[Disclaimer: As the father of a child who will be entering kindergarten in the Fall of 2014, this issue has very real and large impacts on me and my family. I’ve never pretended that the Wallyhood blog is a traditional, objective journalistic endeavor. Quite the opposite: I consciously strove to create a site where stories could be told from the perspective of those who lived them. I believe that community springs from connections between people, not a dispassionate review of facts. All that notwithstanding, I’ve done my best to stay objective in reporting here. I’ll share my personal opinions in the comments, alongside everyone else.]
For the last several years, the teachers and staff at the John Stanford International School have written to the school board saying that the school is not able to fulfill its mission of offering a “language immersion” program because of the way students are assigned.
In language immersion programs, students take some of their classes in English and some in a secondary language (Spanish or Japanese, in our case). They use the secondary language not just during a “language class”, but for one half of the day as part of their other classes, as well.
But both JSIS and McDonald aspire to be “dual language immersion” (aka “two-way model) programs. In this type of program, you have a mixture of students whose first language is English and students whose first language and/or heritage language is the “secondary language” (i.e., Spanish or Japanese in our case). A true two-way model has students teaching each other language and culture as much as teachers do, but this requires a much more balanced proportion of native/heritage speakers with English students. As explained by Karen Kodama, the first JSIS principal and the current International Education Administrator, JSIS is certainly not a two-way model and is heading more in the direction of a one-way program.
However, students are presently assigned to JSIS based on a very tight geography around the school itself. Families living from 45th and southward, and from Corliss to 15th Ave NE are currently in boundary. And there simply aren’t enough native Spanish and Japanese speakers living in that area.
Anyone who has been following the Seattle real estate market can understand why that is. Which means that embedded in this issue over the quality of education being offered to those who attend these schools and the ability of the school to deliver on its “dual language immersion” goal is a class issue: who can afford to buy or rent their way into arguably the best public school in the area? JSIS rates in the 97 percentile of Washington State elementary schools, according to SchoolDigger. What does the fact that it is de facto limited to those wealthy enough to live near it mean for the School Board’s state policy?
The district shall provide every student with equitable access to a high quality curriculum, support, facilities and other educational resources, even when this means differentiating resource allocation.
In response to this issue, the district presented a proposal this past Wednesday to the School Board which includes changes to the boundaries for the school year 2014 – 15, and to specialized programs (Advanced Learning and Special Ed.). You can view the draft version of the presentation here.
The overall goal of the proposal is to implement “Growth Boundaries” which will serve to “align boundaries with projected enrollment growth.” At the same time (and, most notably for Wallingford) another goal serves to “include equitable access to services and programs as a key component in boundary revisions.”
In other words, the proposal is that JSIS and McDonald become “option schools”: children from all of the city become eligible to attend the school. A certain number of spots would be designated for native or heritage speakers of Spanish and Japanese, and then the remaining spots would be distributed by lottery, but with preference going to siblings of existing students (which has intrinsic benefits to the efficacy of language immersion programs), and students who live within a geographic zone surrounding the school.
The boundaries have not been identified yet, but to give you an idea of what a geographic zone looks like for an option school, you can review the geographic boundaries for Salmon Bay.
This possibility has roiled the local parent population for several reasons. Obviously, those who live within the zone now see their “sure thing” become a “maybe”. At a recent PTSA meeting, parents talked about choosing to buy houses in Wallingford specifically because it gave their child access to JSIS. Over the years, the boundaries have moved repeatedly, causing heartache and anger for many.
Pre-2009, enrollment was based on available seats: heritage speakers, siblings, and then attendance area defined by distance. There was no address guarantee1, so historically, boundaries have fluctuated previously from Bagley to Stone Way. In Winter 2009, new student neighborhood assignment plan created the assignment boundaries , and made them quite wide for JSIS.
Their width was a problem, however: The class entering in Fall of 2010 simply had too many automatically assigned kids, many more than predicted by the SPS hired demographers. Whether these extra kids were due to people moving into the zone deliberately, parents providing fraudulent home address information to gain access to the school (a practice that certainly occurred and continues to this day) or simple poor prognostication on the school board’s part, it’s difficult to say.
This overcapacity issue continued through Fall 2013, with extra kindergarten classes getting stuffed in at the last moment, teachers who had expected to teach one grade being drafted to teach another, music rooms threatened to be converted to kindergarten classes, etc. Each of these extra classes creates a delayed sibling obligation in following years, rendering the existing system and boundaries unsustainable. Current enrollment of 453 neighborhood students is 120% of capacity and future projections indicate continued overcrowding.
Indeed, over the years, the boundaries have shrunk a number of times, leaving many of those left “out in the cold” (i.e., attending B.F. Day in Fremont) furious. By distributing the limited number of spots to those outside the boundary, this issue is exacerbated.
Separately, there is a concern that bussing in kids in from all over the city while reducing the number of kids who live in the neighborhood from attending reduces the “neighborhood school” community feeling. It’s certainly easy to suggest that if two kids live next door to each other, but go to different schools each day, their community bond will be weakened. Likewise, the bonds of the parents whose kids attend different schools would also have less structure to grow on.
If all this is confusing, a set of JSIS parents have constructed a well-written and thorough FAQ.
The school board encourages you to share your thoughts and concerns by emailing comments to [email protected] (please put your school or topic in the subject line), by attending informal “Let’s Talk” meetings (sorry, I don’t have info on when/where), by attending the “Walk the Boundaries” event in September and by attending one of the Community Meetings scheduled for September and October:
| When | Where |
|---|---|
| September 23, 6:30–8 p.m. | Mercer Middle School Lunchroom 1600 South Columbian Way |
| September 24, 6:30–8 p.m. | Nathan Hale High School Commons 10750 30th Avenue NE |
| September 25, 6:30–8 p.m. | West Seattle High School Commons 3000 California Ave SW |
| September 30, 6:30–8 p.m. | Meany Building Lunchroom 300 20th Ave. E |
| October 1, 6:30–8 p.m. | Ballard High School Commons 1418 NW 65th Street |
We’ll keep you posted once the website is up and running and remind you about the meetings in the fall. You can also read what others have to say about the preliminary boundary presentation on the Seattle School Community Forum.
And, of course, we encourage you to share your thoughts with your neighbors here.
1 I understand that while legally no student is guaranteed a spot in any specific school, in practice, all students within the area are assigned, so it is referred to as an “address guarantee”.
Very nicely written, covering many important and sometimes opposing facts and ways to proceed.
I have been in all of the Seattle SD language Immersion schools. The difference in how JSIS and McDonald can apply a dual language model from how it is done in Concord and Beacon Hill is dramatic.. when you are in the situation. As I taught in an eastern WA Dual Lang program and subbed in some in another district, I havepondered this often. One solution is that both JSIS and McDonald is to use different dual language model.. thus NOT using the criteria of cross-cultural learning. This would soften the need or idea of bussing kids all over and reducing spots fo rneighborhood kids..
I suggest that the public school community find out what department or person is in charge of Seattle’s public school system. If there is one. To whom or what does the School Board answer to? Technically I think it is the Seattle Mayor and if so that is a weak relationship. The elected board members and the appointed Superintendents come and go. From my experience dealing with that a organization there is no There There and There needs to be.
clarification on one point: a one-way model means that teachers, and not peer students, are providing the didactic process. Thus, if there is a dearth or absence of native/heritage speakers, the model is automatically a one-way. Currently JSIS is sliding away from a burgeoning two-way program, which would require a first-language speaker proportion of approximately 25% spanish, 25% japanese, and 50% english.
“Indeed, over the years, the boundaries have shrunk a number of times, leaving many of those left “out in the cold” (i.e., attending B.F. Day in Fremont) furious.”
Lovely choice of words.I don’t know if that was the intent but it makes it sound like attending B.F. Day is somehow a lesser fate in value and educational experience. It is rather insulting to the students and families of BF Day. It also adds whether real or perceived to the elitist and sense of entitlement persona of JSIS parents.
BF Day is a fairly racially and economically diverse school with students many of whom are recent immigrants. The sense of community is strong and as is the quality of education. Education at least in my eyes is more of you reap what you sow not just where you happen to buy or rent your house.
