By Tracy Record
West Seattle Blog editor

Tomorrow night, the Seattle School Board continues working on the next step in the new Student Assignment Plan – how to start the transition this fall, from a focus on “tell us what school you’d like to attend” to “your default assignment is a ‘neighborhood school’.” Some of the thorniest issues – like “sibling grandfathering” – are part of the transition, and the fine points highlighted West Seattle school board rep Steve Sundquist‘s open-door community chat this weekend. Read on for the discussion, plus the reason why he says he won’t be able to propose that some elementaries be “dual feeders” as he had hoped:

Sundquist is one of several school board members to host these types of meetings periodically, at least monthly; he’s been scheduling them more frequently since the district started digging into the details of the SAP, particularly the maps delineating the attendance areas for each school.

West Seattle’s maps were caught in a unique controversy when the first versions were created without recognizing a situation unique to the peninsula – the fact that it’s about to have the city’s first campus-sharing middle school and high school, and therefore the reference areas for Denny International Middle School and Chief Sealth High School needed to be exactly the same (which in turn required the same for Madison Middle School and West Seattle High School). The changes between the maps’ first and second versions meant, among other things, that some parents who looked at the first round and thought their child(ren) would be assigned to certain schools, discovered in the second round that their assignment-area schools had changed – or, in some cases, they missed the news about the first-round “error” and didn’t get word of the changes till after the second-round maps were approved.

On a larger scale, the feeder plan for two entire elementary schools changed: The original maps pointed Sanislo Elementary to the Madison/WSHS track and Gatewood Elementary to the Denny/Sealth track. The second (and now final) maps flipped that; Sundquist said that he’d heard from a lot of unhappy Sanislo parents. Gatewood parents, whose school has collaborated with Denny and Sealth on a variety of projects (such as Project Earth Care), said they weren’t burning up the phone lines/inboxes with comments after the 1st maps the way the Sanislo parents allegedly were – because they didn’t know they needed to, until those second maps came out.

At a community meeting before the holidays, Sundquist said he had an idea for addressing the Gatewood parents’ concerns – but at this weekend’s meeting, he confirmed – as is written in this new document on the district website – he can’t make that proposal after all; he partly blamed the district’s much-maligned VAX computer system, which, he said, was having enough trouble keeping up with everything that “directors (have been) discouraged from offering amendments” to the assignment plan.

His idea had been to propose making Gatewood – as well as Sanislo and West Seattle – “dual feeder” schools, so that families could choose either the Denny/Sealth or Madison/WSHS track. The question is specifically addressed in a “West Seattle” section that begins on page 7 of this document. Here’s the excerpt:

Could we make the Gatewood, West Seattle Elementary, and Sanislo attendance
areas dual draw schools (with guaranteed seat at both Denny and Madison with
transportation)?

• This would not be consistent with the New Student Assignment Plan as approved by the Board. In the long term, seats cannot be guaranteed for additional students at Denny beyond those in Denny’s attendance area. The estimated 2015 enrollment at Denny is 930 students, with a functional capacity of 930 students in the new building. (In the short term, there is likely to be capacity available for non-attendance area students at both middle schools.)

• Madison will have excess capacity in the future as current grandfathered students age out. This will leave space for non-attendance area students to apply and be assigned to Madison.

• Additional transportation would require more buses and increase costs. The old plan had two middle schools in each large region, with transportation to both schools provided from the entire region. Providing transportation to one middle school reduces the size of the transportation area and transitions to fewer and shorter bus routes. (Middle school students who attend a middle school outside of their service area would still be eligible for a Metro bus pass if they live outside of the school’s walk boundary.)

However, Sundquist says district projections suggest that “the vast majority” of those who want to go to Denny/Sealth from outside the attendance area will be accommodated. Chief Sealth, for example (which has an open house/cultural performance night tomorrow) may be closer to 30 percent available seats than the district’s stipulated 10 percent “choice” set-aside, he said.

