(Ed. note: Seattle Schools is on break until January 3, not January 2, as previously reported).
While Seattle Public Schools is on break until January 3, parents in the neighborhood are still reeling from the current challenges at John Stanford International School. We have a recap of some of the reader comments from our posts on this topic, including some suggestions for taking action, contact information and additional resources:
- The school district proposed to find 2 additional homerooms to support 4 incoming K classes for JSIS by repurposing the Music room and to add a portable into the staff parking lot. Since JSIS is a historic site and we have limited space a variance would have to be granted by the City of Seattle to add a portable. Please e-mail your thoughts on this variance for JSIS to Mayor McGinn’s office and put John Stanford
International School as the organization on the form. Adding a portable does not solve our capacity management problem because there is still significant stress put on the core facilities. In 3 years the school runs out of space again and can only accommodate 2 incoming K classes causing even more families to be divided over the sibling issue. For a summary of the discussions at this week’s school board work session and next steps go to the JSIS web site.
- Right now there is only room for 2 K classes next year (this year they turned the computer lab into a classroom). The current boundaries/NSAP give us 4 K’s…we will be 2 classrooms short. Even if they bring in the boundaries and we get to 3, we still are 1 room short (the music room, likely).
- The JSIS community came up with a GREAT short term plan – combine the JSIS and McDonald boundaries into 1 boundary. Siblings of each school get placed first, then by proximity until JSIS is full, then the extra class would go to McDonald.
- Please note that the Transition Plan will be presented on January 4. Sherry’s next community meeting isn’t till the 14th, with the final vote on the 18th. So if you want to give Sherry input, I would do it soon. She does pay attention to her so please e-mail her.
- As others have said, ultimately the boundary needs to be brought in OR JSIS made into an option school. There are more families in Wallingford than there is space at the 2 schools capacity combined. And with the NSAP, families are moving into the boundaries to buy/rent so they get their kids in. It has become a destination school, so no matter how small the boundaries, there is still risk of overcapacity.
- PLEASE write to:
[email protected]
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The one boundary idea for McDonald and Stanford is a selfish idea for current parents as it could potentially send kids living a few blocks from Stanford all the way over to McDonald. It also goes against the whole idea of going to your neighborhood school for future students by accommodating current parents. It’s a very short sighted idea.
I agree with Helen. I understand the frustration over the sibling issue, and I’m sure I will be in the same boat next year. However, I have lived within a few blocks of JSIS for years and years, long before I had kids, and have stayed where I am so that my kids can go to JSIS.
Part of this frustration comes from apparent lack of accountability for poor planning on the part of SPS. Why did they close McDonald School in the first place? Families living in Wallingford could have told them that there was a baby boom happening in north Seattle.
And the portable classroom also sounds awful, not just for the kids, but because there is already VERY limited parking in the neighborhood during weekdays. Where would staff park? Most of the parking is already taken up by commuters.
“Combining the boundaries” does not sound like a “great” idea to this McDonald parent.
“Combining” with JSIS sounds like our school, or part of it, would be absorbed into our larger neighbor. What a colossally inefficient and short-sighted move after all we’ve built so far.
We have built what is a pretty amazing school given the constant barrage of nonsense from the district.
We’ve been camped out in an abandoned high school at Lincoln for two years, with new under-funded “big ideas” chucked at us by the district every few months. Our children’s playground is a decrepit parking lot. And all this time, SPS dangled the carrot of an actual school building in front of us. “All this will be okay once you move into the new building, it will be worth it.”
That’s not to say we at McDonald couldn’t temporarily share some space with our neighbors at JSIS, who are facing a real issue (once we have an actual building). There are lots of ways we can work together to help JSIS and sharing some of our space temporarily may be one of them.
But if SPS is considering some of the more elaborate “combining the boundary” ideas that are floating around out there, they should think again. There is a limit to what this community will take.
McDonald is a great school and an empowered community, not a resource to be harvested as needed.
How would making JSIS an option school solve the capacity problem?
In my opinion, the issue is that lower Wallingford doesn’t have a neighborhood school. JSIS should be an option school. As a parent of a kid who entered school just before forced neighborhood assignment I can say I am grateful. My son would not have survived in an immersion program. He barely held it together in the early grade school years as it was because of mild undiagnosed learning disabilities add to that another language, OMG! We would have been spending his college fund on kindergarten for sure, private school here we come and we are philosophically opposed to that for many reasons which I’m not going to elaborate on.
Anyway, the bottom line issue is lower Wallingford does not have a neighborhood school. The school district is trying to make JSIS “fit like” one and the results are exactly what we are seeing and will be moving to Hamilton soon as their feeding programs are fighting similar issues.