School assignments and boundaries are contentious issues indeed and the overcrowding issues of the north end schools need to be to be addressed. I’m sure we will hear from all sides of the issue. Also, as immersion language schooling is highly valued, why is not offered citywide? (probably cost and implementation) To restrict it to a handful of schools is only going to add to the disproportionate number of families wanting to send their children to only a few schools and tightening the geographic boundaries. The answer may be a mix of sibling preference, native speakers and an open lottery as the immersion programs are not offered district wide.
Hear hear to iliveheretoo – As a parent who was drawn out of the JSIS boundaries, the issue for me has little or nothing to do with the quality of BF Day. I have friends and neighbors whose children go there and are very happy with the quality of the school. The issue is having to split your time between two different schools, two different afterschool programs, two different PTAs, etc….which is particularly difficult for two working parent households.
Can we please have a discussion about this issue without implying that BF Day is an inferior school? It is completely unnecessary and only serves to divide the community.
Re %s needed to be a 2 way immersion school… there are other ways to look at the numbers… for example just looking at Spanish… needed 50% native speakers and 50% non-native speakers. That statistic needs to be separate from the same 50/50 need for the Japanese program.
From my view of classes, JSIS is not close to be a true dual language immersion program school. The word Dual does not mean Spanish and Japanese as in 2 non-native languages .. but rather 2 cultures represented in a language immersion program.. each program is independent.
Finally, tho a poster says that BF Day’s reputation or parent implications of their program should not be a part of the conversation, there are some important considerations for parents re exactly that. BFDay has sometimes had negative reputation for some people whether true or not. Each parent has to decide for him/herself what that means; if it is prevalent this year and for next year as well as implications to students.
I hear what you are saying, JSIS Parent, and I hope this doesn’t come across as insensitive to your comment about having two kids in two different schools with two different PTSA’s and such…but doesn’t that happen with families who have kids going to elementary and middle schools (or middle schools and high schools?) Either way, though, I know it’s hard on siblings — especially when there is a benefit for both children to be in a language immersion program.
But here’s my question — how can a language immersion school truly be a neighborhood school if there are children who live in the neighborhood who don’t do well in this type of program? Also, how can it be a neighborhood school if there aren’t special ed services (or APP services, for that matter) for the population with those needs? Every neighborhood has gifted children and children with learning disabilities, and yet those services are lacking in so many of our neighborhood schools.
There are two issues that are somewhat conflated here:
1. Should JSIS continue to be a neighborhood school vs an option school?
2. Should JSIS continue to be an international school?
As much as I love the international aspect, I’m more concerned about the former. If JSIS and McDonald both become option schools, there are no neighborhood schools in Wallingford. For many of us, JSIS, McDonald (or both!) are the only easily walkable schools.
I like having and being part of a neighborhood school. I like that my kids can walk to school, that they get to meet and make friends with other kids in the neighborhood, that they can walk to their friends’ houses on the weekends (or vice versa), and that we meet great people in our neighborhood through school. I hope we don’t lose that.
BF Day, Greenlake, etc, seem like fine schools. It’s just that neither is really walkable (SPS agrees according to their walk zones) and are at least 3 busy street crossings away.
As to the 2nd question – should JSIS be international – I’d love to keep having a neighborhood international school. My kids get a lot out of it. But if I had to choose between neighborhood and international, I’d pick neighborhood. At least for one of JSIS and McDonald.
Margaret raises the questions about gifted and special ed services in neighborhood schools. For gifted students, Elementary APP is a stand alone program and Spectrum is provided at BF Day. The district allocates special ed services to schools based upon their student population need and those funds have shrunken dramatically with the 3 year budget shortfalls. The district does allocate some Special Ed and ELL services to JSIS but given our low free and reduced lunch population it is not that significant compared to other schools. Every international school has a “linked” school that guarantees a seat to a student at a traditional school in the event the student, for whatever reason, does not want to attend an international school. JSIS linked school is BF Day.
The walkability factor is important. How about parents proposing to the district to move McDonald’s dual language program to another site.. like in NE of district or central area or NW up north of Ballard and then have space for many wallingford residents’ children. Having 2 dual language schools in the same neighborhood when SSD is so vast and large seems unfair to many other students in other areas who cant walk to a dual language program.
I agree with wickywack and feel that the district should consolidate the language immersion program into one building and designate that as an option school, while the other school becomes a “traditional” neighborhood school. I personally don’t see how B.F. Day and Greenlake will accomodate the overflow.
Julie, I realize those services are available at other schools, but I guess I’m just wishing there was a neighborhood school model that could accomodate general education, plus APP or Spectrum kids, plus special ed that would keep those kids in their neighborhood. (This is true for Hamilton, though, admittedly, the population is three times the size of our elementary schools. But let’s face it –Hamilton, isn’t a “neighborhood” school in a sense because kids come from Laurelhurst…) This whole model is broken, honestly.
I guess, from a budget perspective, my wish is just a pipe dream.
Spectrum used to be similarly contained in select schools and it also caused lots of trouble with parents going to great lengths to get their kids into those schools and that program. Contained Spectum is being disbanded in favor of advanced learning opportunities in all schools and the situation is much better, as all the stress of wait lists and qualification and sibling splits is being removed. I think whittier is the last self contained Spectrum school at this point.
It seems that something like that should be tried for language immersion as well. If it’s popular, work to spread the program so that jsis isn’t so special. Busing kids around is almost invariably a mistake, no matter the intentions. Like wickywack said, having neighborhood schools is more valuable than specialized programs.
@Margaret – Yes, it is true that you inevitably end up splitting your time between middle and elementary schools as your children age. I would posit that the level of involvement is different between the middle and elementary level kids – but having not been there yet, I cannot be sure. Certainly some of the before and after school arrangements would be different for older children.
For some of us, elementary school is the only chance our children have to actually experience being in the same school. For some families with 3 children, the school boundary changes mean having children in 3 different schools – one in middle and two in different elementary schools. Perhaps I am an idealist, but I think that the schools should keep families together as much as possible and whenever possible.
I agree that it is really wonderful having neighborhood schools in Wallingford. It’s great that I never drive my child to any of her friend’s houses because they all live within 5 to 10 blocks. It would be a shame to lose that. With the old system of Seattle kids being bussed all over, my friends were always driving their kids around.Hopefully if they go ahead with the option school plan, they will leave plenty of space for neighborhood kids at JSIS and McDonald. Even without good schools, Wallingford is a very nice place to live and will continue to be a draw for families so the school district should plan for the future with that in mind.
@Julie who said “The district does allocate some Special Ed and ELL services to JSIS but given our low free and reduced lunch population it is not that significant compared to other schools. ”
How did you come to the conclusion that the poor kids are the ones that need Special Ed? I see the potential for an ELL correlation with RFL because of recent immigrants, but special ed may be needed for your child regardless of your income bracket.
It’s actually the other way around. JSIS gets few special ed kids (and hence very few dollars for this) *because* of the immersion program. When your child is already behind in acquiring their first language, very few parents would complicate the matter by putting them in immersion. They self-select out of JSIS to the SM1 and SM3 programs at BF Day.
@iliveheretoo: Yeah, that was a holdover from a previous draft, in which I sarcastically compared to going to BF Day v JSIS as a horror. I removed the sarcasm, and what was left sounded a bit weird.
I was a JSIS parent whose child’s needs were not met by the immersion model. Because of the immersion, and I think also because of the bias of the PTA and many teachers, JSIS focuses on language and arts and under-emphasizes math and science. In the immersion language model all resources seem to go to teaching the children reading and writing in both languages. Few resources are directed to challenging students in math and science (while we were there they axed the computer lab guy and the math specialist).
At JSIS, no resources were available for students who need advanced academics. I was told that if I wanted my child’s needs to be met academically, we should “hope he gets into APP.” Luckily he did, and while it was a difficult decision to change schools, it was the right one for him. If he had not tested into APP, we would have had to hope we could get a waiver to attend a different school (because JSIS was our neighborhood reference school), move, or take a loan out on the house to afford private school. Not great options.
I think making the language school into an option school makes a lot of sense. There are students for whom the model doesn’t work, at least not as it is done. And while I really hated that we had to choose between appropraite academics and language (why can’t we have both?), I can see that it might be beyond the capabilities of even the most experienced teachers to differentiate for students of different needs and abilities and teach a foreign language.
