By Tracy Record
West Seattle Blog editor
Monday night’s Seattle Public Schools “capacity-management” meeting at the Denny International Middle School Library provided a visual metaphor of the problem it was meant to address.
Every chair in the library was filled by the time the meeting began … and people just kept coming, requiring extras to be brought in, until the room was full, wall to wall.
Six elementary schools in West Seattle are perceived to have a “capacity-management” – overcrowding – problem so serious that something must be done before next year. A seventh school in the area – Chief Sealth International High School – is stuffed too, but while the district is only putting it on a “watch list” for now, its teachers are circulating a petition to get portables, which happen to be among the options proposed for the brimming elementary schools.
If you would like to see and hear the meeting for yourself, here’s our unedited hour-and-a-half video:
And/or, read more details ahead:
Early on, the crowd was asked for a show of hands as to who was there with an interest in north West Seattle – the elementaries feeding into Madison Middle School, as the district describes it for purposes of this process — versus who was there on behalf of south West Seattle (the Denny service area). North beat south, about 4 to 1.
Not surprising, since crowding has been worst at two of West Seattle’s northernmost elementaries, Lafayette and Schmitz Park.
Leading most of the meeting, assistant superintendent of operations Pegi McEvoy tried to put a happy face on it. “We are growing as a district, that’s great news.” Growing so much that, despite closing two school buildings in West Seattle over the past four years – Fairmount Park Elementary and the Genesee Hill building that had long housed Pathfinder K-8 – they’re now looking at potentially reopening two in the next two years, as a “bridge” to get to the next building levy and whatever it may propose/fund.
In case you’re following this issue closely already and just want to get to the point: The options currently on the table are the same ones that were presented to a board work session last week and reported in this WSB story, with one change; others that had been circulated in a “worksheet” at that November 21st work session are currently out of the mix – though McEvoy acknowledged that anything could surface/resurface.
The currently-under-consideration options, school by school, were presented as:
ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS IN THE DENNY FEEDER AREA
Arbor Heights Elementary (needs to add 2 homerooms)-
*Open Boren, move kindergarteners there
or
*Open Boren, move 5th graders there
or
*Open Boren, use as an interim site for a STEM (science/technology/engineering/math) option school to be opened in fall 2013 at Fairmount Park Elementary, and look into Montessori there
or
*Add 2 portables
Roxhill Elementary (needs to add 1 homeroom) –
*Same first three options as Arbor Heights
or
*Add 1 portable
West Seattle Elementary (needs to add 3 homerooms) –
*Same first three options as Arbor Heights
or
*Add 3 portables
ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS IN THE MADISON FEEDER AREA
Gatewood Elementary (needs to add 1 homeroom) –
*Open Boren, use as an interim site for a STEM (science/technology/engineering/math) option school to be opened in fall 2013 at Fairmount Park Elementary, and look into Montessori there
or
*Add 1 portable
Lafayette Elementary (needs 2 homerooms) –
*Move 5th graders to Madison
or
*Open Boren, use as an interim site for a STEM (science/technology/engineering/math) option school to be opened in fall 2013 at Fairmount Park Elementary, and look into Montessori there
or
*Add 2 portables
Schmitz Park Elementary (needs 2 homerooms) –
*Same first two options as Lafayette
or
*Add 2 portables
The PowerPoint presentation in which you will be able to see these for yourself (aside from in the background on our video clip) is supposed to be online sometime today (update: the district has provided it – see it here).
The meeting format did not allow for public commenting on these or any other options – though some sentiment was made clear the first time the district officials mentioned the prospect of sending fifth graders to a middle school – more than a few in the crowd booed/hissed (and one was heard to say, “That’s just crazy.”). Comments were solicited on cards circulated around the room for attendees to rate the various options (proposals for other schools in the city were briefly outlined too, though all but two people in the room indicated they were there to find out about West Seattle-area proposals). That was a source of frustration to some; one person’s question was whether there could be an additional meeting after the three presentation sessions (this was the first) simply to hear what everyone had to say.
The district’s factors in determining these options were described as including wanting to “minimize attendance boundary changes for next year” (none are proposed for West Seattle right now), wanting to minimize impacts on district-provided transportation, wanting to minimize reliance on portables, and wanting to coordinate with whatever is to be proposed in the BEX 4 levy, among others.
