In the continuing saga of the school boundaries, there’s yet another new proposal on the table for Wallingford. This one has moved the elementary school border that determines whether a child attends BF Day or Green Lake deeper into Wallingford, send a swath of children below 40th westward.
It’s also contracted the geozone around McDonald School, reducing the number of homes that will get priority access to that school in the city-wide lottery, turning over part the northwestern area east of Stone Way and below 50th to an enlarged John Stanford School geozone.
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| McDonald Geozone Boundary (Oct 16th Proposal) | McDonald Geozone Boundary (Nov 6th Proposal) |
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| BF Day / Green Lake Elementary boundary in red (Oct 16 Proposal) | BF Day / Green Lake Elementary boundary (Nov 6th Proposal) |
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| JSIS Geozone (Oct 16) | JSIS Geozone (Nov 6) |
The board will be voting on the proposal November 20th
Eric Fisk’s coverage of the old boundaries for Wallyhood can be seen on our School Boundaries Update From Sherry Carr post. The November 6th recommendations to the board can be found on the Seattle Public Schools site. According to that site, “feedback on these recommended changes may be sent to [email protected]. Please put your school or issue in the subject line.”
(Thanks for the heads up, Alison Hobbs!)
The new BF Day geozone is still not far enough west in lower Wallingford to cover the children currently registered there, per district fiat to move them out of JSIS geozone! Lower Wallingford & Fremont should definitely be in the BF Day geozone, as the closer school, particularly as there is so much capacity! What is the district thinking?
Or am I reading these incorrectly. I’m assuming the yellow area shows the new boundaries…
For BF Day, don’t pay attention to the yellow areas. Pay attention to the red line that hooks around Hamilton.
Any one else think it’s strange that there is a small portion of the Green Lake boundary that is completely separated off by both the JS and McD geo zones?
I suspect that most people won’t get in from the geozones for the first few years as they try to control capacity. So, families in that weird little green lake zone won’t be as isolated from school mates as it looks.
But, I do find it frustrating that they seem to be drawing the geozones based on not upsetting people who are currently in JSIS and McDonald which:
1. doesn’t acknowledge the fact that they just drew out the remaining part of the neighborhood 2 years ago so there are many families in that region who also had the plans change mid course
2. draws a region of the neighborhood that has been at McDonald for the last 3 years into JSIS – which decreases likelihood of them going to school with neighbors with very low likelihood that there will be space for them (since there hasn’t been enough space for kids at JSIS in the current boundaries)
3. doesn’t make choices that maximize walkability
So what’s happening to that little white block around Hamilton? It looks as though streets south of the JSIS boundary will be going north to Greenlake?
Half of Wallingford being in BF Day is going to hurt our children’s educations and our home values. It takes 10 years to turn around a bad school. Is our little corner of Seattle going to wait that long?
What makes B.F. Day a bad school? Test scores? and are we talking home values again? Both of my children attended B.F. Day, one still is and the other is at Hamilton now. Both are in Spectrum and their test scores are in the 97% range. So, what is it about B.F. Day that makes you think that it is a bad school? The fact that they have a fair number of low-income students and many students where English is a second language and that may affect overall test scores. Or is it that they have special ed students? I am glad that my kids are exposed to and interact with the children from a various cultures and backgrounds. My son’s best friend is a boy from Vietnam and his English may not be perfect yet, his math scores are much more advanced that what the average Seattle public school 5th grader is at. I think having B.F. Day is good for our little corner of Seattle.
As a parent with a couple more years until these changes start to affect us. I am mostly confused and becoming pissed quickly. My wife and I bought our home a few years ago when the boundaries for JSIS were a few blocks further west. We bought where we are partially because we had plans to start our family and we wanted our children to attend JSIS. With the constant changes and having two small children now this is becoming more important to us.
What is confusing us, right now, is that the GEO zone extends Now we are seeing a nice portion of the GEO zone go right around us. We live in that nice little pocket south of 45th but west of Bagley. The Geo Zone extends all the way over to Stone Way and goes from 45th to 50th. Why? This will require children who actualy live closer to JSIS to commute further to go to school. Yes i understand that just the virtue of being in the zone does not mean your children will attend. But it does increase the chances and like any parent I want the best chances for my children.
I understand some people will argue that people who live in Wallingford are spoiled and privileged. BS. Personally it took me 5 years to get out of High school. Lived in a few foster homes kinda slowed down the forward progress that is an education. After High School i did many odd jobs until one day i noticed how close i was to holding a sign at an on ramp. I enlisted in to the military and through my experience and VA benefits i earned my BA and eventually bought a home using my VA benefit. please excuse my little rant at the end.