As Eric notes, the district is virtually eliminating the Spectrum program. Research had demosntrated time and time again that stand alone classrooms for gifted students benefit BOTH the gifted kids and the typical kids. I think mainstreaming is a terrible idea – how can one teacher possibly teach 30+ students whose abilities range from special ed to APP? Seems to me that no one gets their needs met in that model. But they don’t have to bus kids if they are all going to their neighborhood school, which saves money, and that is probably the bottom line. And some parents favor the children attending the same school over the children being in an environment which meets their social and academic needs. Having experienced both models, I truly believe the stand alone models do a better job of supporting the needs of the student population. Similarly, I think a stand alone immerision program will be more successful if the students and parents who are part of it are committed to bilingual education and not there by default.
@Kimberly – I understand that you felt disappointed with math and science instruction at JSIS. But, not sure exactly how making JSIS an option school would really have changed your situation. Unless I am misunderstanding the assignment plan, you should not have had to “hope for a waiver to get into a different school” as the current assignment plan guarantees enrollment at BF Day for anyone who does not want the immersion program. With JSIS as an option school, your assignment would be BF Day – essentially, the same situation.
My impression (based on conversations with friends who are parents at other Seattle public schools) is that the frustration with math and science instruction should be focused on the SPS as a whole – while I do think that there is some variation across schools, the truth is that it seems to be fairly poor overall.
a problem with math and science instruction in a dual language model is that the instruction is in one language.. in JSIS in the Spanish program it is in Spanish. In a true dual language program with 50/50 population the kids are partnered by language and the partners help translate. Here, at JSIS, there arent many language partners.
Something lese to think about in this discussion when one talks about space and boundaries.. the Wilson-Pacific building at 90th and off Aurora while used, is for a program which has low attendance and thus, the building is way below capacity. Also the Marshall building- was it sold? Can it be used?
Would it be fair (or logical) to guess that if John Stanford is not converted to an option school than the boundaries would have to be shrunk again? After reading all the documents on the JSIS website it is made clear that there are no more available classrooms and the current boundaries are netting 3 incoming classes/year. If the boundaries are shrunk how much of a neighborhood school do we have left?
It is sad to think that all the kids walking by our house each morning to walk to school would be replaced by people driving from all over the city. And to think McDonald will be the same thing. Not only will people be driving from all over to get to JSIS we will be driving our kids to another school because we can’t go to one that is 3 blocks away and one that is 5 blocks away. It certainly hurts community building when you don’t have the social interaction of other parents that have kids the same age two blocks from you.
Totally agree with walkability being the most important thing here. We’re actually closer to B.F. Day but I don’t like the idea of crossing Stone which is more busy and commercial than Wallingford.
Within 6 months of purchasing our house the boundary was changed to what it now is. I cannot emphasize this enough to home buyers: Do not buy a house in order to get into a public school. Some parent at one of the meetings I attended said it well. When purchasing a home in Seattle you are making a long term decision. Minimum 5 years. Seattle Public Schools make short term decisions. 1 year in the future only. After the boundary changed in 2011, I thought this isn’t the end. It will change again. And now this.
@Yoyo: The reason for grouping the international schools geographically is to generate enough kids to sustain the language program at Hamilton. With Spanish and Japanese language speakers coming from both McDonald and JSIS, it might provide enough kids for a dedicated class for each language at Hamilton. As it stands now, this year Hamilton is eliminating the class dedicated for immersion kids because they can’t justify a class with only 17 or 18 kids in it. Instead, immersion kids will be together with other kids who may have taken 1 or 2 years of foreign language. Its hard for me to imagine how that can work out well…
Kimberly- The system for handling spectrum (i.e. “gifted”) students in all schools is “walk to read” and “walk to math”. For the uninitiated, it means that all the kids are mixed up for their homeroom, but that when it’s time for reading or math instruction the kids switch classrooms to receive appropriate math or reading level instruction.
I can’t overstate how great that model is. You get to keep neighborhood schools, kids get the level of instruction they need, and teachers at a grade level work as a team. Unlike Spectrum, where everyone was fighting to get into the program all the time and some kids would get in that really shouldn’t be in and other kids who needed it would be wait listed, teachers can just resort the kids at the end of each school year. It’s really the best of all worlds.
Anyhow, I know it’s a bit off topic, but I would hope that some similar transition can happen for language immersion. The current model is clearly failing in a way that’s similar to how Spectrum failed. So long as parents are fighting to get into JSIS it’s going to be a mess.
@Jane: My understanding of what’s happening at HIMS is that they are going from 3 immersion classes in each language (for 6th, 7th, and 8th grade) down to two, with the kids grouped by the level of fluency they have achieved. While some of the kids who only started studying the language at HIMS might in principle get in to those immersion classes, it’s not about lumping everyone together.
It would be very helpful if more data were provided on demographics and budget:
1. Demographics – How many children from within the boundaries of JSIS and McDonald do they expect to be bumped to other schools in order to give preference to native speakers and siblings who live outside of the boundaries? Where do they expect these children to be placed? How many at Green Lake? How many at BF Day?
Without data, it is hard to make predictions, but I would assume that there will be an especially large number of JSIS neighborhood families whose kids will be bumped once the sibling and native speaker policies are introduced. My estimate, not based on data, would be between 100-150 kids (once the entire school is option-based) who will be sent assignments for BF Day.
2. Budget – What will be the cost of moving the two schools to option schools? I assume this will primarily be a cost for busing? Will there be other costs?
What is the oversight for the Seatlle School Board and the Superintendent of Public Schools? To whom or what (department or office) do they report? This is a relatively small district and the points mentioned here have been topics for decades.
@ nancy: http://www.governor.wa.gov/oeo/system/districts.asp
It is not the mayor. He has tried to work with the school- but this is not under his oversight.
It seems like the problem (option schools or not) is that the school capacity has not kept up with the anticipated enrollment in this area. i was disappointed when touring McDonald that even after renovating the school there was not expected to be enough space in it for the projected enrollment. why did they not enlarge the building? seattle schools also seem perpetually underfunded. obviously the demand for bilingual instruction is high in this city–maybe what we need is an additional tax or levy to enable more bilingual school options through the city. i agree that having a walkable school in the neighborhood is the best option, although i also would really like to be able to send my kids to a bilingual school and that is why we moved to the area.
Youngest kid is at JSIS. Oldest also attended JSIS and is now at Hamilton. Have to disagree with the notion that math and science instruction at JSIS is substandard. Most of my oldest child’s JSIS classmates are in honors math or higher. The JSIS students were generally better prepared to handle middle school level math than their peers from other schools.
Math and science isn’t “substandard” at JSIS, any more than at any other Seattle public school. As Laura indicated, there are big problems with the SPS math curriculum in general. One of the problems is that the curriculum is too wordy. It is difficult for those for those with lexical difficulties who might otherwise be able to function well in math, and difficult for those not learning in their native language–such as ELL students and immersion students.
On a more general note, it would be interesting to know how many JSIS parents would have applied for a language-immersion school if it were a bus ride away. In other words, how many people wanted their kids at JSIS just because it has a good reputation, and how many very specifically because of the language program? (and how many sent their kids there because its the neighborhood school and didn’t even know anything about it?). This is more a wondering question than an invitation for individual answers–a poll of blog commenters is not a scientific sampling. [says the blog commenter]
No one said Math or Science is substandard. it is however taught in the nonEnglish instruction block.
Per Fruitbat’s query. At last week’s SPS meeting, one of the longer serving directors noted that before they made JSIS an international school it was on the block for closure due to low demand for the Latona school. I think that is telling about the demand for the international and immersion programs (not to ignore overall capacity growth across the school system, though).
It’s hard to fault SPS for this. People intentionally moved within the JSIS boundaries to make that their reference school, so the boundaries necessarily contracted to the capacity of the school.
To me, it makes sense to give up or move the immersion program and stay a neighborhood school as BFDay doesn’t have the room to take the entire overflow. Immersion is not a tenable program for SPS. There’s no evidence that immersion past the age of 6 will help you attain native fluency, and no evidence that it helps across disciplines, so SPS can’t justify rolling it out district-wide. And if the program is statistically overweight with the children of affluent, educated parents, who can afford to live in Wallingford, they’ll never be able to prove it works well enough to roll it out. -It’s a false positive.
