New proposed boundary maps have been released for the October 16th school board meeting. Sherry Carr, our school board rep, offers these thoughts to our community:
In alignment the District’s schedule, the updated boundaries have been posted on the ‘Enrollment Planning – Growth Boundaries’ webpage. This link will take you to the site and you will need to page down to the title ‘Recommendations to the Board’. I urge you to read the statement and then review the updated Growth Boundaries Attachment for October 16. Please note that the September 17th boundary proposal is now obsolete.
This update takes into consideration the feedback received (email, public meetings, etc.) and the changes range from minor to substantial. There are changes affecting the Fremont/Wallingford neighborhoods so families will want to review the materials carefully. It is conceivable that if a parent liked what they saw in the draft (9/17) proposal, a change may have been incorporated that they now don’t like and they will want to offer feedback.
As it relates to JSIS and McDonald converting to option school status (from attendance area school status), it is important to review the proposed ‘geo zone’ around these schools. Students in the geo zone have priority over the general lottery for enrollment purposes. Geo zones are not a guaranteed boundary and do change from year to year in order to manage enrollment. Rules regarding Option School enrollment may be found at this link starting on page 16. Changes to these New Student Assignment Plan rules are not being considered as part of this action.
This recommendation will be made to the Board on Wednesday, October 16th with action being taken by the Board on November 20th. Feedback continues to be welcomed (Email:GrowthBoundaries@
seattleschools.org).Sherry Carr
As a follow up based on the comments from recent posts to Wallyhood, I asked her this:
The “option school” designation is technically being put in place because both schools are language immersion schools, not because they have a shortage of seats. The designation works well for the school staff and students already at the schools, since siblings are grandfathered in and the school has a reliable and diverse population of students that allows it to maintain its programs. The designation does not work well for Wallingford parents with preschool age children that want a neighborhood school they can walk to and share with their neighbors. It seems likely that virtually every Wallingford parent will choose JSIS and McDonald schools as their “option”, so some parents will need to send their kids to a school far away that is not “special”.
Would it not be better for the long term to disperse language immersion across schools, so that everyone “wins” and also has a neighborhood school? For instance, could immersion be an enrichment time 1 hour a day like music or PE instead of being a half day and could it be extended to neighboring schools that may want it, like BF Day and Green Lake? Also, how should parents engage on this issue constructively, beyond just writing a sad email to “[email protected] and [email protected]”?
The proposed designation change from ‘attendance area’ to ‘option’ school is primarily because we have a shortage of seats. Far more families want access to these schools than the schools can serve which is the result of offering an enrollment guarantee based on attendance area boundaries.
As to the loss of a neighborhood school, I would suggest families look at the geo zone boundaries. JSIS and McDonald will largely still be walkable neighborhood schools – they just won’t be ‘attendance area’ schools with an enrollment guarantee.
I would add that both Green Lake and BF Day are very good traditional schools with quality instruction in the classroom, welcoming school communities and active PTA groups. Both have capacity. I urge pre-school parents to take the time to visit each of these schools and see for themselves.
As to community engagement, we have had several rounds of community input to date (link). Email and public testimony at the Board meeting are always welcome and can still influence the direction. Instructions for signing up for public testimony can be found at this link.
Thanks to Sherry for working with me on this post- regardless of disagreements, we owe her thanks for doing the job of school board rep with so much professionalism and dedication for free. Please give your feedback in the comments section. Thanks!
Regarding the “spread the immersion” comment – please realize that immersion is not right for all kids, nor is it desired by all parents. We were in the last Kindergarten class that had the option to select a school from the region. We intentionally left Stanford off because we knew our son would (metaphorically) drown there. We were lucky enough to land in an arts-integrated school. Yes, I have to make a long drive twice a day, and he isn’t walking to school. But he IS part of a community, he IS thriving, and he has had a fantastic time learning through art, music, dance and theater – his passions. He wouldn’t be nearly as successful in a language immersion school.
Dallas had a series of “magnet” schools in the 1980s (including an arts school, business school, law school, etc.) that allowed students to apply and attend – regardless of location. It worked out great for students who attended them, including me. Yes, some kids decided they’d rather go to a home school and dropped out. But for the majority, having those options -including kids who couldn’t afford to live in a “good” area (including me) – they were a God’s send.
In short, it’s not about what you think is best for your kids – it’s what’s best for your kids. If they will thrive in immersion, that’s great! But don’t force kids who aren’t language-inclined to attend a school that dooms them to failure.