The timetable outlined last night also resembled the one presented to the School Board at its work session last week: The board will have a work session December 7th; a proposal will be introduced at the January 4th board meeting, with a vote expected at the January 18th board meeting.
If this timetable holds, McEvoy said, they’ll be looking at open enrollment “earlier than last year” – February 27th through March 9th (those dates seem to be locked in, as they are already on the district website’s home page).
While those were the dates on the PowerPoint, one additional date was added in discussion during the meeting; the board has a “committee of the whole” meeting on December 14th, at which a close-to-final proposal could be presented, according to interim assistant superintendent for business and finance Robert Boesché. (One other date mentioned, for the “long-term capacity management” timetable – the school board is supposed to approve the plan for the BEX 4 levy in October of next year. Plus, the “FAC-MAC” committee has a “special meeting” this Friday.)
Meantime, there are two more meetings this week elsewhere in the city to go through the same presentation as last night; the next one is 6 pm tonight at Eckstein Middle School in the north end.
REST OF THE STORY, added in installments 7:56 am and 9:24 am:
In addition to about 150 in the audience and a half-dozen or so district officials, those in attendance included several members of the 30-person “FAC-MAC” advisory committee that’s been working on the capacity-management issue, plus West Seattle’s outgoing school-board rep Steve Sundquist, and the person to whom he lost this month’s election, Marty McLaren:
(As noted in our interview with McLaren, published on Sunday, she is to be sworn in tomorrow, after election results are certified today.)
The questions started fairly early during Monday night’s meeting, punctuating the presentation, before the official Q/A session toward the end (during which the district reps got to only a few of what communications staffer Tom Redman said were more than 100 written questions turned in).
Among the first: Wouldn’t it be easier to just change schools’ attendance boundaries now? McEvoy’s reply: The district is trying to “create as much stability as possible in the assignment plan (at least for the next two years); we’ll have those (boundary) conversations soon.” She did leave a bit of wiggle room, saying the district could do “minor” boundary adjustments in unspecified areas where “a couple of underenrolled schools” are next to “significantly overenrolled schools,” if that seemed to be the “best” solution.
While it wasn’t listed as an official factor, cost of course would play into district decisionmaking, it was acknowledged. Portables, for example, cost $135,000 to buy, it was noted, or $25,000 to install and $2,000/month to rent, if they are procured on a temporary basis. Opening school buildings gets much more expensive if they have been closed more than two years – Fairmount Park falls into that category, with a projected reopening cost around $8 million. It couldn’t be done before next year, it was explained, because the district will have to hire an arch/engineer, go to the board for approval, then go through design and permitting, go out to bid, and finally, construction of the required upgrades would happen summer 2012-spring 2013.
Boren, which has not yet hit the two-years-empty mark, would cost about $3 million to reopen. (It’s been a temporary site for some time, most recently housing Chief Sealth during that school’s two-year remodel, which was completed just before the 2010-2011 school year. And at one point, McEvoy said the district will have someone in Boren this fall, one way or another, so that extra-upgrading-needed status would not be triggered.)
Several questions sought clarity on the potential “STEM option” school that would theoretically be housed at Boren for a year and then Fairmount Park. Would that include Spectrum? someone wondered – apparently based on the “worksheet” mention last week (NOT in the currently-under-consideration lineup) of possibly moving that advanced-learning program to its own campus.
No, it does not, McEvoy replied, at which point she clarified that the worksheet from last week had only represented “sort of the brainstorm options out there.” Another STEM question: No academic prequalifications; it would be “open to anyone who would be interested.”
Many of the audience questions carried an undertone of suspicion/skepticism. One such: If kindergarteners were moved to Boren, originally with the expectation they would be moved on to their “real” school the next year, what happens if Boren is then designated a permanent site and they get “stuck” there? It was reiterated that Boren is supposed to be staying in the fold as an “interim site” (but no guarantees).
