West Seattle school-staff sizes: District’s list; school board member’s Gatewood postmortem

Two notes about public-school staff sizes and district changes. First, Seattle Public Schools says the final enrollment counts are in, so it’s making staff-size changes where needed. The Seattle Schools Community Forum website has published the memo from acting Superintendent Dr. Larry Nyland to principals, with these changes for West Seattle-area schools:

Staff reductions – 1.0 FTE (full-time equivalent) at Madison Middle School, 0.6 FTE at Denny International Middle School

Staff increases – 1.0 FTE at Concord International Elementary School, 0.5 FTE at Sanislo Elementary School

The memo did not include enrollment numbers, but we’ll be asking the district for that information.

Meantime, two weeks after the looming loss of one FTE at Gatewood Elementary led to an unprecedented – and successful – fundraising drive, West Seattle’s school board rep Marty McLaren has issued an extensive postmortem on what happened and why. She sent it to her e-mail list (open to all) on Tuesday night. In it, she concludes, “in my opinion, the Seattle Public School District was not remiss in its action of surplusing a Gatewood teacher.” In case you’re not on that list, here is McLaren’s report, embedded below or PDF format here:

evergreen October 22, 2014 (4:39 am)

I was confused about the letter. It addresses reimbursement. Was Gatewood not able to keep the teacher after fundraising?

Ivan October 22, 2014 (5:01 am)

Heaven forbid that they should ever “surplus” someone from the ever-increasing layers of bureaucrats they seem to have there.

Ex-Gatewood Dad October 22, 2014 (8:11 am)

While I’m not surprised by Marty’s letter I think it leaves a lot of questions unanswered:
1. Marty states that changes were implemented early in West Seattle because there was ‘early clarity’. If that’s the case how was it decided that mitigation funds were not going to be used?
2. What I’ve heard from faculty at Gatewood that it is fairly unique in terms on the number of students with Emotional and Behavioral disabilities it supports. How was that factored into the decision not to use mitigation funds?

3. How much money was budgeted for the mitigation fund and where was it spent?

4. I think Marty missed the point about why students moved to FP. Our neighborhoods assignment school changed from Gatewood to FP. While the school district did communicate that there would not be transportation provided it wasn’t very prominent; that was why so many changed from Gatewood to FP in the first few weeks of school. How many students did the school district forecast would provide their own transportation to Gatewood? Apparently not too many. Surely there’s got to be a better model/forecasting of how many neighborhood students will attend if there is no transportation provided to preferred schools

5. Doesn’t this situation illustrate the need to revisit the window of time that the school district allows students to move? Reforming classrooms a month into the school year affects the education our kids get at both schools. Having classrooms with 30+ kids in them for the first 6 weeks of the school year is a disservice to them all.

Marty’s note reads like a defense of the current policies and procedures rather than an attempt to perform a collaborative post mortem to see what we can do to limit the impact kids across the school district in the future. Disappointing but not unexpected.

evergreen October 22, 2014 (9:14 am)

My child has been in classrooms with major shuffling of kids and teachers at the 6 week point for 4 out of his 5 years in elementary school with SPS. Isn’t this the norm? He has also had multiple kids with disruptive behavioral problems in every classroom. Isn’t that also the norm? His classes have all had 28-29 kids, though in kindergarten there were more than 30 (32-34?) until the district transferred an additional teacher into the school. From my perspective, the GW/FP situation is not new or unusual. But I do applaud the PTA in raising a huge amount of money in a short period of time in order to support a teacher and bring attention to this issue.

brandon October 22, 2014 (11:19 am)

It sounds like Marty’s hand was slapped and told to apologize. Her letter states that these population changes were evident in early September. Why do they wait and wait and wait if its so evident?

pjmanley October 22, 2014 (11:28 am)

Whether you agree with Marty or not, we are lucky to have her in West Seattle. She works very hard, tries to do the right thing, and responds to almost every request she receives, which is a lot in this fast growing neighborhood. That said, Downtown interests will target her seat in the next election, favoring someone more friendly to the ideas of Mayoral Control of our schools and other Big Ed Reform ideas. Count on it and be supportive, even if she feels like “the devil you know” to some who aren’t happy about her GW/FP reasoning. She’s a good egg.

LK October 22, 2014 (5:02 pm)

I agree Pjmanley. This was a respectful reply that required thought and energy. I am glad we have Marty as our rep.

Ttt October 22, 2014 (10:10 pm)

Gatewood IS different than other schools and needs the extra teacher– they have 2 emotional behavior disorder programs and an English language learner program. Name ANY other school of their size with these three programs. Marty mclaren should come visit the schools in her area. Does she? Although I have felt in the past, that she has tried to help our community, I think she is neglecting to visit our schools to actually see what is happening. Does she talk to teachers about the needs of their schools? They are the ones that know the inner workings of each school. Are there any administration jobs that could be cut instead of teachers? Has anyone looked into that? Did I just hear on the news today that Garfield high is trying to save a teacher too?
BTW: this is NOT the norm in other districts: other districts do not have to raise money to keep teachers, nor do they 28 kids in their primary classrooms.

evergreen October 23, 2014 (7:18 am)

Thing is, it’s easy to make arguments with partial info and emotion. We don’t have access to the district’s rationale, so would need that to understand the whole picture. We would have to look at the numbers and budget. I suspect other districts are dealing with ELL and behavioral disorders, for example Highline next door, but we need all the data for comparison. Gatewood is not the only school to deal with this in the district, my son was in the NE quadrant with an ELL program and high ratios. Like Gatewood, the school had staff budgeted to work just with ELL students in the classroom. I think ELL inclusion enriches the classroom by exposing all the kids to cultural differences. Was it enough? No, some of the ELL kids exhibited understandable behavioral problems until they eventually had a grasp of English. As for the kids with behavioral problems, my kid’s current school had its fair share without any support for the teachers. Gatewood has a psychologist budgeted into the program, and I imagine that is calculated into the teacher student ratio somehow. Is this enough support in reality? Highly doubtful, and from what we are hearing from Gatewood, flat out no. But please realize that all of the schools have a chunk of kids with disruptive behavioral problems but without any recognition or support in having a “program”. I have no doubt that Gatewood needed that extra teacher, and legally the district should supply her/him without PTA fundraising, but all schools are stretched thin. I am impressed with Gatewood and believe that what they did will ultimately benefit all schools, since it makes this issue part of public and district discourse. Gatewood has an amazing community. But I am not going to bash Marty, who has to consider the wider view, was a teacher herself, and takes the time to craft thoughtful opinions. I’m also not going to bash the district, for they are underfunded and unfortunately highly bureaucratic. I think it must be a difficult place to work.

nbc October 23, 2014 (9:46 am)

For all of SPS’s bluster about Gatewood’s situation being a fluke because of Fairmount Park, the fact that 6 other schools are now facing staff reductions ‘due to low enrollment’ only proves the point that there is something seriously wrong with how they forecast enrollment and staffing needs at the district level. This retroactive ass-covering is only serving to piss people off and motivate their voting decisions. Instead of making excuses, show us how you are going to fix the process because it’s clearly not working.

Ttt October 23, 2014 (4:26 pm)

Evergreen, I don’t think you understand. The emotional behavior disorder programs are a k-2program and 3-5 program for children diagnosed with emotional behavioral disorder. That is very different than kids with behavioral problems. And a n ELL program as well. All these children are integrated into regular ed. Classrooms, which requires the more than “normal” teacher support. There are no other schools of gatewood’s size with 3such programs in WS, and possibly in the district.

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