Immersion is simply a cool learning opportunity. One that isn’t right for all but that either needs to be made available equally to everyone in SPS, contained to Option schools, or eliminated.
My children would not be affected by JSIS change to option school but I am against breaking up the neighborhood. I lived here for over 15 years before I had kids. I expected my children to attend their neighborhood school REGARDLESS of the language immersion program. This is my community. I love Wallingford and that’s why I live here. We live 2 blocks from the school and my children should have priority over families outside the boundary. Walkability is huge. Additionally, I volunteered at the school on average 3-5 hours per week this year because I could walk. I know the MAJORITY of the other parent volunteers in out grade also walked.
@Chris: The language immersion thing is great, but it’s not actually my favorite thing about the JSIS curriculum. Even better than the language immersion is the international focus throughout the curriculum — in PE, in art, in music, in *everything*.
Back when the school was small enough to have the “International Dinner” event, and back when we had a BOC, there was this lovely ceremony as part of the International Dinner where all the kids who were born in another country had the opportunity to present the flag of their native country, and to say in English and their native language where they were from. The feeling in the room as ALL the kids seemed to feel included in that and to be thinking “what’s special about our community is that we are an international school” was amazing.
I agree that is very important Emily, and it seems to me the International aspect could be, and deserves to be, decoupled from language immersion and deployed district -wide to foster a sense of belonging. You obviously don’t need to learn your mathematics in Spanish to develop the curiousity, tolerance, respect and inclusive perspective that come from understanding at an early age you are part of a larger world.
Cultural, ethnic & socio-economic diversity was actually a big reason we chose BF Day, (back when you had a choice) and it’s been very beneficial for our son, but I can see where a formal International focus would have taken it to another level.
The district deliberately picked McDonald as the second immersion school in the Hamilton zone as the goal is to have two elementary schools feeding into a middle school to increase the number of middle school kids able to participate in immersion. Beacon Hill in the south is currently immersion. There are plans to have Dearborn Elem become immersion and both Beacon Hill and Dearborn feed into the Mercer Middle school. Concord Elem in W. Seattle which is also immersion will feed into Denny International Middle School. An additional yet to be determined elementary school will also feed into Denny.
While I understand the goal of walkability and neighborhood schools, I am also one of those who was in the original JSIS zone (east of Wallingford Ave) that was pushed out and then given the one year opportunity to have my child attend McDonald. We were told this was to allow siblings of current JSIS students living all the way to Stoneway to attend the school in which their older sibling attended. Some of us are now hoping the district will extend that same courtesy to us. And an option school is the best way to guarantee siblings to be able to attend. Within a few years (once the siblings have come through), you will then find that the option schools are more likely to be filled with neighborhood kids due to the fact that geozone is the second criteria after siblings. So in essence, after waiting a few years, walkability will be the norm.
Option school preferences:
1. Siblings of enrolled students
2. Geozone students (typically several blocks around school)
3. Lottery (city-wide)
How is it that the district “picked” McDonald for the 2nd immersion school? I was under the impression that upon realizing they were zoned out of JSIS, the McDonald PTSA lobbied SPS incessantly and raises the $100k+ necessary for the immersion program each year from the parents.
It would seem if the district had a master plan for Hamilton they would fund it to ensure it’s fruition….
Also immersion is no longer needed once you are in middle school. From a language acquisition standpoint, there’s no benefit to an 11 yr old who’s already been taking it for 5 yrs over just having say, an advanced composition class. Or is that what you mean? Having enough kids to make a 6th yr Japanese class a viable option? Because in middle school you walk to classes, so it seems you’d need way more than 120 incoming 6th graders to justify 6 teachers dedicated to teaching their subject matter in Japanese or Spanish. How would they phase that in so the resources aren’t underutilized for 2 yrs while they get enough kids? And wouldn’t that prevent those kids from having individual electives that deviate from other Japanese immersion 6th graders?
Both JSIS and beacon Hill Intl now have vacancies for principals.. doors open for change, policy, parental input.. etc….
Chris, immersion benefits any language learner. Any other method is just language appreciation. How do you think people in the Netherlands, say, end up so fluent? It’s like saying there is no benefit after elementary schools for kids to continue playing their musical instruments.
@Chris: But HIMS doesn’t have immersion (at least not now). They just have a second track in the language classes that is (supposedly) tailored for the kids who have been through the immersion program. I don’t think there’s any plans to do actual immersion (= math etc taught in the target language) at the MS level.
Dist, I’ve lived in the Netherlands and Iceland. I think you are comparing apples to oranges. English is used as a common default language frequently. In fact ads on the streets in Holland are often in English. Only very old people cannot speak English in Iceland and Scandinavia. Dutch is easy to learn if you already know German. I never learned much Icelandic or even tried and got by fine there. Icelandic is an archaic language related to Norse but even Norwegians have trouble with it. My point is that being fluent in a foreign language won’t help all that much because abroad so many people speak English. You will get more bang for your buck if your child learns a musical instrument. You may think your child speaks a language fluently but if she spoke to a native speaker of the language he would probably say no you don’t. Hate to rain on your parade but that is my life experience from living abroad for several years.
My parade remains dry and sunny, thank you! I’m not arguing that immersion is the best thing in the world, but that it the most effective way to teach a language. Japan would be a good counter example. Plenty of English exposure (ads on the street), but because very few schools teach English with an immersion model, very few Japanese people speak English confidently until they go abroad and are immersed. In that region you have Sinagpore as a counter-expample. They use immersion, people speak English.
If you want to argue that learning language is not a worthwhile use of an English speaker’s time, that’s fine, but it’s not the conversation I am having. I also actually know the kids at JSIS. Some are nearly fluent, others not so much. But they all know so, so much more than high school kids after Spanish or Japanese I, II and III. Immersion beats the hell out of traditional methods where you talk about the target language in the native language.
Sunny days to you, Evon!
My daughter started at JSIS in the first Japanese kindergarten class, continued through 5th grade, went on to 6th and 7th grade “immersion” classes at Hamilton and finished with two years of Japanese at Roosevelt.
On the subject of “dual immersion”: her class may have had 25% (max.) native speaker/one parent native speaker. Never came close to 50%, and I wonder if the district has ever determined that “dual immersion” is a realistic approach for Japanese. I believe that most of the Japanese families in Seattle have been here long enough that the children (and their parents) speak English. I think the problem for native speakers of Spanish is that the kids, for the most part, would have to be bussed, rather than attending a school close to home. There were a lot of efforts made while my daughter was at JSIS to involve the Spanish speaking families – buses provided to events at the school, special Spanish language PTSA meetings, etc. I had the impression that they had limited success, which I can understand – it can be hard enough to fit in those things when they are just down the street, let alone on the other end of town. If the district wants to do “dual immersion” they should locate the schools where their target populations live.
People seem to have different definitions of “immersion” – immersion means surrounded by, and the key thing about the program at JSIS is not that math is taught in a language other than English, the key thing is that during the Japanese or Spanish part of the day, the teacher speaks only that language, and the students are encourage to respond in kind. When my daughter started at HIMS they had two periods in Japanese – a Japanese class and art. Unfortunately, the woman teaching “immersion” Japanese at that time was a disaster. There were a lot of parent complaints, but last I heard, things hadn’t improved. The teacher didn’t maintain the discipline of teaching in Japanese, and wasn’t able to insist that the kids speak Japanese, and generally couldn’t manage the class. My daughter told me she had lost ground in speaking skills and vocabulary by the end of 7th grade. Lots of parent complaints, her class and later classes, but the school was never committed enough to the program to get a better teacher.
In sum: JSIS and HIMS were our neighborhood schools, and I wouldn’t give that up for the language program, if I had to pick.
The early language instruction gets them started on a good accent and conversational skills, but they won’t be reading much Japanese unless they stick with it into high school. Based on feedback from my daughter, I would disagree with Dist about the level of language skill – the vocabulary they are exposed to is limited, and they barely touch on Kanji in the Japanese classes. The immersion program you see at the elementary school level does not exist at the middle school or high school level, and the middle school classes are the real weak point.