Wouldn’t it make more sense to just add portables, then, rather than use Boren for only a year? was a followup question. “We’re asking you to tell us,” McEvoy replied. What about a playground at Boren, which has been housing middle- and high-school students in recent years, and was originally a middle school? They’d make space and do whatever modifications were needed, said capital projects/planning director Lucy Morello, who was also front-and-center for much of the meeting,
Is what’s proposed really all the space you need? Reply: They’re still talking to principals, “vetting some of the information,” to make sure they are seeking the right number of added homerooms.
Meantime, in the longer view, Genesee Hill and ex-Denny were the two sites mentioned by Morello for potential elementary-school construction under terms of the future BEX 4 levy. (The site of the now-demolished old Denny school was mentioned as a “future elementary site” going all the way back to the design-team meetings for the project that is now almost complete on what was the Denny campus – we were there for the first public mention three years ago.)
In the “will that really be enough?” questioning vein, one person asked how the district numbers were so far off previously – how did SPS wind up in this situation just a few years after closing schools?
The answer ultimately came from a volunteer member of the FAC-MAC committee, recapping information they had been provided – that the district had been capturing a certain percentage of the potential student population and that rate had stayed “flat” for years, but “when the housing bubble crashed in Seattle, it began rising, and the suburbs’ capture rate dropped” – now, he said, the capture rate is 63 percent, up from a previous 58 percent. Plus, thousands of new housing units have come online in West Seattle in recent years (and the district was not taking that information into consideration when planning, though now, with a consultant’s assistance, it is).
Frustration still emerged, even without a formal “what do you think?” opportunity during the meeting. One participant drew some applause by declaring that she feels “we are looking at Band-Aids” and not a real fix for the ongoing capacity-management problems. McEvoy said, “I would concur,” while going on to say that the district still has to “react” for the coming school year (whether it’s a Band-Aid or not).
So what about middle and high schools? They will get a closer look in February, it was promised, but for now, there is a “watch list” for three high schools — Chief Sealth, Garfield, and Franklin, McEvoy said, because they are “at capacity.” That drew shouts that Sealth is “OVER capacity.” Added one person, “How do you deny that?” (Early in the school year, new principal Chris Kinsey told the Sealth PTSA the student population was almost 50 students over its stated capacity.)
“The reality right now is that not every teacher at Sealth has their own classroom, and that’s not considered ideal,” intoned McEvoy.
Though it wasn’t mentioned during the meeting, Sealth teachers have taken this one into their own hands, and are circulating a petition online and offline, with more than 150 signatures so far. You can see the petition online here. Its text:
We, the staff, parents, students and concerned members of the Chief Sealth International High School community, are asking for portable classrooms to house the additional teaching staff being assigned to our school during this school year. Providing adequate resources, including classroom space, is essential for student learning and is a basic responsibility of the District.
The present proposal, with additional teachers and without additional classrooms, will not provide adequate space for our teachers to plan, teach, and meet with students and parents. The current plan is for some teachers (up to 5) to share classrooms with other teaching staff, moving from classrooms each period, without a room to call their own. These teachers-on-carts create a disruption in the ability of both the displaced and the floating teachers to prepare for their classes.
We informed the District as our remodel was being designed that the remodeled Sealth would have less space due to the removal of the portables. Our enrollment has increased by 400 students since that time and now we have even less space. Our capacity has been set at 1,200 students and we are now at 1,246. Our remodel did not include any planned work spaces.
The District has portables available and we hope these portables can be used now to help our students. Nowhere in the Short-term, Medium-term, or Long-term Capacity Plan options has the staff or the Board suggested or recommended that sharing classrooms is an option for capacity management. The only temporary solution has been portables and that is what we are requesting.
We understand that our building has recently been remodeled and while portables may not be in keeping with the BEX design, we hope that you will support a decision to support our students by providing their teachers with adequate space. We also expect the District to assume full financial responsibility for the installation of the portables.
(Petition supporters will have a table at the Sealth PTSA meeting at 7 pm this Thursday in the school Galleria.)
As noted earlier, district officials reported more than 100 written questions turned in during the meeting, and promised to answer them on the district’s website (keep an eye out here); they also said you are welcome to keep sending questions – capacity@seattleschools.org. They requested input on what you would support, as well as on what you would oppose.
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