What makes BF Day an undesirable school include factors such as:
1. “Class mixing”, where low-income, high-needs students are mixed into general classrooms. This is a bad policy that, in California, has been definitively proven to be destructive to the education of both low-income students and students from a more privileged or gifted background. Everyone loses.
2. Unstable leadership, where successful principals and teaching leaders have been moved from school to school. The SPS, more than BF Day, is to be blamed for this.
3. Poor test scores, well below the state average. Whatever else you want to say about BF Day, by every benchmark available it’s a poorly performing school.
http://www.greatschools.org/washington/seattle/1553-B-F-Day-Elementary-School/?tab=test-scores
“In God we trust; all others must bring data.”
Crickets, time is actually on your side. For the coming school year, it is going to be very difficult for any child without siblings in the school to get in unless the school has three kindergartens. (I believe two is what is planned because they don’t have a classroom for a third.) The year after that they are likely to have a stable three kindergartens every year which will improve the chances of everyone in the geo-zone. You will have uncertainty until your first child is successfully enrolled at the school. After that you can be assured that all your children may go there. (And I think you even have the freedom to move out of the boundary after that.) If the system had remained with the status quo, the boundaries would have needed to continue to shrink, and when they did, siblings would not have been guaranteed a spot. No scenario is good, but I suspect that the new one will actually pan out better for your family. Good luck!
Not sure about the whys. I imagine it is to make capacity management among the schools in the Hamilton area more manageable. When the idea of an option school was first being seriously discussed, Director Carr was for a very small Geozone (that you likely would not have fallen into) so that people from outside Wallingford could get into the school. With the zone so large it basically means that living in the geozone is necessary but not sufficient for getting into the school. The problem with the tiny geozone is that it effectively means that Wallingford has no neighborhood school. The larger geozone will mean that in a de facto sense JSIS is still a neighborhood school, but without a guarantee based on address. In the end, I think it is a good compromise, especially if seats are held for native speakers. (And I acknowledge that the equity issue for access to immersion schools has really not been addressed by the current plan. It is far from perfect.)
So now B.F. Day is a bad and undesirable school? So, what should be done?
Shut it down? or just leave it for the “those” other low-income, special ed, and new immigrant ESL children? It’s just not good enough for the children of Wallingford, even though it’s in the neighborhood.
Perhaps with the influx of nice middle to upper middle class children in stable environments, the test scores will go up. Though I personally believe a good education involves more than just test scores. Please elaborate on how “class mixing” causes everyone to lose? I haven’t found that to be the case with my children.
As for those worried about falling home values because of being in an “undesirable” school geozone, just a thought, for the supposed premium that many are willing to pay for a house to be in a “desirable” school geozone such as JSIS, the amount could have been applied to a very nice private school if so desired.
Since great schools.org for data. Here is some other interesting data for B.F. Day, JSIS, MacDonald and Green Lake especially the reviews given by parents on the schools.
http://www.greatschools.org/washington/seattle/1553-B-F-Day-Elementary-School/
http://www.greatschools.org/washington/seattle/1553-B-F-Day-Elementary-School/?tab=reviews#schoolReviewSubmitForm
http://www.greatschools.org/washington/seattle/1576-John-Stanford-International-Elementary-School/
http://www.greatschools.org/washington/seattle/1576-John-Stanford-International-Elementary-School/?tab=reviews#schoolReviewSubmitForm
http://www.greatschools.org/washington/seattle/5658-McDonald-Elementary-School/
http://www.greatschools.org/washington/seattle/5658-McDonald-Elementary-School/?tab=reviews
http://www.greatschools.org/washington/seattle/1565-Green-Lake-Elementary-School/
http://www.greatschools.org/washington/seattle/1565-Green-Lake-Elementary-School/?tab=reviews
At this point I can only assume that the school board is selecting the Geozones by drinking a box of Franzia and then playing Risk with a monkey.
And can we PLEASE have a moratorium on calling Wallingford parents spoiled?
If you feel the need to type that, please go outside, take a deep breath, yell at a BMW, complain about GMO labeling and then STFU.
If you’re worried about class warfare from the invading yuppies then just consider the negative impact when they are all forced to send their precious Sophias and Wyatts to private school. If you think that will help neighborhood schools in the long run then the cognitive dissonance is probably giving you constipation.
I’m not personally affected by this, but I don’t get the odd spur of the JSIS geozone *at all*. What’s the point?
The region south of the spur is closer to JSIS and further from the reference school – Greenlake.
The geozone ought to be a reasonable shape – a square or rectangle around the school. I won’t gripe about how big, but families deserve something better than a bizarrely gerrymandered geozone.
