One month after the Seattle School Board‘s vote to move Denny Middle School into a new building on the Chief Sealth High School campus (WSB video coverage here), an official challenge to the decision is filed. We just got a copy; it’s filed in the name of 12 individuals and one union (Operating Engineers). The legal documents say the individuals are concerned about “property values, crime, and other effects” of the move, as well as the safety of a 6-12 campus; the union, which represents classified school workers, says it’s concerned about job loss. The filing also contends, among other things, that the decision was made without “following the procedural requirements for citizen involvement required by the school closure statute.” This is filed in King County Superior Court. We will pursue district comment tomorrow.

Footnote to last week’s vote … the permit application for the CSHS work is now on file with the city.

Tonight, the Seattle School Board is scheduled to make its decision on the Denny Middle School/Chief Sealth High School shared-campus proposal. (All WSB coverage is archived here.) What board members specifically are being asked to approve or reject is a resolution to move $10 million from elsewhere in the budget to support Option 2 (district rendering below), the option recommended by district administration — going ahead with building a new Denny on the Sealth campus, but adding money to the required renovations CSHS was already scheduled to get:

WSB will be there tonight with live online updates; as the day goes on, we’ll report any late pre-vote developments, starting with this: Sealth teacher John Wright forwarded a petition signed by staffers who support Option 3 (building a new Denny on its current site; renovating Sealth with the basic upgrades it is scheduled to get no matter what). Here’s the petition text; Wright says of the 93 CSHS staffers contacted yesterday, 83 signed it (they hadn’t yet reached 16 staffers):

We the undersigned staff at Chief Sealth High School strongly urge the School Board to vote for Option 3 to keep the campuses separate. We strongly urge all available funds be utilized to build the absolutely best possible Denny Middle School to support our entire community.

There have been multiple admissions of community and staff engagement flaws in this entire process, some accidental, some intentional. Ultimately, however, we request Option 3 be chosen as there has been no evidence towards academic benefit for any co-location campus model.

1. All or almost all of the existing 6-12 models in the country referred to by the school district are either private, charter or magnet schools with self-selecting application processes. The models of 6-12 schools which exist were pre-planned projects, not mergers of existing schools. Successful 6-12 models had staff heavily involved in every phase of the development of the school and, in many models, the schools were created gradually (ex. one grade level at a time).

2. There is no academic plan for a 6-12 co-location model. Vague affirmations from the district that it “could work” as well as the Facilities Department website’s Academic Benefits (actually just copied from the Denny principal’s letter) do not constitute an academic plan. An academic plan requires considerable deliberation and intensive wide-ranging input prior to construction according to best practices.

3. Any large-scale educational program change absolutely needs teacher support for it to be successful. Combining the campuses without an educational plan for shared programs, shared planning and collaboration time for teachers, will lead to a lack of support and poor implementation.

Ultimately the reason why Sealth staff cannot find a single research study to clearly refute the proposed 6-12 model for Sealth & Denny is because something like this appears to have never been tried before. Never before have two existing schools with a significant FRL rate and no self-selecting application process had a building built prior to the development of an educational plan with the expectation that it would somehow work out. There are no studies to support or refute this exact model because it is a massive experiment on our kids – it has not been tried elsewhere and we believe it has not been done because it is an inadequate model.

Wright says Sealth principal John Boyd (WSB interview from yesterday morning is here) was presented with this petition late yesterday afternoon, before it was sent to the School Board. He also notes “this is a staff petition because the district still maintains that all of the other ‘Sealth staff polls’ were unofficial. So to avoid charges of ballot stuffing or any other classic attempts to discredit the integrity of the staff’s position, the original petitions will be given to the Board along with the staff list so they can verify the accuracy by contacting anybody they want.” He says that will be done at tonight’s meeting.

The agenda for tomorrow night’s Seattle School Board meeting, including the vote on the Denny-Sealth combined-campus project, is now updated on the district website. In the public-comment section at the start of the meeting, 18 people are listed as signed up to speak about the Denny-Sealth proposal (you can see the entire list on the agenda posted online). Also added to the agenda since this morning is the “updated report” on the actual item on which board members will be voting, whether to “transfer” $10 million to the Denny-Sealth project in support of Option 2. Here’s a link to that; its list of the sources for the $10 million is: “$1.5 million from Debt Service Fund, $3.5 million from BEX III Technology, $5 million from BEX III Infrastructure.” Again, the meeting’s at 6 pm tomorrow, district HQ in Sodo; we’ll be there and plan to liveblog it with continuous updates here, start to finish (you can also watch live on cable channel 26).

With the public meetings over, discussion and feedback are all that’s left till Seattle School Board members vote on the Denny/Sealth project one week from Wednesday. (All WSB coverage archived here.) The feedback that matters the most is that which you give to board members — once again, their contact info is here. There also has been a lot of spirited discussion online, on this website and elsewhere (including here and here), as well as in the public-testimony time at the start of board meetings. One of the Chief Sealth High School students who has spoken to the board, and at public meetings on the project here in West Seattle, is Duron Jones. He sent WSB a copy of a letter he said he has sent to the board, and asked us if we would post it. We are doing so with an invitation for any student with a different opinion to send us their thoughts, which we also would be happy to post.

