Reopen West Seattle schools? Here’s a new chance to speak out

How should Seattle Public Schools deal with school overcrowding? You get another chance to make suggestions. Days after the district confirmed that it’s pushed back the decisionmaking process on short-term “capacity management” – particularly, where to reopen schools next year – it’s announced a new set of community meetings. The first one is in West Seattle: 6-7:30 pm Monday, November 28th, in the library at the new Denny International Middle School (2601 SW Kenyon). Previously, the district had said decisions would be made this month, and has had only one meeting in this area (October 6th – WSB coverage here). Today’s announcement says the meeting will include “presentations by Seattle Public School Capital Projects and Planning staff members, followed by a question and answer period. Comments from the community will be collected, recorded, considered and included in the District’s Short Term Capacity Management planning process.” The district’s webpage about the “capacity management” process is here.

fiver November 9, 2011 (2:08 pm)

What date is the 6PM meeting at Denny? I didn’t see it listed when following the links.
Thanks for the continued coverage on this.

WSB November 9, 2011 (2:10 pm)

November 28th. Was just going back for a round of proofreading and hadn’t caught that yet. Sorry.

WSMama November 9, 2011 (3:42 pm)

Why don’t they just move Spectrum out of Lafayette and move it to a new school? It would take 5 (??) classes out of that overcrowded school.

pjmanley November 9, 2011 (5:51 pm)

Because WSMama, most Spectrum kids live in the Lafayette boundary, and we’re supposed to be trying to get programs to the kids that need them instead of shuttling kids to buildings further away. Transportation is facing huge cuts again this year, and we don’t want 150 more cars on the road each morning in WS.

The answer is to open buildings and redraw boundaries instead of ejecting kids from their neighborhood schools like this Board did to Cooper. I fought it then, and I don’t ever want to see that happen again in WS.

N.A. Neighbor November 9, 2011 (7:27 pm)

Also, moving Spectrum from Lafayette only helps Lafayette (and one could argue whether they’d actually see that as helping) – does it help Schmitz Park or Gatewood which are also busting at the seams?

SpeakLoud November 9, 2011 (9:41 pm)

All we need is another option school-no redrawing boundries, no pissed off mamas-just another good choice for West Seattle-as many people could be happy with that than any ohter option IMHO

(required) November 9, 2011 (9:51 pm)

Talk about letting the lunatics run the asylum — have you read some of the stuff on the district’s webpage? I just read Les Kendrick’s “recommendations.” Talk about useless bureaucratic blather! He urges we figure out better ways to tell how many kids there are. Give me a break! Every year, there will be kids! We need schools with reasonable ratios of teachers to kids — not mind-numbing bureaucratic bumbling about meetings and stuidies and blagh blah blah…OPEN A SCHOOL! The problem is obvios: overcrowding, right? We know it’s there — ask any parent, teacher, or staff at Lafayette and the answer is the same: overcrowded. The real problem with public education in West Seattle’s schools isn’t population forecasting — it’s that due to obvious overcrowding, we are providing education in classes with unreasonable numbers of students. You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows — when it rains, you need an umbrella. Here, we have overcrowding. We need another school. Simple. It should remain open to always ensure that kids aren’t at levels that impaid schools’ ability to really teach kids. We should always see student levels at low numbers. Opening another school ddoes that. Enough Seattle hand-holding kumbayah BS…open a school! We don’t need a bunch of feel good community meetings where people talk and nothing happens — we need leaders in the district who will lead. What is happening now is pathetic….Sorry, I am just fed up!

Neighborly November 9, 2011 (10:45 pm)

Yes, open an all West Seattle draw option school and don’t re- draw the boundaries. Move Gatewood’s EBD program to the new school. Everyone gets a smaller class, inclusion is done better, and nobody has to sell their house.

Public School Advocate November 9, 2011 (10:51 pm)

How can we do this without creating BRAND NEW school communities? Just a few weeks ago, the “idea” from our school board rep. was to open 2 new elementaries to be temporarily housed at Boren (1 from North WS, 1 from South WS). How many families would want to start K in brand new school community in a temporary location? Not a great idea in my book. Rather, I’d like to see what we can do with existing communities/programs before changing boundaries, etc…
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A few ideas I’ve heard discussed:

