During a Seattle Public Schools “Board Operations Committee as a Whole” presentation last night, the Capacity Management Team presented a list of recommendations for short-term capacity management during the 2012-13 school year. The entire presentation can be seen here, but by the looks of it, other solutions are being offered to remedy the overcrowding at John Stanford International School:
As you can see from the slide pictured above, the two options before contemplating the change in the Wallingford neighborhood school boundaries would be either to use the school’s music room as an additional classroom or place a portable on school grounds.
As we mentioned earlier in the week, a final draft of the Short Term Capacity Management plan and the New Student Assignment Plan Transition Plan will be presented at the next board meeting on January 4 and then put to a vote on January 18. Reader Mike has also told us that District II School Board Member Sherry Carr’s next community meeting will be on Saturday, January 14 from 8:30am – 10:00am at Bethany Community Church – CE Brick Room, 8023 Green Lake Drive.
This is terrible news, and this board is proving itself to be incompetent. I suppose if they wreck the school, it will help solve the problems caused by its popularity.
All this does is punt the problem one year further down the line.
What happens the following year when there’s no capacity?
I see no solution other than changing the boundary to be sustainable.
Is there any chance that LSA, JSIS’ before and after-school child care program, could offer the use of one of their two rooms to the music program during school hours?
Please do not take away the music classroom. Kids love having a space to learn and create music and we do not want that priviledge taken away. An please please please do not bring portables to our school. Last year my daughter attended a different school and her classroom was a portable and it was quite depressing and awfully cold. Then they cranked up the heater and it was an oven.
There has to be a better way to solve this problem and for the solution to be sustainable.
Gah! Is there anyone we can contact on this? Like Thomas said, this only pushes things one year further down the road (while worsening the overcrowding wrt to the playground, cafeteria, after-school activities etc). Shrinking the boundaries is the only viable solution (short of making it an option school, which isn’t a “short term” change).
The school board makes the final decision. Sherry Carr’s email is [email protected]
I suggest that you make concrete suggestions because the final decision will be made in early January. A dislike of portables is probably not going to get us anywhere because many schools face having portables. The fact that they have to apply for a variance (the school is a historic site) for said portable and the fact that the school site is just too small to accommodate the number of students already attending (i.e. the boundary was drawn twice as large as it should have been) may. The bathrooms are in bad shape, the lunch room is overcrowded (imagine when the k and 1st graders are twice as big as they are now!) and the playground is dangerous may get us somewhere. Neighboring schools still have space for classrooms and a music room. They must draw tighter boundaries. It is the only responsible solution unless they are willing to put option school status back on the table.
Thanks A. My comment was just for this anonymous blog. I agree we need to be proactive and give concrete ideas and stay informed. I have submitted mine to the Schhol Distric for what it is worth.
I am not familiar with the ‘option school’ alternative. What does it mean for families in the neighborhood? Do siblings have preference? Native speakers? Any clarification will be highly appreciated.
An ‘option school’ is open to wider-than-neighborhood enrollment, sometimes (typically? I don’t know) with some percentage set aside for neighborhood kids. The full list is at the bottom of the school directory: http://www.seattleschools.org/modules/cms/pages.phtml?pageid=197023
We went to an option school, TOPS K-8, for kindergarten. They had a neighborhood set-aside that was a perennial source of friction, with a vocal neighborhood minority wanting a larger set-aside despite a lack of kids in the neighborhood… When JSIS was a city-wide draw, there were some preferences given to native speakers, though I don’t know if it was a set-aside per se or just weighting given during enrollment. Typically sibling preference is granted to option programs.
I totally agree that portables are terrible (particularly on a such a compact site- I can’t believe it’s back on the table!).
An option school is one that doesn’t have a NSAP. Rather, students from a broader area could apply to attend (with no guarantee), and yes sibling get preference. I would hope for reserved spots for native speakers, but there is no plan yet. It will be interesting to see if that’s what they work on for the 2-5 year plan.
Ever since the boundaries were redrawn in 2009, we have been told that we cannot have portables at JSIS. Our playground is among the smallest in the district, the school is more overcrowded than ever, and now they say they might put in portables?
I have not heard a single parent say that they support losing the music room – even those parents who will be drawn out if the boundaries change.
There is not going to be one solution that works for all families but this level of upheaval year after year is ridiculous.
Unfortunately the 2009 boundaries were drawn too big. This will have to be addressed at some point.
protected static, we cross posted- I was responding to oh no!.
I emailed Sherry Carr making the points about playground, lunchroom, bathrooms and just pushing the problem of siblings out another year.
Encourage Sherry Carr to come to the school during the day — especially lunch time and recess — and actually see what’s going on. She always says she gets it (if you correspond with her enough times through email and attend her community meetings, you no doubt have heard “I get it” a handful of times) but I don’t think she really does — or is too weak to stand up for what is right.
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.
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.
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]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
Funny how Sherry Carr completely ignored 120 parents who met at JSIS last week to say “change the boundaries” “keep the music room and LSA” and “no portables.”
Sad how our new principal won’t stand up for students and teachers.
you lost a good principal
Ms Alvarez is a strong leader, I do not believe this mess is anybody’s fault. Otherwise we should point at Kelly Aramaki because it was under his tenure the JSIS boundary got extended to Stone Way. This is a real problem and parents owe it to their kids to participate and help find a sustainable solution.
The principal doesn’t really have any say in the matter. Kelly Aramaki isn’t responsible for the good or bad of the situation and neither is Ms Alvarez. I sat in a meeting with Mr Aramaki a couple years ago and he predicted — as all of us in the meeting already knew — that they would eventually have to shrink the boundaries and would continue to make them smaller or they would have to make it an option school. By the end of all the NSAP discussion, I believe Kelly was advocating for JSIS to be an option school. This situation is solely on the district staff (Tracy Libros) and the school board (namely, our representative Sherry Carr).
