Letter lists 4 potential names for new school on Genesee Hill – and a potential new plan

| Genesee Hill | West Seattle news | West Seattle schools

(Image captured this morning from construction-site webcam)
Remember the call for suggestions about what to call the new school being built on Genesee Hil, for the program currently housed (and overflowing) at Schmitz Park Elementary? A letter has just gone out listing four finalists, and launching a vote. The finalists are:

*Genesee Hill Elementary School: Genesee Hill is the name of the original building, which opened in 1949.

*Genesee-Schmitz Elementary School: Genesee-Schmitz recognizes the shared identity and history of the neighborhood and the two schools.

*Dietrich Schmitz Elementary School: Dietrich Schmitz was the longest-serving member of the Seattle School Board in history, serving 32 years and multiple times as President.

*Thelma DeWitty Elementary School: Thelma DeWitty was the first African-American teacher in Seattle, working first in West Seattle at the Cooper School.

The four potential names are not the only points of interest in the letter from Schmitz Park principal Gerrit Kischner. It’s been pointed out that the new school, with capacity around 650, might be not be big enough to hold SPE’s continuing-to-swell population, and Kischner’s letter includes this mention of one way that might be addressed:

… Please note that while we would like to move forward to finalize the naming of the new building, we are also continuing to watch enrollment numbers that could affect the long-term plans for both our current and future school sites.

The Building Leadership Team made a point of requesting that we ensure that the Schmitz Family legacy, which has inspired Schmitz Park Elementary School to be a flagship elementary program in the Seattle School District, will continue to be recognized and honored. If enrollment trends continue to the point that our program could be needed to operate at both sites, we will recommend to the Superintendent that the new building be opened as Schmitz Park School at Genesee Hill.

Regardless, we will not change the name of the school building we currently occupy, which is officially named by the School Board as “Schmitz Park School.” This is a promise made by the District to the Schmitz Family, who donated the land for the Schmitz Park Preserve and school site. Important Schmitz Park traditions and our fox mascot and logo will continue at the new building. …

We’re following up with the district regarding the “both sites” possibility; meantime, you can read the entire letter here.

Now, back to the name poll: Make your choice online here; if you’d like to vote another way, the letter mentions you can postal-mail or drop off your choice to/at SPES (5000 SW Spokane, Seattle 98116). Deadline is April 26th – one week from this Sunday.

Orca April 16, 2015 (10:00 am)

WTF
The school is not built yet and “it may not be big enough” in the near future.
Who does the planning. Isn’t there people within the power structure of the School District with enough sense of reality to consider these things.

Private business would be bankrupt in a year with this type of nonsense.

jwright April 16, 2015 (10:18 am)

Orca, The School District does not control community demographics, they can only react to them. They can project the number of students…but projections are just projections. There was already pushback from some people about the size of the new school. From my perspective the District has identified a potential future problem and is working proactively to address it. That is what I would expect them to do and does not seem like “nonsense” to me.

More property taxes April 16, 2015 (10:40 am)

Seattle DPD and Seattle School District should catch up with one another. Have a meeting or something. Left hand should know what the right hand is doing. Can’t keep green lighting development and close schools as they did in the early 2000s which led to the overcrowding of SPE and Lafayette, for example. Taking a look around at the continuing tear down to town home/packem in mentality, i’m not surprised the new school will be obsolete / full before it opens. Sad. SPS dropped the ball and turned my kids school from a school they had been going to with 2 classes per grade to a damn community college / portable farm. But community colleges have more than one bathroom. SPS money scandals and leadership failures (Silas Potter/Goodloe-Johnson. Revolving door Superintendents) left me with little to no confidence, years ago. Should have enrolled my kids in private school as we debated doing in the first place in 2006!

More property taxes April 16, 2015 (10:42 am)

Not a response to jwright.

Les April 16, 2015 (11:09 am)

WSB are there any current plans for school zone cameras on Genesee street?

