needing to work with downtown for a school.  Yes, creative ideas would be good...if this were an actual need AND priority.  What is fascinating is that it was stated at the BEX IV meeting at McClure that staff IS working on looking at space, etc.  One, you'd think that BEX/facilities staff might have better things to do (but we also thought that about Dow Constantine, the Mayor and the City Council and yet the arena was their obsession for the last couple of months).  Two, why is this so important?  Maybe we should send Banda and the Board separate e-mails and ask them to rank order a downtown school in the list of "what needs to get done in SPS".   What's on your mind?

I attended the BEX IV meeting at McClure last Thursday.  More on that in a moment. Want to make your voice heard?  Write the BOARD.  Don't write the district, write the Board.  They will make the final choice. Let me say that given the push from the Downtown Association, they have heard loud and clear from some of those folks.  (And, they have probably heard from the City Council and the Mayor as well.)  They need to hear from YOU. Write them at schoolboard@seattleschools.org. Now our friends at the Times printed an op-ed from a nice parent on Queen Anne/downtown.   I would gently say this woman gets a few things wrong but she is certainly entitled to her opinion. I would say, though, that EVERY neighborhood should be entitled to ITS own op-ed to advocate for the schools in its region.   So here's the link to the Times' op-ed guidelines and I urge you to write one for your region/school. There is no reason why the Times should show...

We have heard school district officials bemoan the fact that the City of Seattle does not collect impact fees (assessments on new development to offset the costs of additional demands on public resources) for schools. They are, as usual, crying crocodile tears. The District is authorized to assess their own impact fees and they simply have not bothered to do it. Per RCW 43.21C.060 , school districts can assess impact fees. The WAC regarding the Growth Management Act also clearly allows school districts to require new developments to set aside land for schools ( WAC 365-196 ). The King County Code ( 21A.43 ) also not only allows impact fees for schools, it appears to almost require them. The school district could assess an impact fee that would require developers to provide a portion of the cost of building new schools. They simply have not bothered to do it. This not only matters with regard to the development downtown, but to the planned development in Lake City and the planned de...

The Seattle Times is reporting that Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn wants to offer developers a waiver from height restrictions if they will provide space for a downtown elementary school in South Lake Union. It's unclear if the offer is good only in South Lake Union or in other parts of downtown. I don't know who the mayor is talking to, but it isn't anyone who is telling the truth about this.

School District officials bring their BEX IV road show to Madison Middle School in West Seattle tonight. The event begins at 6:30 with introductions and their slide presentation . They also have a handout . Followed by twenty minutes of Q & A from cards, twenty minutes of Q & A from the floor, and twenty minutes of "Individual Time With Staff". I hope to be there tonight because I have some questions

Next week is the first of the BEX IV community meetings (Thursday, the 20th at Whitman at 6:30 p.m.).  It now looks like a real battle brewing and the Board will certainly have a decision to make. For your consideration: - the Downtown Seattle Association has made the unfortunate decision to continue to pressure the Board/City Council for a downtown school.  To their credit, they took a meeting with me and I outlined why, at this juncture, it was bad timing.  I also gently put forth that if one of the South Lake Union businesses would donate a couple of floors, the district could roll out a K-8 or K-5 one year at a time and, by the time BEX V came, then they would get a real building.  (I mean it's just plain funny to ask for money for a building when there is NO land to build on.) They also apparently do not understand the severe and pressing needs elsewhere in the city despite my efforts to explain the overcrowding elsewhere AND the number of rundown schoo...

Today in Crosscut we find an article about the Downtown elementary school that actually includes some data  - census numbers - that could be used to make a case for the school. It actually makes a stronger case for a downtown high school than a downtown elementary school, but there's no mention of that. I have a number of questions that I would like to see answered. Where are these kids going to school now? Do we only need an elementary school downtown - not a middle school and a high school? Why don't we need a middle school or a high school? If these kids are in the census data, why didn't they appear in the District's enrollment projections? It's nice to finally see some numbers associated with this school idea, which has seemed like a pet project by downtown elites until this.

Earlier in the month the Board had a Work Session on BEX IV.  Here are some highlights and commentary. The beginning of the meeting saw staff go over the input from the BEX IV community meetings .  It was surprisingly thin.  All that was said was that there were 510 oral and written comments and that Option #2 received the most yes votes (although I later saw the numbers and it was close between #2 and #3).   Director Martin-Morris had to ask about how this informs the Board what the community is thinking on this issue.  Pegi McEvoy said that info in was in a Friday update that had been published two weeks prior.  Here's a link to the webpage on the community meetings for BEX IV. Head of Capital Building projects, Lucy Morello, said they would be carrying over some major maintenance from BTA III.  This puzzles me.  I thought we had a separation of BEX and BTA precisely so that each has its own discrete area.  This goes to the issu...