West Seattle school-closure fight: Citywide meeting tonight

In the middle of Snowstorm ’08, we published an update on the school-closure process, which is proceeding AS SCHEDULED, the district reiterates, despite some changes and cancellations because of the weather. If you missed that update – read it here; it includes links to the official transcript from the 12/16 Genesee Hill school-closure hearing, and the rescheduled Lowell hearing date. And if you are opposed to school closures – specific or in general – you may want to know about a meeting tonight that just appeared on our radar (thanks to Nora!) – a citywide organizing meeting to oppose closures, by a group we hadn’t heard of before. Here are full details; it’s at 6 pm tonight, Garfield Community Center (map). Meantime, Superintendent Dr. Maria Goodloe-Johnson is still scheduled to present her “final recommendations” for closures a week from tomorrow; the most recent recommendations still call for closing the old Genesee Hill Elementary building and making Cooper Elementary in Pigeon Point (left) the new home of Pathfinder K-8, dispersing the current Cooper students elsewhere. The “Cooper School Works” closure-fight site continues to add info, by the way; we just discovered this page with some of their main points.

kindymom December 29, 2008 (1:39 pm)

The Cooper website makes a *very* strong case for them, I hope it gets the attention is deserves. The WASL score comparison with Arbor Heights is particularly compelling.

brittany December 29, 2008 (1:56 pm)

if you are so moved, please send these facts on to the school board members and superintendent! all of the relevant addresses and email addresses are available on the cooperschoolworks.com website. it only takes a minute to reach out to the school board, and as we’ve seen from recent decisions, public opinion does count.

westello December 29, 2008 (4:52 pm)

I read the Cooper page and find it compelling (although the district is not going to wait around on promises of more enrollment to come from any development). They sound like a fine school.

But kids, you (and Cooper) are missing the main tenet of this round of closures – it’s about building condition and little else.

I’ll repeat what I said elsewhere about what I believe is the district’s view in this case: Pathfinder’s program is more valuable to the district than Cooper’s program. Pathfinder is in a terrible building (and have been for a very long time), Cooper is in a newish building that they do not fill and so the district is willing to give up Cooper’s program for Pathfinder’s.

They do make the mistake of trying to finding some favor for whites and/or wealthier communities. That argument has never won favor before with either the district or the Board (and, in fact, seems to irritate Board members). I think it does more harm than good to use it especially when there is no proof. The fact that they haul Lowell into their argument when Lowell has absolutely nothing to do with their school or the possible loss of its building says something.

Sorry, comment time is over.