I’ve tried to parse through all this on my own, and what i keep coming up with is that if you live in either the McD or JSIS geo zone and you’re not sibling-grandfathered in, you have no predictability about what your school is?
Essentially, if you’re not grandfathered in – you enter a lottery with everyone else in the Geo Zone? Of course, assuming there is not enough capacity to accommodate the whole Geo zone.
is that correct? Any insight on the capacity in K for these two schools and the projected # of incoming K’s would be interesting to see if they are de facto oversubscribed from their very fist year as an option school.
Also, if you “lose” in the lottery are you defaulted to another school based on geography or do you enter a second lottery for the second option school on your list? For example, we opt for JSIS as it’s our Geo Zone school….we don’t get in, how does the disctrict know our second choice and can we pick another option school or must we go for a neighborhood school?
devil is in the details?
insight would be super helpful for these cases.
Gary: I think you’ve got it right wrt to geozone. Being in the geozone puts you earlier in the priority list – ahead of those outside the geozone, but behind those who are siblings. No guaranteed assignment.
If your kid doesn’t get in, you are guaranteed a seat at your reference school – which should be Greenlake now if you are in the JSIS geo-zone (at least according to the map they sent out a month ago).
Gary: I am in your situation as well and I think you are correct regarding priority placement. i can only assume that the geozone applicants will be over the allotted amount so not all will get in. If I am not mistaken, if you lose on the JSIS lottery I don’t think you can apply for McDonald, but I have no definitive answer on this.
Ahh, there is a new map out:
http://www.seattleschools.org/modules/groups/homepagefiles/cms/1583136/File/Departmental%20Content/enrollment%20planning/Oct%2016%20GB%20web/GB_s4202_20131010_0616_AAChanges.pdf
But, I think my previous comment is still true. The reference school for anyone in either the McDonald or JSIS geozone is Greenlake. You are guaranteed a seat at Greenlake.
If we’re talking honestly – and there’s no reason why folks shouldn’t on this anonymous blog – most parents don’t care two whits about language immersion (Japanese, seriously? It’s not 1985): they just want their kids in an academically highly regarded school. JS’s test scores rank it near the top in the state.
Gary W, yes you have it right. It is important for new families to understand that they are starting to shrink the school which has been over capacity. The school used to be 2 kindergartens a year under the school choice plan. Then under the neighborhood assignment plan starting with the kindergartens that are now in fourth grade, they have had 3 or 4 kindergartens. I believe that next year they need to hold the school at 2 kindergartens because they are simply out of classrooms. Additionally, there are many siblings entering because of the too-large boundaries that were drawn the first year of the neighborhood assignment plan. I would bet that siblings are going to nearly fill two kindergartens. So unless the school finds a will and way to open a third kindergarten, JSIS may be a long shot for new families in the geo-zone. (Which, by the way, is *larger* than the current reference area for JSIS, and there are three kindergartens this year.)
WallyDad, if test scores are the primary concern, that is ironic. Test scores are a reflection of a school’s population. The idea that a “better” school causes an individual student to score higher is not born out by empirical studies. In fact, choices we parents make for our kids seem to have little influence on their success in life. We could all drop the activities, the over-scheduling, the tutoring, and the expensive house in the expensive neighborhood with the popular school, and our kids would do as well.
Respectfully, WallyDad, I really do think that many parents do care about language immersion, not just the general “academic excellence” (high test scores, that is) that happens to be associated with many immersion schools. In my opinion, the benefits of learning Japanese is not so much the end goal of knowing a new language, but that the extra challenge helps teach a child discipline, strength and perseverance. Lots of recent research shows that the more a kid is challenged academically in early years, the better he/she does in the long run. Language immersion is a great way for doing that, for some (not all) kids.
If parents really only care about test scores and not immersion, why are they all fighting tooth-and-nail to gain access to McDonald, which is a blank-slate in terms of test scores?
Also, I need to echo Jacqui’s point about how immersion is NOT the best learning environment for all kids. (PS Jacqui, would you mind sharing the name of the arts-integrated school that your son attended? We’re looking for alternatives to language immersion for a very bright, art-loving child.)
@ctl – #9.
McDonald Elementary heavily marketed itself as being based on the JS model and administered by the folks at JS. This is called a “halo effect”: folks transfer their positive feelings about one thing to another thing of a similar brand. Like when people buy MacBooks because they love their iPhones so much.
I have no doubt that should McDonald’s test scores compare to BF Day’s, there will be a general flight that from school too.
