Seattle Public Schools proposes to change neighborhood school boundaries in the New Student Assignment Plan to alleviate capacity issues over at John Stanford International School (JSIS), which currently has four Kindergarten classes. The actual proposal won’t be put to a vote by the school board until January 18, and if the board votes to move forward, the change wouldn’t take place until the 2012-13 school year; but Tracy Libros (Manager, Enrollment Planning) and Robert Boesché (Interim Superintendent for Business and Finance) addressed the issues to the board during a meeting on December 7. You can read the presentation here. Their hope is that the boundary shift will bring the Kindergarten classes back down to 2-3, instead of 4.
In short, SPS is proposing to move the John Stanford boundary back to the west side of Wallingford Avenue, below 45th. Those who live to the west (and on the west side of) of Wallingford Avenue N. would attend B.F. Day. For those of you keeping score at home, this was where the boundary was until 2009, when it moved to Stone Way. The difference though, is that McDonald Elementary is now part of the neighborhood school equation.
The northern JSIS boundary will also be pulled south from 46th/47th (it does this kind of jog thingy in the middle of Wallingford) to N. 45th. Students in that area will be assigned to McDonald Elementary. Here’s a copy of the map which you can click on to enlarge.
So, what happened and why did the boundary have to shift again from the approved New Student Assignment Plan in 2009? According to the presentation, while opening McDonald Elementary was planned to help alleviate the enrollment numbers over at JSIS, it did very little to reduce that pressure. The proposed boundary change for 2012-13 would cause a “slight increase in enrollment” at McDonald and an “increase of a 0.5 to a 1 Kindergarten class at B.F. Day”, which currently has three Kindergarten classes. The District believes that “B.F. Day should be able to accomodate the increase for at least the next few years” and “if needed in the future, the site could take portables” which cannot be done over at JSIS.
Here’s a timeline with the next steps to the plan:
A draft of the plan will be available for discussion during the board’s meeting on January 4. The plan will be put to vote on January 18. Initial assignment letters and Open Enrollment information will be available on February 24, and Open Enrollment for 2012-13 will take place from February 27 through March 9.
H/T to Michael for bringing this to our attention!
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2017001813_johnstanford13m.html
Redrawing boundaries is one small part of what is going on with the public school district at the moment. The School Board meetings are both televised and open to the public.
Unfortunately, lack of adequate demographic information on the district’s part results in no space at JSIS for siblings outside the new assignment area. Based on historical draws, this assignment area should fill three K classes easily. All the families who entered JSIS during the “big” years now are faced with having children in different elementary schools, or pulling their older child from JSIS.
I find it hard to believe the opening of a new school (McDonanld) next door did not alleviate enrollment.
@JG: McDonald is too little, too late. Central Administration has seen this huge increase coming, but my (second- and third-hand) understanding is that Facilities controls the capacity agenda – and they’ve been opposed to building new schools or expanding existing ones in the north.
I was able to attend a meeting with our district School Board representative, Sherry Carr (http://www.seattleschools.org/modules/cms/pages.phtml?sessionid=&pageid=191464&sessionid=) on Saturday. The event was attended by about 15-20 people – almost all of whom were current parents at JSIS.
I was glad to see that Sherry was able to hear the perspective of many current parents, the majority of whom were concerned about the sibling issue – “How can I ensure that my younger child is able to attend school with my older child at JSIS.”
Unfortunately, while the point of view of existing families is important, the voices of families who have young children who have not yet entered the school system (and neighborhood families at large) was largely absent. I know there are many families that moved into the impacted section of Wallingford over the last 2.5 years who are expecting:
1. That their children go to a school in the neighborhood where they live;
2. That their children receive an immersion school experience;
3. That the their children attend John Stanford.
With the proposed change, none of these expectations will be realized.
The next community meeting with Sherry Carr will be Saturday, January 14 8:30 – 10:00 am Bethany Community Church – CE Brick Room, 8023 Green Lake Dr . (This meeting takes place only 4 days before the vote.) If you want to reach her by email, her contact information is listed on her official website.
Margaret — This is actually the second year that the boundary has been Stone Way. Prior to the NSAP, the “Reference Area” was bounded by Wallingford Ave but the boundaries under the old plan had very little meaning. In the old ‘Choice’ plan, being inside the boundary did not guarantee you getting in. Now, under the ‘Neighborhood’ plan, you are guaranteed to get in if you are inside the boundaries. However, the families that are really screwed if these new proposals go through as is are the families that currently live inside the boundaries but will be outside the proposed boundaries and have younger siblings. Those younger siblings will not be guaranteed a spot at JSIS even though they have a brother or sister already attending. So much for predictability. I’ll have more to say about this later.