I don’t think we should go so far as to say “nobody’s fault”, but it’s clearly not the JSIS principals’ (past or present) fault. The fault lies with the school board who set the boundaries too big in the first place, over the objections of Mr. Aramaki (and, as I’ve heard it told anyway), Ms. Kodama.
The fault also lies with the district administration and ousted superintendent who refused to listen to parents and community members about the flawed demographic information that resulted in school closures that were unnecessary.
I don’t think it really matters whose fault it is. Schools are packed everywhere, or at least the schools where parents want to send their kids are packed. If you look through the entire presentation, JSIS is not the only school to get portables. And regardless, the boundary change proposed won’t be enough to get down to two classes. Either the music room or the portable is happening.
What the district can’t account for is how many people will move or register an address in the JSIS zone to get into the school. So the demographic data they use doesn’t seem to be very helpful.
@JJ: my understanding (from having talked to a District demographics analyst) is that the District was presented with data showing that there was a large population increase coming, and that the North needed more schools, period. What it comes down to is that Facilities wields more clout than pretty much any other branch of SPS. Their intransigence – and willingness to play political games around closures, renovations, and new construction – is in large part what is causing the capacity problems. There’s definitely a race/class element at work – Facilities doesn’t want to give (or be seen as giving or doesn’t think they can justify giving) resources to the rich/white North.over the poor/non-white Central and South districts.
I think both proposals coming out of the school board over the past 10 days are flawed.
The first proposal would mandate a that a significant sub-section of Walilingford families send their children to school in Fremont. (Yes, I know that was the case two years ago, but now McDonald is in place and we should be looking for options to send our kids to Wallingford-based schools first.)
Next, they proposed that JSIS continue its unsustainable trend of 4 entering classrooms through the addition of modular classroom and the repurposing of the music room.
Another option – not yet proposec by the school board – is to send the children of Wallingford families west of Wallingford Ave to McDonald. This would keep these the children of those famiiles in a Walllingford school and allow them to receive immersion education for their kids.
I have heard the concerns that McDonald already has 4 k-classrooms and that their space is maxed. From my understanding this constraint was created by the registration policies of the District when they allowed families outside the boundaries into the school last year. I have heard (please corroborate) that there were three entering classrooms from within the McDonald Distric boundary last year and the fourth was created to allow students from outside the boundary to enter.
That fourth classroom would have accommodated all the demand from South West Wallingford last year (which is estimated/projected to be the equivalent of .5-1 classrooms.
This isn’t a school principal issue…thankfully
Taca- Yes, we did lose a good principal and ended up with one who doesn’t always put the best interest of the students before her own, unfortunately.
Oh no! – Sadly, Principal Alvarez does not have strong leadership skills. She is new to this game and is making one mistake after another at our expense.
She is staying out of this issue after learning from another ongoing school issue that pushing through her own agenda and then not accepting responsibility for her actions does not play well with parents…
I vote for portables over losing music!
(Not really relevant to this thread, but since it seems to be coming up here.)
@another JSIS parent: I’m glad you recognize that this is not a school principal issue, but I would like to know what you are referring to with “one mistake after another”. I am familiar with the whole controversy around the pledge and I understand the point of view that that change was unwelcome and the process that brought it about poorly conceived, but I have not heard of anything else that Ms. Alvarez has done that could be characterized as “one mistake after another”. (And this isn’t the only conversation I’ve been in where someone has expressed that sentiment without giving specifics.) I’m really curious is there are other things going on that I don’t know about, or if this is all just spill-over from the pledge controversy.
In case anyone did not hear this, it looks like they are right now intending to place the portable in the staff parking lot! The impact on the neighborhood will be huge with now the entire staff having to find parking (with all the stuff we lug in, I am not sure how that will happen?)…and as others have said this does not solve the problem. The school building can fit 3 class per grade but not 4 (to do that we need 6 more classrooms than we have right now).
Here is what was posted:
Summary of School Board Work Session on Capacity ManagementThe 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
http://www.seattle.gov/mayor/citizen_response.htm 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: http://www.seattle.gov/mayor/citizen_response.htm
Aren’t we out of space in one year? The current 3rd and 4th grades have two home rooms, so in a year two more rooms are needed. The year after two more. Where do they come from? So the music room and the staff parking lot disappear and we are in crisis mode once again in a few short months.
solution: Make JSIS OPTION SCHOOL with geozone = current boundaries and then balance of students who want language immersion go to McDonald.
Doing this means families are not split apart (under an option school, within the geo zone, the first tie breaker is the sibling – so families stay together and don’t have a child in JSIS in grade 2, and, a K child in BF Day). Anybody currently already in JSIS gets their sibling in first — the balance can go to McDonald. Those families will still get Language Immersion, and will not face being split off from their sibling.
What about next year? By being an option school with the same boundaries, the siblings will still get in, so, families will still not be split, but, the balance will not if capacity has reached a critical point, so, it ensures safety will not become a problem as it will with JSIS remaining a ‘neighbourhood’ school. Keep in mind, due to the geozone and the popularity, it is still going to essentially remain a neighborhood school, in that it will only draw from a very small part of Seattle, but, it will provide the mechanism for the other students to be accommodated elsewhere so that additional stress on the core facilities does not reach a breaking point. And, it avoids shrinking the boundaries this year, breaking families apart while letting in fresh K students, and then next year shrinking the boundaries yet again, now breaking up more students’ families in an unnecessary way. Making JSIS an option school TODAY will prevent problems for the next year AND each year thereafter! Contact Sherry Carr and tell her you want it to be an OPTION SCHOOL NOW to avoid constant shifting boundaries and uncertainty and overcrowding.