1) Give Cooper back to Cooper and move Pathfinder to Boren. The capacity of Pathfinder could be increased in a bigger location. They could accommodate ~75 students per/grade vs. current ~50 students.
2) Schmitz Park moves to a renovated Genesse Hill building and Schmitz Park site becomes an “option” school
3) Roxhill moves to a new building on the site of old Denny with an increased capacity.
4) Move Spectrum to it’s own site which alleviates crowding at Lafayette and provides an option to more families that want Spectrum for their students.
5) Temporarily “house” 2 existing elementary schools at Boren while their schools are remodeled with increased capacity. Existing school communities will be much more likely accept temp. housing if they know they will be returning to something better.
6) Add portables to Pathfinder to increase their capacity. If other schools need to have a few portables, why not Pathfinder? There is enough land there to eventually build a middle school “wing”.

option school is KEY November 10, 2011 (9:04 am)

I totally agree that opening up another option school is best. Changing the boundaries again would cause so much unnecessary havoc in the community. Also, why does the spectrum program exist at only one school? Are kids turned away from that program? Maybe we have that program exist at two schools?

pjmanley “most Spectrum kids live in the Lafayette boundary” – where are you getting that data from?

sb November 10, 2011 (12:36 pm)

Even if “most Spectrum kids live in the Lafayette boundary” is true, I would argue that’s because of the convinience factor. Despite my child’s qualification to be tested into Spectrum, I choose not to because of the distance from my home. Perhaps a more central location would draw more families.

WSMama November 10, 2011 (1:54 pm)

I’d like to know where the ‘most Spectrum students live in Lafayette boundaries’ info comes from too. Are the Lafayette people the only ones testing their kids because they don’t have to switch schools? A lot of people don’t even bother because they don’t want to switch schools.

Forest November 10, 2011 (5:14 pm)

Public School Advocate –

Moving the Spectrum program to its own site sounds good, but which site do you suggest using? If you’re thinking about Boren, I’ve got to disagree. NO elementary program should be housed there. The street location is dangerous and the building too intimidating (with rooms and fixtures scaled to fit teens and adults) for use by elementary students.

Athena November 16, 2011 (5:28 pm)

This is just devastating news to me. I have a child that falls in to the “twice exceptional” learner category. Many of the spectrum students fall in to that category and I wonder how they will receive the special education services that are so critical to their success. There is also something to be said about continuing to change these lines, it is hard enough for a NT child to change schools, much less one who has challenges socially. It can’t be healthy for these children to continue to be shuffled around. Sometimes it is critical for a child to be in a program like spectrum so they will be challenged. If my child is not challenged, he will get bored and will be in trouble. I hate to sound ignorant but where is Boren? I googled it and the only thing I found was near Seward Park. The other thing I feel West Seattle will have a challenge with is the commute if we are taken out of West Seattle. Do we want more people on the West Seattle Bridge during viaduct work?? Finally- we are SO happy at Lafayette. Yes it is crowded, but the teachers are amazing, PTO is fantastic, the new leadership is doing a great job. There has to be something we can do. I will be at the meeting and I will be speaking loudly :(

Athena November 16, 2011 (5:29 pm)

correction to say PTA not PTO

Forest November 17, 2011 (2:43 pm)

Athena –

Boren is on the east side of Delridge Way, 3/4 mile north of Home Depot. Its street address is 5950 Delridge Way SW.
Google “Seattle Public Schools – Building for Learning” and scroll down to Boren on that web page’s list of Seattle public school histories.

dadam November 20, 2011 (12:49 pm)

Maybe Lafayette has Spectrum kids because parents choose to move to the neighborhood where they would like to live and create a community around their school, and make their crazy lives a little easier and not have to drive or bus their kids all around seattle. We moved to the neighborhood specifically for this reason. We went through our daughter having to move to school after school to stay in APP and didn’t want our son to have to change schools every year so we moved to where the program was. If the Spectrum program leaves Lafayette, our son will leave the program so we can stay and enjoy the ease of living blocks from the school and after school programs. i can’t even find the words to express my frustration with the district. Aside from the ones I don’t want my kids to hear.

WSB November 20, 2011 (1:29 pm)

The district has never had Spectrum as a self-contained program on its own campus in all the years I have been following the program (and once you get to middle school, it’s not self-contained at all), so that one is hard to imagine, but we’ll keep watch as proposals emerge …
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We have personal experience with this one as our child was in Lafayette Spectrum in 3rd-5th grades and it remains to this day, five years later, the best experience he has had in any school (private, public, online) along the way. He probably wouldn’t have the opportunity to get into it now, though, as we don’t live in that neighborhood. At the time, there was no other Spectrum program in WS so it was either, get into Lafayette or do not be appropriately served.
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Anyway, hope everyone with an interest in the overall capacity-management issue will indeed come to the November 28th meeting, whatever they think should be the result … TR

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