WSB April 16, 2015 (11:15 am)

The city is supposed to announce soon where its next round of cameras will be. When we asked them a couple months ago what was the most LIKELY area in West Seattle, they said Delridge, by Boren (STEM and temp home of Arbor Heights).

sam-c April 16, 2015 (11:34 am)

With respect to all the new development equaling lots of new students, every time I read a story on the densification, it seems like the new development includes only (not family friendly) one bedroom apartments for $ 1800/ month and no parking space. It almost seems like tearing down single family homes to build apodments would actually push families out of West Seattle, but what do I know ?

Ttt April 16, 2015 (12:27 pm)

the district should remodel the old schmitz park and reopen as another k-5 school. It is definitely needed in that area. Lafayette and schmitz are both currently packed to the gills and i think alki is too.

Be mama April 16, 2015 (1:57 pm)

SPE has attracted families to buying in its boundaries, people are specifically focusing their home search in its boundary areas, as are we. Who wants a school bigger than 650? Not me! Im happy they are considering breaking the school into two as needed.

Lynn April 16, 2015 (2:30 pm)

The district has requested money from the state to reopen EC Hughes as a 400 seat elementary school after Westside moves out. That, combined with the new Genessee Hill School and new building for Arbor Heights, would give us some breathing room at the elementary level.

We’ll need more middle and high school seats soon. What’s the plan for that?

Minki April 16, 2015 (4:46 pm)

The mega schools are preparing kids for future careers at places like Amazon or Microsoft.
After an organization exceed 300 people you lose that sense of community. Who needs community in elementary school? It’s about preparing kids to be future cubicle jockeys.
Having taught in a mega elementary school I can say that administration is overworked and don’t know kids by name. You really lose that sense of community.

wetone April 16, 2015 (4:49 pm)

Let’s see they tear down “Genesee Hill Elementary” and build a new school. Is there any commonsense reason why it would not be called “Genesee Hill Elementary” I wonder how much time and money has and will be wasted on this issue. You would think the city and school district would have more important issues. Only in Seattle……

WSB April 16, 2015 (5:18 pm)

School names are not just haphazard decisions, anywhere. Just Google. I found this among others:
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http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/naming-a-school-is-not-a-task-taken-lightly/
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And in this particular case, as noted in the letter, the issue of continuing to honor the Schmitz family is a factor.

MSW April 17, 2015 (1:00 pm)

They should remodel Schmitz Park and bring it back to the original capacity. Give the families the 3 or 4 school choices like we had a few years ago. This will help reduce the overcrowding. the new Genesee Hill school will be at capacity even before it opens. Seems like poor forecasting from the Seattle School District. Maybe they should get their behinds out of that fancy administrative building once in a while and visit each school and see firsthand what is going on.

DWS April 17, 2015 (7:54 pm)

Schmitz park has historically been a great school, my guess one reason is a manageable number of clases. Having two schools would be great. I did a rough count of the new occupancy here in west Seattle, 1541 new units, and 1921 new parking (some parking will be for stores, whole foods, etc). How many units will have kids is hard to guess, but for sure it won’t be less. On a side note, if two people per unit had cars it would add 7 miles of cars to West Seattle roads.

Mike April 17, 2015 (8:54 pm)

The sad thing is anyone with basic math skills could figure out that 650 capacity isn’t going to work. 1 + 1 !== 1
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I vote for “Thelma DeWitty Elementary School”. Rebuild Schmitz on it’s current land and open another school with 650 student capacity and then have 1300 elementary capacity within a few blocks of each other. Then rebuild Alki. If we can spend half a million on a stop light, we can raise money to build more schools.
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Gerrit Kischner is a good principal, he deals with all the district garbage and comes out polishing a turd to the point it’s a gem stone. I honestly don’t know how he and the staff at Schmitz do it, they’re great. As much as I would not want Mr. Kischner to leave Schmitz, I think he’d be able to turn SPS into one of the top districts in the nation if he was running the show.

Sorry, comment time is over.