The transition plan only covers next school year, though Sundquist acknowledges “many asked for a multi-year transition plan.” He says the district wants to see what really happens in 2010-11 before deciding what might be necessary and/or possible in subsequent years; “Rather than hard-code a bunch of rules, we’ll take it a year at a time. That also matches our funding situation, which is so dire we keep hoping (it will get better next year).”

He had mentioned that in remarks toward the meeting’s start, before taking questions – the possibility that the district “might need another 34-35 million dollar cut” in the coming years because the funding picture hasn’t bottomed out yet. Sundquist also made a pitch for the levies on the February 9th ballot, saying that “when I was growing up, levies were about funding extras, but they are now really a fundamental baseline funding source for school districts.” He urged those in attendance to talk to friends and neighbors about supporting the levies, and also acknowledged a parent’s anger over the changes forced by the assignment plan leading her to suggest she might not support the levies:

“Whether you believe that you should trust me as a director and my colleagues or not in the end you believe you shouldn’t then your recourse is at election time with me should i decide to run again … the only thing I would say about a levy is the only people who get punished if we vote it down because of anger at the school board or
central staff … is the kids.”

Next, he detailed the district’s stand on “sibling grandfathering” – what to do about the fact that some students are in schools outside their “attendance area,” but will have younger siblings coming into the system, with their parents hoping not to have to transport their kids to different schools. Sundquist reiterated that while younger siblings are welcome to apply for admittance to the non-attendance-area schools attended by their older brothers/sisters, they will not be guaranteed seats at those schools – but if they are turned down, the siblings will be guaranteed seats together in their attendance-area school.

“It’s a capacity question,” he elaborated. “They (district staff) don’t believe that (guaranteeing siblings space at non-attendance-area schools) will work universally across the district, so they are offering this guarantee.”

That raised eyebrows among some in attendance, as it was noted that several elementary schools in West Seattle, particularly a few in the north such as Lafayette and Schmitz Park, are already packed, particularly in the wake of redistribution following the Cooper Elementary closure last year.

Pressure on Lafayette might be relieved if Arbor Heights Elementary starts offering the Spectrum second-tier-gifted program next year – Sundquist said that hadn’t been finalized yet, nor had the start date for Spectrum at Madison Middle School. “I’m told I will know before I vote,” he said – as in, by tomorrow. “I’m hopeful it will be offered next year in both places.”

Concerns also were voiced about families with the means to move doing so over the summer to get into their desired school by moving into its attendance area. One attendee chimed in, “I can tell you there are five or six people (she knows) who will change their address illegally to Aunt Jane’s address.”

Parent Fiona Preedy also recalled the story of people who moved into the Schmitz Park area expecting to be able to attend that school “and now the boundaries changed.”

After a while, the discussion of school assignments became more barbed. One mother said, “This whole process has been extremely frustrating and annoying.” She expressed anger at the fact the revised West Seattle maps weren’t even posted at the school where her child attends kindergarten, and weren’t given the time for scrutiny and comments that the original proposals – the ones with the acknowledged West Seattle error – were.

“What should have been a two-round process with the maps was a one-round process,” Sundquist agreed. “… This particular issue, especially for West Seattle was difficult, and I accept that.”

“And even by looking at the map,” the upset parent continued, “you wouldn’t know you had a problem unless you enlarged.”

Someone else in the room said, “That’s why there are two appeals coming.”

Two other points of frustration expressed before the meeting wrapped up: While the district had sent out a survey in hopes of getting more of a sense of how many siblings of current students were “in the pipeline” to potentially complicate the “sibling grandfathering” issue, the survey only asked about incoming kindergarteners. “Why didn’t it ask about other siblings?”

“I wish they had,” Sundquist replied.

Also, there was a concern about spots not guaranteed at Denny International Middle School for out-of-attendance-area students now in dual language immersion at Concord International Elementary – which was originally promoted as a Concord-Denny-Sealth track. Since the Concord program is only in the early years, meaning no one’s advancing to middle school any time soon, “we have a few years to fix this,” Sundquist offered.

In the short run, though, there’s tomorrow night’s school board meeting – 6 pm, district HQ in SODO; the group advocating for sibling grandfathering is at keepourkidstogether.org.