Long term the solution is to fix this problem…none of the short term solutions are really without pain for everyone involved. I’m not going to give my opinion as to which I feel is best as I don’t want the backlash of “your child isn’t even involved” which almost ultimately happens.
I would hesitate before calling anyone selfish. We’re all trying to do the best for our kids. I certainly understand the viewpoint of parents who live across the street from JSIS. I would hope they in turn could understand mine.
Making JSIS an option school solves the sibling issue since siblings are given preference in option schools. It also effectively limits the geographic boundary, because distance from the school is the next “tie breaker” at option school enrollment. So, it would likely be an option school in name only if I understand the information I have read correctly.
Honestly, it seems to me that the sibling issue is the main stumbling point. I don’t have this issue myself (we can see the school from our house and I kid is in already), but it is the only issue that can be solved. There have always been more parents interested in sending their kid to JSIS than there is room. That is why we need McDonald and Beacon Hill and West Seattle’s immersion schools. The solution is not to overburden the school.
neighbor — McDonald was closed in 1981. While I agree SPS has made poor and short sited decisions regarding school closures in the past years, I don’t think we can include closing McDonald Elementary 30 years ago as part of their recent failure in capacity planning.
I don’t think combining the boundaries is a good answer, but I think SPS needs to find some sort of fix to this mess they have made of JSIS that accounts for displaced siblings.
Karla, you’re not alone. I have to admit, the wild popularity of programs like the one at JSIS troubles me a bit. Foreign language immersion is a very particular kind of education. It’s simply not going to work for every child. A student body based on proximity alone seems to be asking for trouble — for the school and for the students themselves.
I keep hearing about people moving to the neighborhood just for this one school. I’ve heard mild panic and disappointment expressed at the prospect of attending BF Day or Greenlake instead (even from new families who don’t have the sibling issue). And it makes me worry that we’re starting to equate “foreign language immersion” with “good,” the same way we used to do with Montessori, without really questioning whether this particular philosophy is right for the individual child (or whether it’s right for every child in the neighborhood).
I’d rather see JSIS as an option school in a more centrally located building (like TOPS), with opportunities for families outside of the heart of Wallingford. The old building could become an excellent neighborhood school, one that doesn’t have to bus its special ed neighbors elsewhere.
There are definitely downsides to foreign language immersion. Science, for example, lags behind where it should be given the students capabilities. But moving the school just makes whatever neighborhood the immersion program moves to more desirable. Distance from school is a consideration in option school assignment, too. It is the second tiebreaker (after siblings). So the houses under noisy I5 bridge would lose value again and some other houses in some other neighborhood would appreciate in value. But the problem would be the same.
Let’s advocate for more high quality schools, not screw up the few good ones in order to make sure that they are all low performing.
BF Day IS the lower Wallingford neighborhood school. It’s less than .5 miles and an easy walk over the 41st St overpass. And it’s a great school and their anti-bullying regimen makes it an incredibly safe choice and it has a great community feel. The new crop of Kindergarten parents is incredibly involved.
This overcrowding is about language immersion being the new black and parents not questioning whether it actually is a good thing for *their* child. (Psst: It’s actually a myth that language cannot be acquired beyond a certain age, it’s just a little easier when you are younger), and the tradeoffs have to be considered carefully for *your* child.
When we went to enrollment open house a few years ago (pre-NSAP when we had choices) I asked the JSIS booth how they teach math and science in a foreign language, and their response was that 60% of the morning’s content was repeated in English in the afternoon. So I said “So that mean my son will get exposure to 30% less content each day at JSIS in exchange for Japanese?”
They stood silent for a min or so, then finally one of the teachers said “I never thought of it that way, no one’s ever asked that.”
And don’t worry, all of those pesky “homeless” reduced free lunch kids at BF Day are slowly phasing out each year as the 5th graders graduate due to NSAP. The standardized test scores will come up “miraculously” over the same period and in the lockstep with the median household income, and change in skin color as it turns lily white, with no real change in curriculum or teaching style. -We just got rid of the poor kids whose parents have two jobs and can’t spend time with them on homework every night. Yay us.
The original post repeats the idea that the district’s plan somehow buys the school three years before capacity is a problem again. Please explain how we can assume that there will be only two kindergartens in 2013-2014 if the boundaries are staying the same.
Thank you for these comments. I am reading them along with my email. I’m not convinced the proposed solution is the best answer – even for one year and will work with the staff and parents to find a stronger one.
SC