By Tracy Record
West Seattle Blog editor
Friday night’s not usually prime time for public meetings.
Last night, however, an extraordinary gathering filled a meeting room at the new High Point Neighborhood Center: Two Seattle School Board members, a contingent of top Seattle Public Schools officials including the Chief Academic Officer and two local principals, and dozens of parents with translators serving them in languages including Somali, Vietnamese and signing.
Neighborhood House had sent us word of the meeting earlier in the day, saying it was a followup to a December 21st forum in which High Point families shared concerns about effects of the new Student Assignment Plan, including the fact that West Seattle Elementary is now the default school for the area. (Before the new Student Assignment Plan moved the district back to neighborhood-based schools, parents citywide were allowed to choose what schools they wanted their children to attend, near or far.)
Here’s why some are concerned about WS Elementary:
According to the 2009 annual report for WS Elementary, 54 percent of its third graders did not meet state standards in reading last year; 68 percent of third graders didn’t meet state standards in math. In the scores listed online for third, fourth and fifth graders, 5th grade reading is the only section of the test in which a majority of WS Elementary students did meet state standards – 52% last year. The same year, though, 93 percent of fourth graders failed to meet state standards on the math test.
The first hour or so of last night’s meeting proceeded slowly, as district officials offered simple explanations of services they offer for bilingual families, pausing after each few sentences for the translation to make it around the room, where attendees wore electronic devices to pick up the translation broadcast by whichever interpreter they were connected with:
One of the district officials on hand was Bilingual Education Program Manager Veronica 
Maria Gallardo (photo right), who didn’t discuss High Point specifics so much as list districtwide stats:
*More than 5,400 English-language learners in Seattle Public Schools
*Top three languages (after English) are Spanish, Somali (that’s new, she said) and Vietnamese
*Support is offered in 9 languages, with 97 teachers and 191 instructional assistants focused on English-language learners; districtwide, students speak more than 100 languages
The support systems repeatedly stressed during the meeting include Bilingual Orientation Centers (4 elementary and 1 secondary) “for students who have been in the U.S. less than a year,” said Gallardo.
The district’s new Chief Academic Officer, Dr. Susan Enfield, noted that she had taught bilingual students during her career. She was the first of several to stress “family engagement” as a key component of students’ success. The district official in charge of that, Family/Community Engagement Coordinator Bernardo Ruiz (top photo), spoke briefly too, mentioning the “family engagement team,” which he said includes the principal and teachers at each school.
West Seattle’s school board rep Steve Sundquist also offered a few general words of welcome; board colleague Harium Martin-Morris was also there but did not speak to the group. The meat of the meeting came when the three-dozen-plus parents who were there were offered the chance to speak, all but one through translators.
How do you know how the students are doing? was the first question. Dr. Enfield mentioned testing – the WASL “for now”; also the MAP test (explained here), given three times a year. She urged the parent to “go to the school, talk with the principal and teacher, ask for information” and noted that starting next year there will be a new type of “school report” on how individual schools are doing.
Next question: Students in other districts seem “very successful compared to here” (Bellevue and Mercer Island were mentioned by the parent) – so does that mean their program is better?
Sundquist took that one: “I would say in Seattle Public Schools, opportunity for our kids has not always been equal.” To illustrate, he mentioned the sought-after Spectrum (lower of 2 “gifted” levels) program at Lafayette Elementary, and the fact that “up until recently there had not been many (such) programs at schools in the southern half of the city,” but new district management is trying to expand Spectrum. In West Seattle, Arbor Heights Elementary is expected to offer it soon, as is Madison Middle School (until now, Denny has been the only West Seattle middle school with the program), though Sundquist reiterated that the decision has not yet been made on when those new Spectrum programs will be added – this fall? or later. Bottom line, though, he said, “We expect all our schools to be good schools for your children.”
The next two parents voiced similar questions/concerns: If a school is underperforming, and a student is doing well until he/she starts attending that school, what is the problem (causing that)? And what if everything they’re advised to try, including “family engagement,” doesn’t make a difference?
“I’m sorry you’re not happy, because that’s not good,” Dr. Enfield replied. “Because our system is so big … we are working hard to minimize the differences between schools. If your student is not learning .. we have resources that can help you sit down and talk with the people at your school about your student’s progress.”
Time and time again, the district officials kept coming back to family engagement. When West Seattle Elementary principal Gayle Everly spoke, she said, “One thing I know is that family engagement is key.” She mentioned “working toward data-driven instruction” and said her school offers support to children who are achieving at different levels via a math specialist, a math coach working with teachers, and “differentiated instruction.” Her school, Everly said, has 65 percent English language learners and “a strong bilingual program.” She described West Seattle Elementary as “a Spectrum school,” though the program is not self-contained, which is its usual mode in elementary grades. “We funded a part-time Spectrum instructor this year,” Everly said.
She implored the parents who had spoken, and those who were going to speak, at the meeting, to be specific: “If there is a specific student you are worried about, I would love to talk about that. There is a lot of conversation in the education field about how we advance children and serve children for whom English is a second language. … The bilingual assistant may not always speak the same language as your child, but might be there to make sure their needs are being met.” She also referred repeatedly to the Bilingual Orientation Center at her school, and urged parents to talk with their children’s teachers.
That did not go over well with the parent who spoke next. The phrase that jumped out as the translator recounted, in his own soft tone, what the parent had voiced passionately, loud and long, was: “You cheat us.” The translation continued, “You say that if your kid is behind, go to the schoolteacher … no, we don’t go to the teacher. You are here now. You are the ones above the teachers. We go to you.”
Dr. Enfield took the microphone to respond. “You’re right. Our job is to educate your children, but we can’t do that alone. We need to work with you. We need to work with partners like Neighborhood House … We have more than 45,000 students. Each one is unique. I don’t know your child, but the principal and teacher do, so it’s my job to give them the support to get the job done.”
The tension was defused shortly afterward as Denny International Middle School principal Jeff Clark was lauded by the next speaker for “the best school (the student in their family) ever attended.” Applause ensued. (Denny’s annual report for 2009 is here; some subjects there also have a majority of students failing to meet standards.)
But next, a renewed note of concern. A man told the story of “an African girl” – someone else’s child, he made it clear, not his own, so he had heard the story secondhand – who skipped school for five months allegedly without the school having sounded an alarm for the family: “Someone finally went to the school to ask how she was doing, and the school said, ‘oh, we took her off the rolls because she wasn’t coming’.”
There were no easy answers or explanations for that. Only the district reps promising they would do better. And the next step, they said, would be for families to attend open houses to find out more about the schools to which their children will be assigned: West Seattle Elementary has an open house January 20th, beginning with dinner at 5:30, and also including a “learning enrichment fair” as well as information about the Student Assignment Plan; Denny has an open house January 27th, starting at 6:30.
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