Seattle Schools Community Forum

Charlie Mas said... The fundamental problem with Seattle Public Schools, the fault at the root of all of the district's trouble, is the fact that the District is structurally and culturally incapable of responding to the needs of the community it purportedly serves. As a consequence of this fundamental failure people are choosing alternatives when the District does not meet the community's needs. Anonymous said... What bothers me as this goes along is that Joanne Bowers, the principal at Viewlands, should have become the new principal at Greenwood (the current principal is retiring). The district is advocating, if Viewlands closes, that Greenwood take a large number of Viewlands students. Who is in the best position to unite these schools? Who knows the most about the autism program and how to make this inclusion program work? Who has started a school previously (ORCA)? The answer to all of those is Joanne Bowers and yet, the district, in yet another bone-headed move, has put W...

(excerpted from the public testimony of the 6/26 site hearing at Viewlands ) My name is Sandy Culbert. I have been a para-educator at Viewlands since 1991, proudly I say that. Dear friends, people of Seattle and Viewlanders, I come tonight not to bury Viewlands Elementary, but to praise it. Let's look at what is good and worthy of praise at this school. Let's see what happens here in spite of the leaking roof and poor building conditions. In fact, the roof is going to be repaired this summer, maybe even as we speak. It's time to look under the roof and see what is important here at Viewlands. One, we have been blessed to have a strong diverse student body, 48 percent minority, 52 percent majority. We can be proud of all our students. Dedicated staff, number two, teachers, principals, secretaries, tutors, parents, in the PTA, outstanding. Great reading scores. Great direct reading assessment scores for the lower grades. Three, a highly successful inclusion program in the aut...

Excerpted from the June 26 site closure hearing at the South Shore building . "I'm Brian Street. I'm a teacher at the New School. And I have two children at the school. I also live in the community. I'm also a graduate of South Shore Middle School. I want to talk about the work we have been doing here planning a preK through 8 school and how our vision fits this location and the students who live around it. First I want to talk about this community. The other day I heard a parent describe Rainier beach as the Plymouth Rock of Seattle. A couple of years ago, the New York times described the south end of Seattle being uniquely suited to make diversity work. Out school population reflects the diversity of this neighborhood. 27 percent of our student are English language learners. I understand that both last year and this year, 100 percent of our incoming preK students came from within one mile of our school. This neighborhood is our base. Now I would like to talk about ou...

(Posted by a former Seattle parent) On May 5, I became part of the reason for school closures. That was the day we moved out of Seattle. When people talk about the hidden cost of families leaving the city, it often sounds like a theoretical threat. I am proof that it isn’t. My husband and I loved living in the city. I liked seeing the mountain while I took the bus to work; he liked walking with my daughter to the grocery store. We loved our Greenwood brick tudor so much that we arranged financing to build a room for our infant son. Like many parents with children about to enter school, I began touring schools early and read every article I could find about the school district’s plans for the future. I was dismayed by what I saw. The Seattle School District didn’t just not work to keep us, they actively pushed us away. Of the five schools we toured, not one had a principal who had been there more than two years. We had no idea which schools to apply for because we didn’t know which woul...

Excerpted from the 6/26 South Shore site hearing transcript . I assume not everybody will read the transcripts, so I am going to post at least one excerpt from each hearing. "Good evening. My name is Beatrice Butler. I came here tonight to speak on behalf of the Emerson family and community and its support of a merger with Rainier View and Emerson. We have been looking at all the information that has been presented to us. We have been talking with some of the Rainier View people, their staff, and we have been talking with the community. One of the things that we're looking at, the issues, is that last year, Rainier View was on the list for closure. We keep feel like we're not getting the full picture of what's happening this year. We feel like Emerson was placed on the closure list for the sole purpose of securing a space for the New School. We appreciate the New School and their support of Emerson, keeping Emerson open. First of all, I would like to say that. And than...

All the school closure site hearings this week have court reporters, and the district has committed to posting the full testimony from the hearings on-line. As of today (Wednesday), transcripts from two site hearings are already posted. Go to the Investing in Educational Excellence page and scroll to the bottom of the page under the section labeled "Public Hearing Schedule."

By Charlie Mas, a Washington Middle School parent. [Posted with the caveat that this is based on the superintendent's preliminary plan to which changes are likely.] There has been a lot of talk about the closure plan having disproportionate outcomes for students of color, students living in poverty, English language learners, and special education students. And that is true if you compare the demographics of the set of students in terminating programs with the demographics of the district as a whole. The district as a whole is 41% White, 40% qualified for Free or Reduced Price Lunch, 12% bilingual ed., and 9% special ed. But we're not going to close a school that is full when we're trying to reduce excess capacity just because it has a lot of White students and that will balance the racial mix. Do we want academics and real financial considerations drive these decisions, or do we want them driven by race-based politics? Since we're really only talking about terminating ...