If you want to see examples of what a coherent K-12 immersion program can look like, check into the Portland, Oregon public school website. Folks from their program came up to talk to us at JSIS, and I felt like the school district there is much more committed to their immersion programs. There is a parent group that supports the Japanese program (Oya No Kai, oyanokai.org) and possibly similar groups for their other immersion languages.
@Emily: Thanks, that’s what I thought but was confused by McDonaldparent’s use of the term “immersion” in conjunction with middle school.
@Dist: The issue isn’t whether immersion benefits a 2nd or dual language learner, it’s (a) for how long does it help and (b) What tradeoffs are you making with your child’s education to attain mastery in the 2nd lang?
Wrt the former, there have been studies that show students who receive at least 5 to 6 years of dual language instruction achieve parity in L2 by grade 5 of 6 and maintain that level of performance.
So in other words, once you learn to swim from being immersed, you don’t need to be wet all day. (But definitely agree you do need to hit the pool regularly to maintain that skill.)
Wrt to the latter, What happens if a child is struggling acquiring the second language and has to take their other curriculum in that lang? If they struggle with English, they get an IEP and special ed help, this support is not in place for immersion. Then there is the choice of electives. In grade school, parents make that choice for the kids by choosing immersion. (Because you repeat some of the content both in L1 and L2, you are getting less unique content in exchange for L2). In middle school, the kids begin to make their own choices.
Lastly, wrt to your earlier Netherlands example, they don’t do English dual immersion in Dutch schools, so it’s a nonsequitur. Your Japanese reference is also a little off wrt causation. As I understand it, in Japan the emphasis is on written communication with much less emphasis placed on speaking. Immersion would probably fix this as any sink or swim environment would, but so too could a regular ESL class which weighted speaking proficiency on par with literacy.
Chris, I really appreciate you taking time to clarify your comments. I see where you are coming from much more clearly.
My understanding of the term “dual immersion” as I have heard described by SPS admin is that part of the day is in the L2 and part of the day is in L1. Is this not the case in the Netherlands? I thought that indeed, some classes were conducted in Dutch, others in English from the early grades through high school and university. Is this not the case?
The distinction between Japan and Singapore that I am trying to draw is that in Japan, the English teacher speaks Japanese, instructs in Japanese. I would argue that in any country where students achieve strong proficiency in the language, the instructors will teach *in* the target language (and students should be required to stay in the target language) whether the content of the class is the language itself or some other subject. If you know of a place where they teach the L2 successfully in the L1, I would love to know about it!
By the way, I agree with you that there are trade-offs with offering immersion, and they may not be worth it. I’m not sure I will encourage my kids to take that HIMS immersion Spanish class if there are other electives that they are interested in. Are you proposing that the immersion program essentially be an elementary school offering that ends after 5th grade? Or do you think they should do away with immersion altogether? (I ask out of curiosity, not in any combative sort of way. I love immersion, but I’m not convinced it is work-able as the district is doing it now.)
@evon: There are many benefits to studying a foreign language aside from practical considerations of being able to travel easily in regions where it is spoken. For one thing, I believe deep exposure to other languages helps us have a better sense of how others see the world. I didn’t have any foreign language instruction until middle school, aside from a brief exposure to Spanish in 6th grade (then part of elementary). I remember thinking, “If they mean ‘goodbye’, why don’t they just say ‘goodbye’, what’s with this code?”
Learning to speak other languages has helped me understand the central arbitrariness (and creativity) of each individual language, including my own.
I don’t profess to know anything about language education, but 2¢ from the peanut gallery:
– in my limited travels, I didn’t have to get very far off the beaten path before English was no use. I’m talking about urban areas in the western hemisphere and Europe.
– if you really need to communicate, beyond “wo is der Badenzimmer”, you need intensive experience with the language. Everyone knows it’s easier for kids, but it’s still a big investment.
– there are many languages in the world.
Languages can be fun, for some people anyway, and are well worth studying, but does it make sense to spend school time working for fluency in some arbitrarily chosen foreign language while living here? Do we stack too much ambition on our kids? For immersion, go there.
@McDonaldparent, there may not be any preference given to children who live near the school. At the recent PTSA meeting at John Stanford Sherry Carr (Seattle school board) said that if John Stanford became an option school her preference would be for no geozone.
Does anyone have information with regard to the current enrollment of Bf Day and its maximum capacity?
Sherry Carr is holding her regular “District II Community Meeting” on Saturday morning if anyone is interested. I’m sure she’ll have a lot of clarity on the subject:
Details Of: District II Community Meeting (Carr)
Event belongs to:
School Board
Date: 6/8/2013 (8:30 AM – 10:00 AM)
Calendar: Seattle Public Schools (School Board)
Description:Informal, drop-in opportunity to meet with School Board Director Sherry Carr.
Location: Bethany Community Church, 8023 Green Lake Dr – Christian Education Building, CE Brick Room (corner of N 81st and Stone Ave N). The entrance can be accessed from N 81st Street, next to the playground.
Also, I’m not seeing the total enrollment numbers for each school, but here’s a fun fact:
According to the most current SPS Waiting List Summary for 2013-14 Kindergarten classes, B.F. Day has 4; John Stanford has 36; McDonald has 44. This is just for incoming K.
@BF Day in #52 & Margaret in #54:
B. F. Day’s enrollment in October, 2012, was 336. The last I saw, the District projected their Oct. ’13 enrollment at 338.
Based on questions I asked Katie Pearl, the principal at B. F. Day, at the school tours held earlier in the year, the max capacity for that school is about 550. Also according to her from those tours, enrollment had been over 700 in the early 1970’s.
There is an essay at HistoryLink that talks about that school, and claims that in the 1920’s, B. F. Day was the largest school in Seattle, with an enrollment of over 900.
I think that the school is vastly underutilized, and that causes significant problems when it comes to developing and maintaining curricula. In my opinion, it is probably an okay school with a chance to become an excellent school if they ever go back to filling it.
This would also explain the lack of a waiting list.
Re B F Day… there are some very small classes wiht kids whose behavior is not .. whatever word I write will make someone mad.. ideal, adjusted, managed etc.. to be in classes with 24 or 28 other students, so they have their classes and ‘mainstream’ into others fo rparts of the day.
Their need for a classroom takes however many classes needed. Some of the ‘mainstreaming’ put children in the larger classes in the situation of hearing a lot of yelling, pounding on desks.. i. e. major class disruptions. Parents may not wish to have kids on a waiting list when this model provides some.. NO number here.. situations which may bother some children and their learning.
@ oh noooo, “Mainstreaming” is a misnomer. You are referring to putting a special ed kid into the “least restrictive environment”. ANY school in the district with a special ed program will have the students in the least restrictive environment as that is federal law, and the right thing to do to maximize their learning. So Yes, BFDay follows federal disability laws, as do all other public schools in the nation.
I assume you are referring to SM3 kids with behavioral issues (by definition of SM3) when you refer to pounding and major disruptions. These kids are in a self-contained classroom most of the day for this very reason. If they are included in mainstream activities, it’s because it’s deemed something that wouldn’t be hampered much by potential disruptions.
BFDay has SM1 and SM3 special ed. The SM1 kids don’t typically have behavioral issues (by definition of SM1) and are integrated right into the regular classrooms with awesome teachers who specialize in Differentiated Learning and support the mainstream, the advanced, and the kids that need a little more help all in the same classroom. My daughter’s classroom usually has 3-4 adults in there most of the time to help make sure everyone gets targeted instruction.
“don’t typically” is general.. how often?
3 or 4 adults in a classtroom may help provide differentiated instruction.. however if/when a child decides to do the pounding etc… on eof the adults likely tries to talk the child down while other children’s learning is interrupted. No one swoops a loud disruptive child out of a room in 2 seconds.
I had some experience with this model at BF Day. In a classroom with a serious problem. I don’t know if the teacher is back this year.
I am glad you feel your child benefits from her situation.
I know that some children and parents may have different opinions and experiences.
@CEJ the lack of a waiting list may also be explained by recently moving to 3 Kindergarten classes this year, so they absorbed 20+ right there.
