Seattle Schools Community Forum

There had been a placeholder in tonight's Board agenda for what they are calling "Acceleration of BTA III for New Student Assignment Plan". Basically, it should be titled, "How the Hell Do We Get This Done?" Here are their ideas: Seattle Public Schools has several options for financing the work required. These include: Internal financing such as borrowing from the Capital Eligible Projects fund (CEP) and Short-term public financing such as Revenue Anticipation Notes. Internal Financing Internal Financing offers the lowest total cost of borrowing. The District can borrow from CEP reserves. The CEP fund balance as of January 31st, 2010 was $13.9M. Based on anticipated property sales for this year, the CEP fund has the capacity to lend $8.5M to the BTA III program this year. Revenue Anticipation Notes Although the District has the ability to use Revenue Anticipation Notes to fund the $8.5M needed to accelerate construction on the ...

I recently reported that the QA/Magnolia schools group, Successful Schools in Action (SSIA), was having some community meetings (there's one tonight) on the reopening of Old Hay as a K-5 school. The district said they thought a K-5 Montessori school could be an idea. So then there was this in the Seattle PI from the SSIA group: "With the recently released assignment plan and proposed attendance boundaries, the school district has announced the reopening of several schools, including the Old Hay school located on Boston Street. This school will be renovated and reopened in 2011 as an option school to help ease the overcrowding in our neighborhood schools. For the 2010-2011 school year, students will be bused and the program will be located in Lincoln High School. Options schools typically offer unique programs and are all-city draws, with attendance preference given to a small, local geographic area. The district has proposed this school become a Montessori K-5 school, b...

The district proposes reopening 5 buildings to house new schools to help with capacity issues. We already know that Old Hay (which will be renamed soon using the previously used name Sharples) will be a K-5 Montessori. The district has some experience with Montessori (although not a full school) so it could be assumed they know what they are doing. So then we have Sand Point (original name was Pontiac), Rainier View, McDonald (and note it's Mc, not Mac), and Viewlands. All will be K-5s (likely). So the question is how to open these schools and as what? Should they open as full K-5s? Start with a couple of grades? I think just K is out because of two factors. One, for parents who already have a child at a different school (and if grandfathering for sibs at the original school doesn't happen), then you would have a mandatory assignment of two schools. Two, Lincoln is a big building and it would seem odd to have two little schools with just kindergartens as their start. ...