Last year, Seattle Public Schools moved Lowell Elementary’s Accelerated Progress Program (APP) to the Lincoln High School site in an effort to alleviate the crowding at Lowell Elementary School on Capitol Hill. Now, the District has announced that the APP program is being completely separated from Lowell Elementary School, and will be known as “APP at Lincoln”, serving as Seattle’s north end APP school.
In a statement released on Monday, the District wrote, “Given our capacity issues in the north end of Seattle, we will house the program at Lincoln for the next two years. This gives District staff time to continue working on the larger picture of program placement and capacity.”
Over the last year, Lowell at Lincoln shared the building with McDonald Elementary; but this fall, McDonald is slated to move into its newly-remodeled school over at 54th and Latona.
Gee, it seems like only 4 years ago that a coalition of Wallingford professionals practically begged the School District to follow through on what seemed a very forward-looking and flexible plan to move Hamilton to Lincoln and use the “extra” south wing to help house the APP cohort. Many of us worked so hard, for over 12 years to make it so. Sadly, it was not to be, primarily because of a dis functional Facilities department apparently more interested in furthering their professional standing than sound planning.
It has become funny, if it was not so sad, that so much of what many in our community recommended for so long to previous Boards is now coming to pass, although too late to save millions or integrate the school as a model of a joint community/school facilty complete with all-weather sports field, full-size performing arts space, space for adult education classes, and a community center and new library for Wallingford.
Guess it is not a good idea unless the plan originates with the District. Someday, perhaps soon, the School District will finally realize that the parents (their clients) might actually have some good ideas about what works (and what doesn’t) in our schools.
please follow standard news format and first use the full name before you resort to an acronym – what the heck is APP?
@Kate: APP = Accelerated Progress Program.
The “dysfunctional Facilities Department” refers to the Seattle Public School District’s Facilities Department. Of the members of that group who were on staff during the renovate-Hamilton-on-the-Hamilton-site, several are no longer with the District. An announcement regarding those staff changes from the Seattle School Board would much appreciated!
APP=Accelerated Progress Program
((Margaret – thanks for the info, but please fill in those of us out of the loop and disclose what acronyms mean in any article. I appreciate your excellent reporting!))