Thanks for clarifying, Brian. I made the change in the post.
Just to clarify – JSIS only has classroom space to support 3 K’s for the next 2 years and then 2 K’s after that. So if you’re thinking of moving in to get into JSIS don’t buy just rent. FYI – the newly remodeled McDonald school will open next year and be HALF empty as it only has K-2 next year.
Please Note: All proposed solutions are temporary while the district figures out planning for a capital expense levy to be on the ballot in Feb. 2013. The need for another middle school and possibly another elementary school in the North end will change boundaries again. The 2-5 year plan will be created this spring so stay informed and go to community meetings.
We just purchased a house this year because we wanted to be in the district. In addition to not having our child be able to attend JSIS, our property value just went down.
@Katie – while the word “temporary” is used to describe this change. In practice, kids placed at BF Day will be unable to integrate into an immersion program in the future (even if the boundaries are changed two years from now.) That means that the implications of this change are permanent.
The entrance exam for Immersion school programs is demanding. My daughter failed when she attempted to enter JSIS (our neighborhood school) in second grade (and she was quite strong in Spanish.)
In practice, if you child starts in a non-immersion school (BF Day), then it is highly probably that he/she will have no choice but to remain in a non-immersion school – even if space is made available in your Wallingford school (JSIS or McDonald) in the future. Furthermore, this means that your child will be unable to access the increasing level of immersion resources available in Middle School and High School. Clearly, these are not “temporary” repercussions.
JSIS is an awesome school and I see how crowded it is getting and will be getting in the future. But there is no room to move. All space is used up.
@Mike – Concord and Beacon Hill both offer a Spanish language immersion program so there are other options in Seattle Public Schools for language immersion for families, they just don’t have the posh neighborhood. JSIS’s former award winning principal Kelly Aramaki is now at Beacon Hill.
Anyone who has followed the 2010 Student Assignment Plan since its inception, knew that this day was coming since the boundary was drawn larger than JSIS’s original one and it was unsustainable. The old western boundary (past Wallingford Ave) was BF Day. It just plain stinks for families who have not paid attention to these developments but the writing has been on the wall. My only advice is to show up to district community meetings, propose workable solutions to the School Board and stay involved. There’s still time to make your solutions known to the district et all.
Wallingford is “posh”?
Anyone who has followed the 2010 Student Assignment Plan since its inception, knew that this day was coming since the boundary was drawn larger than JSIS’s original one and it was unsustainable.
Why oh why did they change it for 2 years then? They gave people an expectation in that time period only to shift it away. It’s extremely hard to plan anything when your plans don’t go more than two years in the future.
It was a huge mistake to make the boundary so big in the first place, and from what I hear, Karen Kodama and Kelly Aramaki both said so, but the district did it anyway. I don’t know why they made this mistake, but I do know that having 4 incoming Ks each year at JSIS is unsustainable. There simply isn’t space in that building for so many kids. Shrinking the boundary to what it should have been in the first place is the only sensible thing to do (short term).
Long term, I think it would make sense to a) make sure there is an immersion school in every region and b) make those schools regional option schools, with preference for a) native speakers of the immersion languages and b) siblings.
@Katie – I believe that McDonald does have older classes (albeit very small ones) they just don’t have the immersion program in the older years.
I agree that boundary change is needed – having 4 classes per year is unfortunately unsustainable. But I feel for the families who are being split by this. I think that the school district owes parents who made decisions under the “guaranteed assignment plan” better than that.
For what it’s worth, I’ll just point out that while B.F. Day isn’t as prestigious as JSIS, it really is a great school. We transferred from TOPS this year and I’ve found it to be way more academically rigorous (my son is in the Spectrum program). There’s a great sense of community, very active PTSA, a newly renovated library, strong PE, art, special ed, cultural diversity…and we’re in the process of designing a new playground. You could do a lot worse.
I know that’s a small consolation to the families that are being split, though.
The district has repeatedly stated that any changes to capacity now are only a temporary plan for next school year (2012) and that the 2-5 year plan would be worked on in the spring. We all know that JSIS is overcrowded and can only handle 2-3 kindergarten classes next year due to lack of physical space. Obviously enrollment needs to be smaller, but pulling in the boundaries and temporarily displacing families from their neighborhood school for a one-year fix has much longer effects. It has been proposed to move families west of Wallingford Ave. to BF Day. Separating siblings at an elementary level creates a lot of problems for families (before and after school care, transportation, available volunteer hours, school financial support, community building). Separating siblings and sending them to a school that has a completely different educational program is simply not right. Kids can only enroll in an immersion language program in K or 1st grade without having competency in the language. The track to an immersion middle school and high school is set early on and by separating siblings out of the immersion program, they are effectively on a different educational path for the next 13 years.