I’m Duron Jones, a sophomore at Chief Sealth High School (CSHS). I’m sure this opening is something that sounds familiar to the Seattle Public School (SPS) board, as it should since I have spoken to them in public testimonial on several occasions. However I feel that my voice and opinion has fallen on deaf ears as well as the voices and opinions of every single student who let their voices be heard via survey and polls.

The first attempt to gain student body voice resulted in 278 against the co-location of the schools and 5 were for the co-location of the schools. To prove that these results weren’t a fluke we recently surveyed the students with a survey that allowed them to state their concerns and what they believed to be the positives of a co-located school, a survey in which John Boyd himself looked at and fixed up, might I add. That survey resulted in 70% of the students being opposed to option 2, 19% being neutral, and 11% being for option 2, however when it came down to option 3, 25% opposed it, 16% was neutral, and 59% were in favor of option 3. This shows that the Chief Sealth student body may not agree with every aspect of option 3 but we believe it to be in the better interest of the students compared to option 2. Might I also add the students will be the ones who have to deal with the fallouts of a merge campus and not the SPS board.

I’m sure you as well as the board are wondering why there are not masses of CSHS students standing up to speak their voice as they do on surveys, but they do not wish to stand up because they fear the consequences that they could possibly face for just using their right to free speech. Then when they do decide to get involved they are made to feel not welcomed.

But my reason for writing this is not to talk about protocol on how to do things when it comes to students speaking. I am writing this to air the opinions and stances of the students. It has been stated that the board believes violence wouldn’t increase with option 2, safety wouldn’t decrease with option 2, and more students would apply to Sealth via option 2. The life blood of Chief Sealth High School, being the students concur with their thoughts as 67% of the student body believes violence will increase with option 2 as 8% believes it will decrease and 25% believes it will stay the same. When it came down to students applying to Chief Sealth if option 2 was to happen, only 20% believed more students would apply and 54% believed less would apply as 26% believed it would stay the same.

Before I get into the commentary of the students I believe it needs to be stated for the record that when it came down to the academic benefits question, a horse the board has rode to death for why it’s a good idea to combine the campuses, as well as the question of what positives come from option 2. No students who were in favor of option 2 were able to answer those questions however students who were for option 3 were able to answer those questions. But when they were asked what academic affects would option 2 have they responded with middle schoolers imitating the high schoolers’ actions thus doing terribly in class, the drop out and skipping rates will increase, as well as a new building placed next to Sealth causing distractions and animosity. But there was a positive comment in the crowd and that was there would be more options for what you could do in classes, so the board should pat themselves on the back for that small achievement.

When it came to the question of what are your concerns about BEX III option 2 we received countless statements about the safety of Denny’s students, the negative influences of high schoolers to middle schoolers, the loss of identity for both schools, Sealth students admitted they wouldn’t receive Denny students with open arms, fears about it becoming a repeat of Pathfinder, fears about it becoming an exclusive international school, as well as concerns about being targeted due to us being a colored school. Also one of the biggest concerns addressed was the loss of a great group of teaching staff. However when asked about some of the positives this project holds we received replies of and I quote, “Nothing that truly couldn’t be done with the schools staying on their own separate campuses,” so the board should give themselves a hand for that one.

As I looked over the boards reply to the meeting on February 4th I realized we truly don’t have the option to pick an option as we are stuck with option 2. Something that truly disturbs me is when a member of the design and construction team answers my question of, “Why aren’t there any drawings or figures of option 3?” with “We were told to do drawings of option 2 only and not option 3,” Now I love money as much as the next but when you compare it to the well being of a child and it’s future they don’t equal out. Then I listened to one of Steve Sundquist replies for the meeting at Sealth on the 5th of February where he talked about this project is being used to stop the drop out gaps from 8th to 9th, well maybe it hasn’t made it to the boards doorsteps yet but there is an excellent program currently in Sealth called Ignite Mentors where we the students aid Freshmen through their Freshman year and make sure they do what they have to and I’m sure any of my colleagues or mentees would speak and say this program has worked so far and will continue to work and with that statement, if you haven’t processed it yet, my point is the drop out rates are covered. I used to believe the board to be the protectors and justice seekers of the students however now I see they are no different then the men & women who currently hold office in the United States of America. I asked them to prove me wrong on that thought and actually listen to us. However we will see if that falls on deaf ears as everything else has.

Again, we would love to hear from a Sealth — or Denny (middle-schoolers can be eloquent too; we know this firsthand) — student who supports the shared campus; we have certainly heard a lot from adults on both sides. E-mail us any time.

Several signs like those just turned up at 35th/Thistle, one day after district staff announced it’s recommending the school board approve Option 2 – building a new Denny Middle School on the Chief Sealth High School campus, while adding $10 million more in Sealth renovations than were originally proposed. Meantime, the Westwood Neighborhood Council meeting about the project is tonight, 7 pm, CSHS Commons. And the district has just posted a new section on its website with the answers to all the questions posed at last week’s meeting (WSB coverage here) as well as other information on the project — you can read it all here.

If you missed Monday’s meeting, or were there but didn’t get a copy – the full PowerPoint (which we partially screengrabbed for our report) and drawings are now available here.