Seattle Public Schools may be on winter break for the next two weeks, but there are some exciting pieces of news we wanted to share with you:
McDonald School selected as elementary International School: On Wednesday, December 15, Superintendent Dr. Goodloe-Johnson announced that McDonald School was selected as the new elementary International School. Implementation is contingent on funding and would not start before September 2012. A community meeting will be held at the Lincoln High School Library on Thursday, January 13, where Karen Kodama, manager of the International Schools Program, will give folks an in-depth presentation about what the program could look like. We’ll bring you more details as they evolve.
Hamilton and John Stanford honored as “Schools of Distinction”: Earlier this month Seattle Public Schools announced that 15 schools in the district received the “Schools of Distinction” award from the Center for Educational Effectiveness and Phi Delta Kappa – Washington State Chapter. John Stanford International School and Hamilton International Middle School were among the schools to receive the award—with John Stanford as a second year recipient.
John Stanford is among several schools to participate in Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service sponsored by United Way of King County on January 17.
Hamilton teacher Elizabeth Witman-Todd is among 71 in the district who received a National Board Certification this year. National Board Certification is a voluntary effort teachers attain “through a rigorous performance-based assessment that typically takes one to three years to complete.”
Speaking of Hamilton, mark your calendars for Hamilton Science Night, which will be held on January 19, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Science Night will have chock full of interactive exhibits by teachers and parents as well as organizations like The Audubon Society and Seattle Tilth. Click here to see the awesome slideshow Wallywriter and photographer Matt Mason took from last year’s event, which proved to be a fun night had by all 300 people in attendance.
B.F. Day congratulates teacher Kevin Zelko who was presented with The Heroes in the Classroom Award, sponsored by the Seahawks and Symetra. He received a Seahawk Jersey and gets to attend and be recognized at the Seahawks’ game on January 2.
I’ll be curious to see how McDonald plays out, given the controversy at Hamilton over co-housing the APP program. Now with the (as-intended) two feeder elementary schools, I wonder if the district will keep APP there.
I guess I’m just glad that we’ll be looking at high schools by the time that plays out.
On Monday, January 17, JSIS will be hosting a number of service events at the school. For adults, we’ll have a variety of outside landscaping-type tasks, including weeding, spreading wood chips, planting native plants, digging earth terraces, cutting blackberries. Hours 10 am to 2 pm. We’ll also have indoor service activities for children 10 and under supervised by parents. Sign up at the United Way site or contact Barb Burrill at [email protected] if you want to join us. Snacks, tools, and some gloves provided.
Protected static, could you say more? I’ve missed the controversy.
@J – My understanding is that some parents at Hamilton felt betrayed when it was announced that APP was going to be co-housed there, and that there’ve been some resultant… tensions between the two cohorts. Nothing nearly on the scale as seen with the Thurgood Marshall/APP merger, but tensions nonetheless.
@J – as far as controversy goes, it’s mostly a matter of SPS saying one thing: renovate Hamilton to support 2 International Schools, and doing another: oh, and BTW, here’s APP coming to join you.
Ah, ok. Thanks!
APP locating at Hamilton was mentioned during the Hamilton design process, so it was not really a surprise to many. The “controversy” about splitting the APP cohort began to ramp up two years ago and suddenly (coincidentally?) District Facilities stopped talking about the APP cohort moving to Hamilton. Most of us figured it did not mean the District decided against it, just a case of putting on blinders so Facilities did not have to plan ahead.
Space for APP was another aspect of the benefit of using Lincoln, the neighborhood and Hamilton plan for 12 years, where there was an additional 12,000 sq ft that could have been used to accommodate the north end cohort of APP (along with a full-size instrumental music rehearsal space, an auditorium that could accommodate the entire school, two full-size gyms, an all-weather athletic field with space for geothermal wells on school grounds, and shared community space for a larger branch library and a Wallingford community center).
But District Facilities told us “We don’t consider neighborhood plans” and pretty much wasted a 12-year planning effort. Facilities can be very stubborn and makes some pretty bone-headed mistakes, such as not designing Hamilton for the long-term by using energy efficient windows (rather than keeping the old, rattling, single-pane windows), by installing wasteful and non-compliant exterior light fixtures rather than lights directed down onto the property as required by code, etc.
Providing space for the APP cohort at Hamilton was brought up by some community members during design, but District Facilities dismissed concerns as “anti-school” sentiment. At some point, District Facilities will finally decide to plan cooperatively with communities. Imagine some of the resources we could develop!
Thanks for the additional perspective, Greg. As APP elementary parents, we hadn’t heard any that.
We are lucky to have great schools in our neighborhood.
Not all realize that you also have the choice to send your school to our regional (NW quadrant) alternative school Salmon Bay in Ballard. This is a K-8 school that uses an alternative education model.
The most common entry points are kindergarten (of course) as well as 6th grade when the number of kids per grade (not per classroom) increases from 40 to 120. Currently the sibling preference is the first attendance tiebreaker. Lottery is the second tiebreaker. Plans are underway to add a geographic zone around the school as the second tie-breaker, this would potentially make it harder to get in if you lived in Wallingford/Greenlake. Let all school board representatives know if you have an opinion on this one.
For more information about Salmon Bay see:
http://www.salmonbayschool.org
http://www.seattleschools.org/area/boundarymapa/schools/0949.htm
(note that the district obtusely lumps the school under Option schools)
Caleb
Thanks Caleb. I’m pretty excited about Hamilton, my daughter’s never been able to walk to school and I think that’s going to be a huge boon to her. I hear terrific things about Salmon Bay, though.