Wallingford neighborhood has two immersion elementary schools. McDonald has an equitable language program and has the classroom space available for several years. Next year they will only be using 12 of their 19 rooms. For one year, make one boundary for JSIS and McDonald. Keep siblings together and utilize the two schools as one for this temporary fix.
Floor Pie,
No one is arguing that BF Day isn’t a good school. If we didn’t have an older sibling in JSIS and weren’t already committed and invested in the immersion program, I think BF Day would be a fine choice.
As publicanlee pointed out, moving the younger sibling to BF Day causes all kind of problems when splitting up families.
Please keep our families together and in the immersion program, don’t make a temporary fix that will be permanent for some families.
Redrawing the school reference area boundaries as a political decision made by the School Board, not an administrative decision made by the individual school principals or district staff. Because JSIS is such a great school, the pressure from constituents will always be to make the reference area bigger. No one is going to show up at a meeting demanding that they be drawn out of the reference area for the good of the school.
Margaret, just to clarify, the boundary changes are proposed for this coming fall. The language in the post (“the change wouldn’t take place until the 2012-13 school year”) implies that the changes are not imminent. They are.
I would say that the changes are imminent once it’s put to vote and is passed. It’s not a done deal yet (though it seems likely).
This is a further illustration of a flawed district policy that assigns students to highly sought after program based on their location. The language immersion model is not a mainstream educational model that equitably serves the need of a neighborhood in the same fashion that a traditional neighborhood school does. I think it is a great option to provide to Seattle students, but it does not fit the needs of all kids in a neighborhood, which is the primary purpose of the “neighborhood” school.
Note comments about students who move into the neighborhood who cannot attend their reference school. Not mentioned yet are kids w/ learning disabilities, or other challenges who would be well served in a traditional educational environment, but not language immersion or another alternative program.
In our case we live about a block from McDonald elementary and our son entering Kindergarten next year on an IEP w/ speech and language delays will not be able to attend his neighborhood school because it is designated for language immersion.
We’ve lived in our house for over a decade and are considering leaving the neighborhood because of this school issue.
Separating language immersion, or other alternative programs, from a designation as a neighborhood school and equitably assigning students based on a lottery would be a much better long term solution. that would ease the angst involved with a boundary change.
Wasn’t the mission of redrawing boundaries to focus on having children attend their neighborhood schools?
The reference area for JSIS is relatively small in comparison to other schools and it will be smaller yet from that of two years ago. And demographically, it is not that different from other reference areas in north Seattle.
Seems space is the root of the problem…perhaps a sensible solution is to move JSIS to the old Lincoln High School where it can have the opportunity to meet the needs of the neighborhood.
For what it’s worth, Ted, we live on Wallingford Avenue and my daughter started Kindergarten this year with speech, language, and developmental delays (she was adopted from Ukraine at age 3) and we couldn’t be more thrilled to be at B.F. Day where she is in wonderful, capable hands. B.F. Day is exactly 0.59 miles from us but so is JSIS.
JG,
I emailed Sherry Carr with the same idea last week. Why not consider Lincoln high as one of the long term solutions for JSIS.
This is pure speculation on my part, but Roosevelt High School (our reference high school for those of us NOT in the immersion track) is going to become overcrowded as well. I have a sneaking suspicion that Lincoln may need to re-open as a high school.
Yeah! Go Lincoln Lynx!
For folks who want to follow this and other district issues more closely, please check out the blog Save Seattle Schools:
http://saveseattleschools.blogspot.com/
Not every school is a good fit for every child. My kids go to JSIS and love school, but one of them is struggling big time. There is a chance we will need to look for other options for him. So we will join those families attending two different schools in our case for a different reason.
Count your blessings.
We just went through this at Green Lake Elementary in the past two years, what with McDonald coming into the neighborhood. We had boundary lines for the schools bouncing all over the place before they finally settled. Our neighborhood is now cut in two, and a large chunk of the kids who attend GLE now live in the McDonald reference area.
The entire time this was going on, we attended community meetings with Sherry to understand the strategy for our neighborhood school. We asked questions about how this decision was made, the basis for some strategy, process goals, etc. The responses were underwhelming, to say the least. It was easy to form an opinion that the district didn’t make basic, fundamental considerations within their planning process.
While there have been some imaginative theories as to what led to decision making, I believe the root cause of all this is something much more simple: lack of competence. The district just isn’t any good at what is largely a logistical issue.
The approach with JSIS sounds very similar to what happened at GLES — throw some plan out there, see who complains, adjust the plan, lather/rinse/repeat. Not trying to scare anybody, just set your expectations accordingly.