Historically they were also losing 20-30% of the kids along the way from K to 5. Those that left were either advanced learners or from the 42% RFL kids. (Being eligible for Reduced/Free Lunch means you are living in poverty and poverty means unstable home life and address changes.).
The recent re-zoning is changing the demographics of the student population with the southend draw going away. So the RFL % will be phasing down to around JSIS’s over the next 5 yrs I would guess. The advanced kids are sticking around now too since BF Day now has a Spectrum program.
A longwinded way to say I suspect this will correct itself. 🙂
@Oh nooo who said: “I know that some children and parents may have different opinions and experiences.”
Then please stop trying to scare people and let BF Day parents talk for themselves. If you troll through the comments on any article on Wallyhood, I’ve never heard a parent who actually had one of their children attend BF Day complain about the school.
And I’m pretty sure you know that, as you’ve participated in most every other post on BFDay, bringing up this same single incident you experienced as a substitute teacher over and over and you grind your axe on BF Day whenever you can.
(You can change your Wallyhood handle as many times as you like, but it’s pretty clearly the same incident and same person writing.)
@Dist, Sorry for the delayed response to your question on Dutch English curriculum. I’m no authority, but the Wikipedia article says there are only 100 or so schools teaching English via bilingual immersion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_in_the_Netherlands
out of almost 7900 primary schools and 645 secondary schools.
Okay, so let’s talk about the SM3 program at B.F. Day.
EBD stands for “emotional/behavior disability,” which usually covers ADHD, FAS, past abuse or trauma ODD, or some combination. There are never more than ten (TEN!) students in the entire school in this program, and they are served by one case manager and two IAs. Most are in their general ed classroom for at least some of the day. There are a few who are there nearly all day and do just fine with extra support.
There are also ten or fewer students on the autism spectrum in the SM3 program. They also have one case manager and two IAs, and many of these children do very well in the general ed classroom.
There are two self-contained classrooms where these students can go for extra support, academic pull-outs, breaks, indoor recess, social skills classes, etc.
The SM3 program has been through a lot of changes in the past few years, and there are more changes to come. Katie Pearl is a former EBD teacher herself and is a fierce advocate for these students (and all students). As such, she has very high expectations of them and of her staff. Under her leadership, I expect we will see big improvements in how these students are served and, as a result, how well they interact with their community. But special ed inclusion isn’t going anywhere — at B.F. Day or anywhere else.
It’s seems to me that whenever anyone is critical of BF Day there are a number of people who come on here a write 10 posts putting down the commenter. The fact of the matter that if you look at schooldigger.com or greatschools.com the ratings for BF Day are appalling and are actually worse this year than last year. So the argument of things getting better there doesn’t appear to be true.
If BF Day is to be the only neighborhood school serving Wallingford then i for one would love to know what is wrong with BF Day.
@Chris in 59 & 60:
I agree, I think this problem will correct itself, but all things being equal, it may take longer than you or I like. What I was dancing around in my previous comment is the underenrollment across the whole school. History is history, and I know why the school is underenrolled, but it seems that there are a lot of parents in this area who take a look at B. F. Day, and make up their mind that their special snowflake can’t possibly get an education there. I think there’s quite a lot of “B. F. Day-flight” going on, even after the change in school assignments that are naturally going to reduce the F/RL seats. I think that trend will be inertial and self-perpetuating for awhile, and this makes me sad.
Also, I was going to bring up the third Kindergarten class, but before I did, I checked the staff pages on the McDonald and JSIS websites to discover that they each have six Kindergarten teachers. Perhaps some of those are not FTEs, but assuming they are, this makes the Kindergarten student-teacher ratio less than B. F. Day’s already freakishly good 19:1, as neither of those two schools had anything approaching 120 Kindergarteners in October of 2012. Assuming that’s the case, that would obviously be another reason those schools have bigger waitlists, even if you removed the whole language immersion thing from the equation. But I don’t really know, maybe someone who does know more about either or both of those schools can clue us in.
It all brings you to a chicken-and-egg scenario where Katie Pearl has to fight for more budget money to create more attractive curricula so that the parents won’t option out of their assigned school, but she can’t do that until she can convince parents that they need to stay, which she can’t do until she addresses those parents concerns regarding the curricula. The biggest asset to B. F. Day is that if one were to bother to research the internet, one would not find a single derogatory review about the school by anyone that ever put kids into it, which you can’t say about JSIS (at least not that I could find). That frequently seems to not be enough. Another point, B. F. Day’s school tour blew away Salmon Bay’s, in my opinion, but even with those piss-poor tours, Salmon Bay has the largest Kindergarten waitlist in the city.
By its nature, B. F. Day has to be one of the most expensive buildings to operate in SPS – from a physical plant standpoint. And from that standpoint alone, it is probably not cost-effective to have a school at 120% capacity a mile from a school at 60% capacity. In colder months, you have to heat that building to the same point that you would have to heat it if it was full, except the problem is that human beings generate heat, so for every space they aren’t filling in that building, they have to provide an additional 100-150 BTUs of heat. Just for that reason alone I can see that the district may well make JSIS option only with either a small or no geozone and fill B. F. Day.
(Most of those numbers are guesstimates, and are provided for illustrative purposes only. Don’t quote me on them. And perhaps I’m wrong and the cost in water usage for a full building is less than the heat cost savings for a full building, but it seems kind of silly to fully heat a building that’s less than two-thirds full. I am neither an engineer nor do I play one on TV.)
John — The parental reviews on greatschools.com are almost all 5 stars, which I believe does not qualify as “appalling”. The low rating on schooldigger.com is based solely on standardized test data. BF Day has 41% of kids eligible for free and reduced lunch, whereas John Stanford has 12%. It is not surprising that a school with a dramatically higher poverty rate has more kids struggling to perform on standardized tests. So, what is “wrong with BF Day” is that it is serving a population of kids that is very different from that of neighboring elementaries (West Woodland: 9% FRL; Greenlake: 15% FRL; McDonald: 23% FRL). It is completely fair to ask whether BF Day is under- or over-performing compared to schools serving comparable populations, but the poor ranking on schooldigger.com is very much an apples to oranges comparison.
I also think that the new principal is really raising the bar on student performance for kids who are struggling — she’s super involved and dedicated. I suspect her work in this regard is largely invisible to families with high performing kids, but those of us with kids who have challenges are very aware of her hands on “no child left behind” approach.
CEJ — I agree that BF Day can handle more capacity, but given that it’s one of the few north end schools that are not currently overcrowded, the District is guaranteed to adjust boundaries until it’s full up. Unless every single one of those people wants to shell out for private school, the low capacity seems unlikely to last.
Sorry CEJ — rereading, I think we’re saying the same thing….sorry about that.
@John, I think you see 10 people come out of the woodwork to defend BFDay because they are actual ex-students or parents of students who are there every day and know what’s really going on. The people taking potshots don’t usually know WTF they’re talking about you see them all point to test scores that justify their predispositions about the “homeless school”, so they feel justified in not sending their kids there.
Now regarding “what’s wrong”. Let’s think this through:
Today 42% of BF Day students live in poverty. You can see that on the sites you reference. Let’s say you took 42% of the kids from JSIS and sent them to BF Day. Would they suddenly become crappy students just because they are in a different building and crossed Aurora? Would their parents stop spending time on them with their homework each evening and making sure they went to bed and to school well fed? Would they suddenly be less loving and stop placing an emphasis on education?
No. So what do you think happens to BFD’s Fall standardized test scores the second those JSIS kids are on the books?
The post-NSAP reality is BFD’s scores will come up each year even if Katie Pearl does nothing as 6 to 7% of RFL kids roll off the books and are replaced by 98103’ers with full bellies and college-educated parents. But Katie isn’t standing still and waiting this out. She’s developing programs now to improve the curriculum, and making great hires. Making JSIS an option school just steepens the curve.
So what’s wrong? Nothing in 98103. We’ll have 3 top performing schools with very little intervention required from SPS. Hopefully that allows them more resources to help all those RFL kids they sent home.
I agree with j in 66 & 67 and Chris in 68. Poverty is a humdinger when it comes to academic performance. When you don’t have a job and/or your kid is flat-out starving, you’ve got a bigger and much more immediate problem to worry about than their homework or grades. If you want B. F. Day’s scores to go up, fill the dang school up.
