Seattle Schools Community Forum

I met several people from Cooper Elementary last night at the Board Workshop. One of them, Rebecca Cressell, a teacher at Cooper, later sent me a Cooper School Closure Fact Sheet which presents the case against the proposed closure. The fact sheet is quite long (7 pages), so I've posted a link to it so readers can read the entire piece. Below is an excerpt from the introduction and a list of the section headings: "Cooper Elementary is not a wise choice for school closure. Relocating Pathfinder K-8 to Cooper Elementary would result in significantly insufficient capacity in the West Seattle North Cluster to serve area students. 56 displaced Cooper students would be mandatorily forced to bus outside of their cluster, a clear violation of the SPS student assignment plan. Additionally, displacing vulnerable Cooper students would cause significant academic and socio-emotional harm to Cooper’s historically marginalized student population." Cooper serves an increasing population...

Since the full presentation and summary are now published on the district website, I wanted to start this thread to discuss all the recommended proposals. I'd like to keep this in one thread if possible. End of meeting recap : took notes by hand for most of the rest of the meeting; left near the end of the high school discussion. Here's what I can read from my notes: Maier: concerned about transportation costs in option of moving Summit K-8 to Meany. Maier also asked whether Summit K-12 costs in the 9-12 grades had enrollment priority for getting into high schools. Answer from Tracy Libros was "no", would be enrolled in high school closest to home address on space available basis. Said that only displaced students getting ability to choose spots at any school they want are a handful of T.T. Minor 4th grade students who were also moved (from M.L.K.) during last round of closures. DeBell: likes the option of Summit K-8 and Nova together because it provides a pathway ...

MOVING rest of Board Workshop "Live" coverage to above thread 5:50 pm: Taking 20 minute break 5:35 pm : Functional capacity presentation by Holly Ferguson. Reviewing planning capacity v. functional capacity distinction again. Staff (with former teachers and principlas) has now done complete walk-through of all elementary, K-8, middle and high schools. Created a database of all rooms in the district. "Short answer is no" to the question of whether there is sufficient capacity in north end for elementary students, particularly with closure of AS#1 and Summit K-12. Will need space for an additional 200 students if they don't choose to go to Thornton Creek. Maier: points out that capacity numbers are aggregate, adding #s in N, NE and NW clusters, as presented doesn't answer question about whether there is adequate capacity where students are. Rachel: says this can be addressed when redrawing assignment boundaries and clusters Harium: doesn't like this sl...

The latest word (to my understanding) is this: Lowell to remain open. Montlake to close and move to Lowell with "northern" Lowell APP kids. Southern/central APP kids to Thurgood Marshall. So, indeedy. Three schools in three years for my to-be-second-grader. Thank you, Seattle Schools.

As if the district had nothing else to do (and newspapers don't have any other education issues to write about), here's a fight between a family and the district over an out-of-district enrollment. This involves one, Tony Wroten, a basketball player, who enrolled in Garfield last year as a freshman while it was at Lincoln. Garfield moved back to its new building and big surprise! was overenrolled. The district went through the list, found non-residents and Tony was one of them. His family was told he had to live in Seattle to stay. Here's where it got sticky. Tony's dad rented a house in the Central area where his mom lives (dad lives in Renton). But the district - wait for it - sent out an investigator who found that it did not appear that the house in the Central district was his primary residence and they recinded his enrollment. They were told there was room at other Seattle high schools including RBHS, Cleveland and Sealth. Naturally, a threat of a lawsuit has foll...

And last in the line-up of data finds that may aid our conversations on closures (in district-speak, capacity management), is the DeJong report on enrollment projections. This 121-page opus (grab a cup of coffee before you sit down- you'll be here a long time) has maps and charts (in color, no less) with 10-year projections. Happy reading!

Here's another interesting piece of data entitled Seattle Public Schools Marketshare: 2000, 2004 and 2009 (only for elementary). Some of these numbers almost seem wrong but here it is in black and white. I'm not going to dissect it; I'll let you all figure out what details are of interest to you.