It seems to me that a neighborhood school should be able to serve all the children in it’s neighborhood, and not be a specialized program that cannot accommodate English Language Learners, Special Ed kids, or families who cannot pony up $1000 a year to help pay for the language teachers. (Can someone verify this last point for me– I’ve heard that this is a “required donation” from many sources but am not entirely sure if it’s true.) Not to mention another person’s post about kids for which a language immersion program just wouldn’t be a good match. It seem like many Wallingford residents are fine with all of these kids having to seek another school outside of the neighborhood, as long as those who are a good fit for language immersion get to walk to school.
I bet a lot of kids do get a lot out of a language immersion program, but it seems like Wallingford parents who obsessed over this program and thus insisted that another school in their neighborhood to follow suit (McDonald), set themselves up for losing the opportunity to have a truly neighborhood school.
And maybe it is John Standford’s high test scores that attract people, and thus it would still be attractive (and thus over crowded) even if it didn’t have the language immersion program. But any school is likely to have high test scores if it starts off in an affluent community and then siphons off all of the populations of students that tend to have trouble testing well. If Wallingford had a neighborhood school that could truly serve all of it’s neighborhood kids, then it’s test scores would likely change.
I get that it’s hard to roll with the punches when you’ve had your school assignment change so many times. But I think it helps to think of our community as a whole when we evaluate what’s going on with the changes. If this Atlantic Monthly article is on the right track, then equity in education is actually better for everyone!:
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/12/what-americans-keep-ignoring-about-finlands-school-success/250564/
thanks –
so, if I have an incoming K student (which I don’t) in 2014, and I don’t have sibling preference, than I’m waiting to hear from the district if they are going back to 2 K classes in JSIS and how many siblings (which they should know right now – anyone now that?).
When do they set the capacity for incoming K for 2014?
it does sound like, the odds of the Geo Zone kids getting in are pretty low to non-existent.
WallyDad — Yeah, sure, it might be a “halo effect.” But there are also lots of other possible explanations (see comment #11 for one), and I’m pretty sure there is no way to prove causality one way or the other. I think if you take the time to directly talk some immersion-fanatics (I am not one of them), you will hear that they truly believe that immersion itself is amazing.
Neighborhood mom — I think you bring up very good points. As for the $1k immersion assistance fund, it technically is NOT required, and families who are able are encouraged to contributed $1200 or more in order to help cover families who may not be able to donate. However, I can tell you that there was a tremendous amount of pressure on parents to pony up the cash immediately in a recent year when it seemed like not enough parents had contributed. So, parents who cannot afford the the extra funds are not formally turned away from the schools, but the average socio-economic status of all families in a given class must be high enough to cover the shortfall. Or else… no classroom assistants for the immersion classrooms. In other words, there an informal limit to how many lower income students can be in one immersion classroom/school, though this would never be explicitly stated and no single family would be turned away because they do not contribute.
There is certainly pressure to *participate*. Families that don’t want to give a lot or can’t give a lot can simply donate a few dollars and be done with it. Or they can choose not to donate at all. Class reps and most annual fund volunteers have no knowledge of how much people give (or even if they have participated if I remember correctly.) The Annual Fund committee does supply the information of how much it cost per pupil to pay for an IA. Many families give much more than that amount, many give much less, some don’t participate. The only thing I know is how much my family gave. I truly don’t care who did or didn’t, and I think that is true of most people.
To answer your question, donations are not mandatory. My son has been at JSIS on the free and reduced lunch program for 3 years now. We have had to deal with the endless solicitation for funds, but have not once been in a position to donate. Anything. Not even one dollar……and he has been getting the exact same education as students whose parents can donate $5000 a year. When I hear people talking about Wallingford’s elite at JSIS I’m not sure what to say. I’m a poor grad student living on the UDistrict side of the attendance area boundaries and having to pony up $1000 per year for my student is as close to impossible as one can get……
I am also tired of hearing people talk about the wealthy elite Wallingford residents who want to keep a good school to themselves. My child attends because we happen to live close by – if the school did not have the language program, we’d still go there because walking to our neighborhood school is very important to us. SPS decided to put two language immersions programs in the same area which effectively took away our option to walk to a regular elementary school. I don’t know why they’ve changed the plan from using BF Day as the overflow and switched those seats to Greenlake, which will soon be over-capacity. No matter what happens, some people are going to be unhappy, but whatever school your child ends up attending, it’s the family participation in the school community that makes it thrive, so take part and be active.
ctl: He goes to Adams Elementary in Ballard – http://adamses.seattleschools.org/. It is a public school, so whatever weird rules they have these days about getting in to a school will apply. We were grandfathered in, so he has been able to stay. Good luck!
