So said one Option 2 (shared campus) opponent, right after the school board vote. You’ll see that clip at the end of this post. First, let’s backtrack:
There, you see the opponents of the Denny-Sealth shared campus who stood silently throughout much of tonight’s Seattle School Board meeting (WSB liveblog archived here), until and during board members’ 5-2 vote in favor of the project — here’s the roll call:
Ahead: More clips including West Seattle’s board rep Steve Sundquist explaining his support for Option 2 and board member Harium Martin-Morris explaining why he opposed it, plus public comments before the vote (including one FOR the shared campus), and that “it’s not over” vow:
First, here’s how Sundquist explained his pro-2 vote, after reiterating he believes it’s a matter of fiscal responsibility and agreeing the public outreach/engagement was insufficient, while recapping some other points of the controversy leading up to the vote:
Mary Bass and Harium Martin-Morris were the two board members voting against Option 2; Martin-Morris said it didn’t meet “the bar” he set for his decisionmaking, while campaigning last year — that anything he supports must help students learn and help teachers teach:
Of the dozen-plus members of the public who spoke about the Denny-Sealth controversy at the start of the meeting, only one was in favor of Option 2, Denny parent Gavin Layton, who — after sharing his reasoning — also criticized the district’s level of communication/outreach:
Among the anti-Option 2 speakers were Chief Sealth students Alyson Hitch and Duron Jones (you’ll see his short, to-the-point speech in this clip right after hers concludes; the WSB post he refers to is here):
Also among the Option 2 opponents speaking to the board were Sealth staffers such as Delfino Munoz, who urged the board — pre-vote — to consider what would be read into their action, as well as the direct effects of the action itself:
We also talked with Munoz after the vote, to ask him, “Now what?”
As for what’s next from the district’s standpoint — administrators had said that if the shared campus wasn’t scrapped, the project would go out to bid this spring; how the “extra $10 million” approved tonight for Sealth will be spent, has yet to be decided (we talked about it with Sealth principal John Boyd in our interview yesterday; read it here). The district presentation shown tonight (see it here) says work would begin this fall, with Sealth students spending two years at Boren on Delridge; Denny students would move into their new school on the Sealth campus in three years.
Regarding community discussion — there’s bound to be some at the next meeting of the Westwood Neighborhood Council, which stepped in last summer to take the lead in organizing community discussion of the Denny-Sealth proposal, after the district’s acknowledged ball-dropping. (Our archived coverage dates back to that first WNC meeting on Denny-Sealth, and a bit earlier.) The WNC meets at Southwest Library on March 11; read more on its website.
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