The new school year is less than four weeks away, and there’s a push to muster support for one local school that needs it more than ever, Highland Park Elementary. If you can help – or want to at least find out how to – you can do that tomorrow night. For the basic story, here’s the invitation that Highland Park Action Committee co-chairs Carolyn and Billy Stauffer wrote to district, city, and other leaders:
(HPAC’s) role is to affect positive change in our neighborhood, and we have historically been active in bringing together a voice for our neighborhood, which has faced many challenges.
We hosted parent Peter Weiss at our May community meeting, who came to speak with us as a member of the Highland Park Elementary PTA. In discussing his ideas with us to organize a 5K as a fundraiser for the school, the community learned about the state of affairs for our local school – Highland Park Elementary is ranked last in the Seattle Public School System.
Some of our members were brought to tears with this news, exhausted by what feels like yet another blind eye turned towards our community from our leaders. We write to you in response to a request that night from the community to get some answers as to why our school is doing so badly and what the plan is for improvement. We have since discussed this idea with the PTA and have formed a partnership in our efforts. We, along with incoming PTA president Sol Mendez, would like to invite you to a meeting to discuss the school, and answer some questions from our community.
And that invitation is for you too. Come to the Highland Park Improvement Club (12th/Holden) tomorrow night (Tuesday, August 12th), at 7 pm. HPAC says the RSVPs so far include HPES’s new principal Chris Cronas, school-board member Marty McLaren, and City Councilmember Tom Rasmussen.
ADDED TUESDAY: HPAC co-chair Carolyn Stauffer says the school district’s executive director of schools for this area, Israel Vela, also has RSVP’d.
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