Plain and simple: Why aren’t our public schools equal? If they are public, what’s with the complex variety of offerings? If the educational resources were more balanced, wouldn’t the geographical convenience be an easier problem to solve?
I’ve tried to parse through all this on my own, and what i keep coming up with is that if you live in either the McD or JSIS geo zone and you’re not sibling-grandfathered in, you have no predictability about what your school is?
Yeah, but that didn’t change with the introduction of this option school plan. Five years ago when my kid was starting school, the district was still under the “choice” system. There were no neighborhood schools with guaranteed entrance. Kids close by got some preference (after sibs) but JSIS was so popular you had to be within blocks to get in, and not getting in put you way behind everyone else on waiting lists at other schools.
Then the school system switched to “neighborhood schools” Everyone within the boundary was guaranteed a spot, but, because of the popularity of the program and the number of kids in the neighborhood, the boundary every year has been unpredictable. The worst situation, in my opinion, is that siblings were not guaranteed a seat, so one year your first kid would get in, two years down the line little sister was out of luck.
So, yeah, no predictability, but it seems it is not a nut that can really be cracked. The only solution that would give you more predictability would be that you could pull out the immersion program from the school, but I suspect that there would be a precipitous drop off in interest in the school because of its terrible location — underneath the freeway. That’s not really something to be desired either.
I have to say it’s been obvious from the start that the school would end up an option school. The boundaries were shrinking every year. They can only get so small.
I just wish the district would not wait until things are at a crisis state before addressing these problems.
On the plus side, your kid will do great at any of the local schools.
What’s with the weird little westward spur at 45th / 46th?
Wallyhood, my reading of the proposed geozone maps is that the District took the current attendance areas for McDonald and JSIS and turned them into the geozones. The only adjustment was to expand the JSIS geozone from 45th St to 50th Street, and dividing the westernmost end of that area between McDonald and JSIS. This leaves a westward spur for JSIS and an interlocking area just above that for McDonald. Presumably a capacity management strategy. But why the geozone maps left out so much of the JSIS walk zone and left intact the large area east of U District for McDonald, which will have to be bused, is a mystery. Also, bb (#19) is exactly right. Before neighborhood attendance areas, there were no guarantees and capacity at JSIS was managed with two classes per grade. Having a geozone is better than nothing, because without it there is no distance tiebreaker. A family in lower Wallingford located 1/2 mile from JSIS has the same chance as a family 5 miles away.
@11. Thanks Neighborhood Mom for the Atlantic article on education equity. Not a comfortable issue for most of us. Ensuring equity in education would require strong leadership at the federal level – but even absent that, there’s nothing stopping Seattle families and SPS from taking some courageous steps forward. I guess that would start with asking tough questions. Not so easy (and lonesome?) I imagine, based on the kinds of things I’ve read on the boundaries debate in the past few weeks.
I got a few more clarifications from Tracy Libros at Seattle Public Schools via Sherry Carr. Much thanks to her for her responsiveness! These are responses to questions from Gary W, marmoset, and myself:
1. If you “lose” in the lottery are you defaulted to another school based on geography or do you enter a second lottery for the second option school on your list? For example, we opt for JSIS as it’s our Geo Zone school….we don’t get in, how does the district know our second choice and can we pick another option school or must we go for a neighborhood school?
Students new to the district or rising to the next tier (e.g. elementary to middle school) start with an assignment to their attendance area school. (There are some exceptions for APP assignments, students in K-8 schools, etc. but I’m giving you the general response that will apply to most people.)
You list all of your choices on the school choice form, so we already know what your second, third, etc. choices are. The choices can be another option school or another attendance area school anywhere in the district.
If you don’t get assigned to your first choice school, you are put on the waiting list for that school. If your second choice is your attendance area school, you won’t have listed any more choices on the form and the attendance area assignment will stand (unless and until you are offered a seat from the waiting list). If you have additional choices listed, the system will process those choices in sequence. If you get assigned to one of those schools, you lose your attendance area assignment, and are still on the waiting list for your first choice school.
Later in the spring, after Open Enrollment assignments are made, you can change your child’s assignment to any school in the district with space available (but you won’t necessarily get transportation, of course). Or, you can keep the assignment and change to a different waiting list. Waiting lists stay active through the end of September each year and then are dissolved and no further reassignments are made for the year.
2. Is a geozone tie breaker how close you are to the school, or might somebody directly next to JSIS not get in while somebody at the edge of the geozone will get in?