We live inside the JSIS boundaries and always have since WAY before kids. I was happy that we had a great school walkable from our house. But as it turned out, JSIS was not a good fit for my son. I hated that we would not attend our neighborhood school – that we do not walk to school with our neighborhood kids – that I have to drive my kids to Green Lake Elementary every day.
I have ALWAYS maintained that JSIS should have been an option school (Why is (was?) TOPS and not immersion schools?). This year we chose to send my daughter to Kindergarten at Green Lake with her now third grade brother, to have both kids in one school and other than driving rather than walking to school, it has been the best thing I have done for my kids. All of this CRAP about JSIS has been avoided and we ended up at a small, great school that has an awesome community of teachers and parents and I wouldn’t change a thing EXCEPT being able to walk there.
[I always wished I could SELL my kids’ spots to JSIS to help pay for their college education.]
FYI on JSIS kindergarten enrollment: They have 60 kindergarteners enrolled there for 2013-2014 over three classes. That means three, 20-person classes. The enrollment office recently admitted all the siblings from outside the current assignment, a number of about 13, I think. There are no plans to admit anyone else off the waiting list.
So as has been said here many times, my daughter who lives a ten minute walk from JSIS, where all her friends go or will be going, and who would THRIVE in the language immersion program according to her current pre-school teachers, will instead be bused to some other neighborhood’s school where she will know no one and, based on reports from people who have gone before us, she will be bored stiff. (Maybe APP & Spectrum will help.)
I just want to give a shout-out to the enrollment folks at the district for botching the JSIS enrollment zone not once — which I might have forgiven — but twice. And now we will be paying for their incompetence for nine years (her younger sister will likely be bused to B.F. Day when her time comes too). Your tax dollars at work.
I hope the good things being said about B.F. Day are correct. (Although not all the reviews I’ve heard are good.) But when the Republicans start in on the private school voucher thing, this time I might listen.
Huber
To be clear Huber, BF Day has always been a neighborhood school for Wallingford. (BF Day was there well before Highway 99) and at least half of Wallingford’s kids have been going there for a century. We are a 10 min walk from BF Day and live right in the heart of Wallingford. In fact JSIS and BFD are equidistant from my house.
So your daughter won’t be going to a different neighborhood’s school, she’ll be going to the original Wallingford school since 1892 and we welcome your bright daughters.
And fwiw you are more than welcome to take that money you would be willing to throw at private school and get actively involved with BFDay’s PTSA. WE could use it! 🙂
Huber, they often let in a new round of kids right before or after school starts. Hang in there! I would be very surprised if they kept the classes at 20.The principal is leaving, and they are going to be hiring a new one over the summer. Because of the leadership void the whole process may be later than normal. Try to meet the new principal once he or she is hired.
How far down on the waiting list are you? Sometimes kids start a couple of weeks into September. I’m sure that many families are just unwilling to switch once school has started. But if you just keep the option open, that inconvenience of switching after school starts will be followed by six years at the same school. (You do *not* have to reapply once admitted from out of area.)
Thanks, Dist. She’s number one on the waitlist because our property line is the boundary and proximity is the next tiebreaker after sibling. I just wish I shared your optimism. Because the school district drew the JSIS lines so big a few years back, and then repeated the error the next year, JSIS is overcrowded. I’m assuming the enrollment folks are willing to undersubscribe at the classroom level if it means keeping the overall numbers down. And with all the siblings in, they can hide behind geography as an excuse not to admit more.
You may well ask why we don’t just ask how the enrollment people make these decisions. We have. We’ve asked Sherry Carr. We’ve asked the enrollment staff. (The last person my wife spoke to on their staff was downright rude to my wife, essentially telling her there was no one she could talk to to answer her questions.) No one seems able — or perhaps willing — to tell us how this works. The election of a Pope appears to be more transparent. (I volunteered to assist with administration, etc. if short-staffing was part of the problem but never even heard back on that.) And you should have seen the looks in their eyes when I asked at a public school board meeting what actions were being taken to insure such poor performance would not be repeated, and more specifically, who was getting fired over this debacle. Accountability is not a concept with which the Seattle School District is acquainted.
My wife and I can’t afford to send our daughters to private school. (Maybe one, but definitely not two.) But given the choice between bankruptcy and not trusting our children’s education to this school district — even if they go to JSIS — is becoming more tempting.
to Huber, there is likely to be some movemnt on the lists, but it would be hard for me to wait if I were in your shoes.
All the close by public schools have really good (good to me includes: caring, safe, child-centered curriculum, adjusting corriculum as needed, project learning and more) kindergarten teachers, at least ones I know: Green Lake, Bagley, TOPS, JSIS. I do not know the BF Day K teachers. My observations there were in other grades and ikely are prevented going forward.
Huber — It’s hard to separate them emotionally, but frustration with how the district runs things winds up being distinct from people’s attitudes towards their local schools, which are usually quite positive. I understand your aggravation with your situation, but once your girls are in school, you’ll likely find yourself reasonably pleased with their education, while you continue to mutter about district management issues and wishing the school were a bit closer.
I would also add that we (the residents of Wallingford ) put the district in a tight, unpredictable spot. They went from a school that was almost shuttered, to a neighborhood densely packed with families all trying to get into JSIS by default as their reference school, going for the “sure thing” rather than taking their chances with the option lottery.
The only way to rectify that situation immediately would have been to cancel the immersion program,or move the option school it was in, and we would have wailed and rended our garments over that, so they left it alone.
So step one was NSAP, now step two is to put JSIS back the way it should be, an option school, and back fill into the neighboring schools which have availability.
If there wasn’t space at McDonald or BF Day, I’m sure they would have opted to move the immersion program to a new option school. But the bottom line is that JSIS as an International Immersion option program was never really intended to be a neighborhood school.
So what I’m trying to say is, Do n’t be so sure there wasn’t a plan, and that plan was to put us back in check. And even if it was happenstance, this was probably actually the best way to execute this to prevent local advocacy from gaining steam and intervening.
@Huber – The overcrowding issue is mainly an issue with classroom availability. Now that they have committed to 3 classrooms, I would be shocked if they didn’t at least get them up to a minimum number of ~24 because they also worry about attrition and keeping an adequate sized cohort long-term (only kids with language proficiency are able to enter after 1st grade).
The problem is that they need to wait for late entrees because they don’t want to accept kids out of boundaries and then be forced to expand to a 4th classroom that they don’t have. This year there has been an effort by parents to get people to enroll early rather than waiting to enroll till last minute so that the school could make a decision on a third classroom earlier. Hopefully, it helped and will work to your benefit.
Huber, stick it out. She *will* get in if she’s first on the waitlist. They can’t keep the classes at 20 with other schools overcrowded. I have watched this process for five years now and they always move people off the waitlist at the end of summer beginning of the year. Now that there is a third kindergarten, she will get in. You will probably get the call in late August, but it may be just after school starts. (Again, the principal void may slow things even a little more.) There is just no way that 15-18 new kids will move into the neighborhood over the summer and that is what it would take for her not to get in. You are in an enviable position for people much further down the waitlist who don’t even have a shot.
Oh, and now that it is an option school, your first kid getting in will lead to your second kid being assured a spot. Again, you are in a very good position even though it’s not feeling that way at the moment.
Kind of torn here. I love B.F. Day and want to speak up for it, but I also have a good friend on our (apparently four-person?) wait list who’s really hoping her kid gets in.
So, should I talk about my daughter’s incredibly awesome kindergarten year that’s coming to a close; about how she made friends from Ethiopia, Somalia, India and China; how her academic performance is through the roof thanks in part to an excellent teacher and small class size; how Ms. Pearl, who’s only in her first year as principal, has made big improvements to the school even since September?
Or should I do my friend a favor and try and scare you guys away? Scary, scary B.F. Day! Students with autism pound on DESKS there! Students who have just moved to this country and are still learning English don’t do well on STANDARDIZED TESTS! And neither do the students who are living in poverty! Which is totally contagious! And students are BORED there! Because, as we all know, B.F. Day is the only school in the city where kids think school is boring. The only one. Ever. Run away!
