In case it’s fallen off your radar — the Seattle School Board‘s final vote on the Denny-Sealth project is four days away, at the board’s next regular meeting on Wednesday night. The agenda for the meeting is now posted online (including information as always on how to sign up to speak at the meeting – you can call starting Monday); find it here. There are two items on the agenda regarding Denny-Sealth:
The first, which is on the “consent agenda,” is this resolution certifying that what’s described as “the proposed new construction and modernization for New Denny Middle School/Chief Sealth High School” will not “create or aggravate a racial imbalance within the Seattle School District.” This is a technicality required for state matching funds.
Then, under action items – as in, final vote – is the resolution that would finalize district staff’s recommendation, Option 2 (shown below), by transferring $10 million from other projects to add to the renovations planned at Chief Sealth. As revealed at the last board meeting, some of this money would come from projects that were planned for schools in other areas of the city — air and water work at Summit K-12 and Salmon Bay Elementary. The item on the agenda now says “report updated since last meeting” but as of this writing it’s just a placeholder, so there is likely some interesting information to come there when the agenda is updated Monday/Tuesday.
Last but not least, two other items. First, we’ve been forwarded e-mail saying Sealth students opposed to the shared-campus proposal plan a walkout on Tuesday. Second, interesting background material that we received regarding a district statement that this project might be a future model for 6-12 schools is detailed and analyzed by SPS parent activist/watchdog Charlie Mas at the saveseattleschools.blogspot.com site better than we could ever hope to handle it. That post includes a link to the PowerPoint presentation made by Don Gilmore of SPS at a conference in Canada a few months ago touting this as a “nontraditional school” model and also touting a process of “stakeholder involvement” that, as Mas writes, might not sound like what’s happened here – we’re taking the liberty of excerpting his post here:
Here are some interesting quotes from that presentation:
Slide #3: “Planning process now involves all stakeholders in all school plans
Stakeholders analysis process involves all partners in a non-traditional school”All stakeholders were not included in all school plans. What the heck is he talking about? The decision to co-locate Denny at Sealth was made before any stakeholders were consulted about anything.
It was interesting to see Mr. Gilmore characterize Denny-Sealth as a non-traditional school. I don’t think we have heard that characterization locally. On slide #5 he notes that Denny-Sealth will be “District’s first combined major middle school and high school campus” that it will have a “2100 student population”. He also noted “Community skepticism regarding 6-12 campus”. But how could there be skepticism when all stakeholders have been involved in all school plans?
… At the CEFPI conference in Toronto, the planning process for Denny-Sealth was put forward as a “successful planning process to identify stakeholders, establish goals, and develop and prioritize strategies for implementing objectives in a very efficient timeframe”. The planning process for Denny-Sealth is being presented internationally as a successful process.
Most importantly, these next few days represent your last chance to tell the School Board what you think, if you haven’t done so already, since they’re the ones with the final say on Wednesday. Their contact info is here; if you’re still catching up on this whole debate, our copious coverage is archived here. (Side note, we’ve just procured some new equipment that should allow us to liveblog the Wednesday meeting, for those who can’t be there in person OR watch it starting at 6 pm on cable channel 26.)
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