The GeoZone is the second tiebreaker after siblings. After siblings, if there are more students in the GeoZone than seats, the next tiebreaker is a random lottery number. So it is possible that someone at the edge of the GeoZone could get in and someone closer would not.
3. Why the geozone maps left out so much of the JSIS walk zone and left intact the large area east of U District for McDonald, which will have to be bused, is a mystery.
As with most things in the plan, It has to do with building capacities and density of students in particular areas.
4. If I have an incoming K student (which I don’t) in 2014, and I don’t have sibling preference, then I’m waiting to hear from the district if they are going to have 2 or 3 Kindergarten classes in JSIS and how many siblings will be enrolled. Will that information be shared, and if so when?
We don’t know how many siblings will be enrolled until completion of the Open Enrollment process. We know prior to Open Enrollment (which is at the end of February/beginning of March) how many kindergarten classes we are planning on. Sometimes during the Open Enrollment process we change the number of homeroom classes for a particular school (increase or decrease) depending on the Open Enrollment data and building capacity. We monitor the data as it gets entered in the system, and make changes where we can prior to completion of Open Enrollment processing.
For example, this past spring during the processing of Open Enrollment applications, we saw that we had many more 6th graders applying for Jane Addams than we had originally expected. Since Jane Addams had the space and could accommodate additional students in its program, and since taking more middle school students into Jane Addams would relieve capacity issues at other middle schools, we added three 6th grade classes during Open Enrollment processing. So those additional students knew their assignments at the same time as other students, and didn’t have to wait for waiting list moves.
Just a comment when people are looking at test scores…The test scores are based on all of the students at the school and does not tell the whole store unless you know how many special ed and free/reduced lunch students are at the school. JSIS may appear to have high scores because there are no dedicated special ed classes (such as at Greenlake and B.F. Day) and the ratio of free/reduced lunch students is low. Also, the BOC class left JSIS a couple years ago which could account for increases in test scores since then. I wish SPS would list test scores by special ed, free/reduced lunch students, and general students. This would be a better reflection of how the students are really doing compared to their peers at other schools.
About the test scores…
I understand, from a very reliable source, that test scores absolutely do correlate with such factors mentioned above (English as a first language, FRL, etc.) SPS chooses not to break out the data that way because, I think, it underscores how unequally served these groups are.
My question to those who choose their school on test scores alone is this: Are you worried that your child will also have low test scores? Or are you worried that your child might have to share a classroom with students with low test scores?
SPS is currently asking for feedback on the growth boundaries plan, and my impression is that the staff will be putting together a third version to present to the Board on Nov 6th. Community input could make a big difference in what version 3 looks like.
Given that not every incoming student in the geo zone will be able to attend John Stanford (especially if there are many incoming siblings who will take the available spots), I think it’s important for the community to weigh in on the boundary line between BF Day and Green Lake. Which school makes sense for your part of Wallingford? I’m not sure the boundaries have been right sized yet. In the current plan Green Lake’s area is huge, while BF Day’s boundary has shrunk from what it was. I’m concerned this is not good planning. Where is the data predicting how many students will be added to each of these schools?
One more thought: Given that Wallingford does not have another elementary school, it’s a challenge to move John Stanford to an option school. In other areas of the city there are other nearby schools in the neighborhood for students to attend if they chose not to apply to the option school, or don’t get in. (See Thornton Creek, for example.) Furthermore, given this situation does it make sense to have two option schools right next to each other? If McDonald remained an attendance area school it would make sense for it to take on least a good part of the John Stanford area. (Not trying to pit two communities against each other — just looking logically at the map).
The district seeks public input via a survey from Oct. 14-25. The survey is online at: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/7BKFRS3.
For reference, the John Stanford area is 124
The latest list of proposed boundary changes can be found online at: http://bit.ly/GrowthBoundaries.
New map coming this evening!
From SPS:
Coming Nov. 1: Newest Growth Boundaries Recommendations to the Board
An updated recommended plan will be presented to the board on November 6. The proposal will be released with the Board agenda at 5 p.m. on November 1 and posted here by 7 p.m. (The information from the September 17 draft and the October 16 proposal shown below is now obsolete.)
http://www.seattleschools.org/modules/cms/pages.phtml?pageid=294923
Well dang, they went and sucked all of Wallingford south of 40 into BF Day.
Looks like the future is a substandard elementary school or private school.
And they’re still converting JS into an option school! So Wallingford is left with no real public elementary school.
It seems pretty clear Sherry Carr has sold the neighborhood out.