Okay, that was mean. Sorry. Go to B.F. Day, don’t go to B.F. Day. I don’t care. Just don’t pick on it because of who the students are. That’s even meaner.
Hello Wally-parents
I am the incoming PTSA pres at JSIS and I would like to offer a short note, & I will try to keep it as factual as I can.
On 6/8 I asked Sherry Carr to clarify her *opinion* that JSIS and McD should not have a geozone factor if they turned into option schools. Her intention at the general JSIS-PTSA May mtg was transparency by offering her *opinion* regarding geozones (NOT policy or SPS board position). Sherry is open to any thoughtful points and stated she is not the deciding authority on this; that’s primarily the Director of Enrollment, Tracy Libros. The point is that if we want geozones, we need to clearly inform the powers that be. At this time it is the intent of all JSIS parents involved to include clear strong language to emphasize that community support is substantiated upon a geozone criterion.
If SPS changes JSIS and McD into option schools, at this point the first two criteria on enrollment selection are as follows:
1. Native/heritage speakers are first selected for immersion option schools
2. Siblings are given second priority
After these first two criteria, the last criteria can be as follows:
3. Designate a fluctuating geozone to be given third priority, and that would likely be a small radius about the school in which a preliminary lottery is offered for a specific proportion of seats.
4. The main lottery would be open to those in the two local middle school zones
Lastly, with option school designation, the number of children enrolled (ie, # & size of classes) falls to the determination of the school admin, not solely the district level authorities. Obviously, Tracy Libros and the SPS board are not able to be as sensitive to the diversity between neighborhoods as well as the school admins/staff.
If you have any questions about the facts as we know them at this time, please feel free to contact me. I will be at the final JSIS coffee chat hour next friday morning as well as many parents working on this matter for JSIS. Also, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE read the FAQ that Wallyhood hyperlinked above. There is much misinformation floating about & no one wants to engage reasonable but misinformed angry reactions.
Another option is to just move the immersion program out of JSIS to make it a neighborhood school, no? I keep reading walkability trumps immersion, so why doesn’t the JSIS PTSA put that out there as an option?
Because otherwise, it seems we should just lose our collective sense of entitlement over a program that should have ALWAYS been 100% Option school, available by lottery equally to anyone in Seattle and stop looking for concessions.
As for the geozone lottery, maybe we could draw extra lottery winners and add a Hunger Games-style competition? Of course all the actually hungry RFL kids are over at BF Day, so i suspect it would be lackluster.
Seriously though, why would a geozone lottery be fair to the rest of SPS? That would mean Wallingford residents get a better shot at JSIS than the rest of the district. I would probably sue if I lived elsewhere as that can’t be legal for a public school system to favor one neighborhood by giving them better odds in a lottery for an option school.
Love the idea of a Hunger Games thing. Wish I’d thought of it.
If we could work in a Thunder Dome theme, we’d have a damned entertaining contest even if not fair or productive. Then again, when did fair or productive enter into this?
Huber
Chris, don’t believe the hype about JSIS. It is *not* worth the 100k premium on a house, and it is certainly not worth a law suit. Like all schools it has good teachers and not-so-good teachers. Like many schools, when a principal hits his or her stride, they move them out. Moving young Kelly Aramaki into central administration is an example. He is a solid principal and was helping a young school with a population that deserves someone highly capable, and rather than letting him get well established there, he’s gone, out of the schools probably for good, and who knows who will replace him. I would also argue that Karen Kodama would be much more effective and useful if she were in a school. This is the sort of thing that makes me thing a large district is inefficient. You can’t have excellent schools without excellent principals and you can’t have excellent principals if excellence is moved downtown.
Oh I agree it’s not worth the premium. When I spoke of suing, I was speaking more from an equal-access ACLU perspective. It saddens me that there are those that feel that because they can pay that $100k premium, they inherently deserve more out of the same public school system that serves kids in the same district.
I don’t know Karen, but I think Kelly was great. My guess is SPS are hoping to coach the others and franchise them. But at this point, I honestly don’t think that the JSIS job is particularly hard with only 12% RFL. It’s a woefully homogenous population of affluent children from an affluent neighborhood all imbued with a desire to learn from, and the ongoing support of, their parents. With peers being the #2 factor in the performance of a school (and parents being #1, not teachers or programs) it would be great to see these high performing kids spread around a little more, and I think the district is wise to do so, because it has almost everything to do with the home environment, and very little to do with the school itself.
Parents could certainly argue they have no obligation to help other people’s kids but in the context of public schools, they also have no right to getting more from their school than any other in the district.
Dist, I agree so deeply.
A point of clarification on the geozone process. A geozone is a tie-breaker in a list of established tie-breakers (see NSAP). Current option schools have the following order: 1) siblings, 2) geozone, 3) lottery. The move to lottery only occurs if seats remain after the 2nd tie-breaker. There isn’t a defined number of seats given to each category (no specific proportion). Proponents of the option model for international schools would like to see an additional category for heritage speakers, given first priority in the tie-breakers, but with a defined number of seats. The remaining tie-breakers would not have unique seat limits or proportions. So if there were 15 seats left after the sibling tie-breaker is applied, those seats would go to geozone students next. If seats still remained after the geozone tie-breaker, they would be open lottery. What I don’t know from published information is how the geozone seats are determined – distance vs lottery.
The size of the geozone will have the greatest impact on what percentage of seats are available to open lottery. And the geozone can be redefined by SPS as needed based on enrollment at the school in question and at surrounding schools. Ultimately, there is no address guarantee, even for those closest to the school. But as we’ve learned in years past, even the guarantees can change, so perhaps a geozone is just a more honest representation of what already exists, giving families the ability to better calculate decisions.
How is it possible for JSIS to have 3 incoming kindergarten classes? Aren’t they already maxed out of classroom space? Didn’t they have to use the computer lab and art (or music) space for extra classrooms this year?
It was my understanding that with only 2 classes moving to HIMS next year that JSIS would only be able to accommodate 2 incoming kindergarten cohorts for the upcoming year. Is three classes a certainty? Or just hoping?
Incoming,
Three classes is a certainty. Confirmed by many, including the JSIS PTSA in a recent email communication, according to some friends whose children go to JSIS.. (If you’re not on the JSIS PTSA, you’re not allowed on their PTSA listserv. You can look it up!)
Wish I could help you make sense of this process, Incoming. Sherry Carr told us not that long ago that she would permit more than two kindergarten classrooms at JSIS “over her dead body”. I will speak well of her at the funeral, I guess.
Is there any truth to the rumor that Vladimir Putin was just elected to the SPS School Board? Now at least the trains will run on time!
@Incoming: The music room at JSIS was left intact and used as a music room. Next fall it will become a general classroom to accommodate the 3rd K class. The stage will have doors installed and it will become the new music room.
I think it’s a little unfair to characterize inside the JSIS boundaries as very wealthy. The blocks on either side of I-5 are not a very elite area of Wallingford. What was probably student housing rentals are now filled with families. I mean Bagley to Wallingford Ave is definitely a more exclusive area. I know houses are selling for more (or faster) inside the boundary, but if it becomes an option school, I imagine the school will become less economically diverse than it is now.
The RFL numbers dont lie, Helen.
Also, I’m not following your logic. If it becomes a pure option school there should be a lot more economic diversity because they would randomly draw from the whole district, so it would in theory, represent the whole district.
Once upon a time, option schools were the cat’s meow. School choice reigned and the “game” du jour was to figure out how to best work the tie-breakers to get your kid in the school you wanted. A sibling tiebreaker compensated for some of the uncertainty of the process.
Let’s see – schools were neighborhood before they were option before they were neighborhood before they were option. The only constant seems to be that the School District cannot plan for more than five years out before reversing course and spending beau coup public bucks to reverse course.
My kids attended an option school and it was great because everyone was there by choice and parent participation was incredible. The benefit of the creativity and participation provided by option schools is offset by the uncertainty of getting in and less access by immediate neighbors. The cost of transportation can be mitigated by setting a boundary and the uncertainty of access balanced by providing a sibling tiebreaker.
It is equitable to allow all children access to improved schools throughout the city. It seems that the folks clamoring most for neighborhood schools are those who live close to a great school or can afford to move there. What about the less fortunate?
Regardless, what truly makes a school program great is family participation.
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