If you’ve ever been to one of the school board meetings, you’d probably be forgiven for having paranoid thoughts about who lives in those odd geographical spurs. A friend of a friend? An important donor? An influential councilman?
Yeah, I honest can’t think of anything else. It’s not like these geozones respect attendance area boundaries.
I think my feedback on this will be simple: make the western boundary of the JSIS geozone uniform. Bagley, Wallingford, Stone, or whatever.
No offense to B.F. Day, but it’s the scores that worry me. Nothing more, nothing less.
I’m sure it’s a lovely school and I plan to send my kid there, but I am disappointed. Not as disappointed as a couple of years ago when we were kicked out of JSIS. I know B.F. Day parents wanted a larger zone because they wanted kids from affluent homes. I suspect many affluent homes will send their kids to private school anyway now.
Sherry Carr, the School Board member representing our district offered the current attendance area boundaries for why the geozone veers so far west in the area north of 45th Street. It seems that since the entire area between I-5 and Stone way between 45th and 50th is currently assigned to an immersion school, the District reasoned that it should be in the geozone. The first geozone split that area between McDonald and JSIS. The revised version assigns it all to JSIS. She said:
Thank you for feedback and for offering your perspective. The geo zone proposed for next fall roughly parallels the current attendance area boundaries. The geo zone can and probably will change in future years. My point was that the students living in the geo zone will have greater opportunity to enroll than say someone living in the BF Day attendance or the McDonald Geo Zone. Is it a perfect solution? No. But many families living near the school will still be able to attend.
There is also another issue in play as I stated previously and that is around equitable access to non-traditional programs. Clearly language immersion is such a program. Our broader parent and community base wants to see access to these programs open to more families. This moves us a step in that direction.
I don’t think Sherry’s reasoning makes much sense. The boundaries have changed practically every year for the past few years. Why enshrine the last one? Gerrymandered geozones just seem like a bad precedent.
What is missing from this post and its comments is a discussion of the impact of the growth plan on Wallingford’s Hamilton International Middle School.
The November 6 Boundary document proposes that hundreds of APP students housed in Hamilton International School be moved to new APP programs at Eckstein and Whitman over the next three years (please fact check the exact number – I would love to know it). The jury is still out whether any APP students from the Hamilton Middle School catchment area would remain in the school receiving APP services after the move.
This shift has significant implications on Hamilton – and by extension, Wallyhood. The APP parents are fighting the changes – concerned by the disruption to their children’s education and by the separation of the students. On the other hand, these changes would significantly reduce the overcrowding of Hamilton (unless, of course, the space freed up by moving the APP students is consumed by students coming into Hamilton from other schools that previously weren’t in the catchment area.)
I don’t really see this as moving us towards equitable access unless they draw the geozone smaller. There is no room for anyone outside of the geozone to get in so it hasn’t improved access outside of the neighborhood. All it has done is given the schools a cap to the number of enrolled which will mean less kids getting in not more.
I don’t think that Sherry Carr’s argument is reasonable – there are many families who were drawn out of the zone…why should it matter that it is happening this year versus 2 years ago? Not to mention that drawing the JSIS geozone larger just means that a smaller proportion of families in the geozone get into the school and reduces the likelihood that people who would really walk and could decrease congestion around the school will actually get in. Additionally, the fact that the geozone could change from year to year is completely non-reassuring….
The school board needs to stop making decisions that pander to specific interest groups (or that at least they perceive as pandering to those groups since my read of the comments from the last round is that most of the people who were assigned to McDonald that are now assigned to JSIS would have preferred to be in the McDonald geozone) and make rational choices that are in the best long term interest of the group.
@Marmauset
So what Carr is saying is that all the folks between he number streets and Stone Way, and south of 40, are expendable. They don’t deserve access to quality public education or a viable shot at an option school (getting into Salmon Bay outside the geozone? Fat chance.)
It’s clear now that Sherry Carr has sold Wallingford out. Next election, we will remember this.
sorry, i meant “school” not “group” in the last sentence.
Since greatschools.com is being used for data, here is some interesting overall data especially the parent reviews.
http://www.greatschools.org/washington/seattle/1553-B-F-Day-Elementary-School/
http://www.greatschools.org/washington/seattle/1576-John-Stanford-International-Elementary-School/
You can also check out the reviews for McDonald and Greenlake too.
“Half of Wallingford being in BF Day is going to hurt our children’s educations and our home values.”
I work my heart out at B.F. Day teaching struggling students to read. I know this wasn’t your intention, Wallydad, but when I read comments like yours, comments that reduce my work and my students to a mere property values liability, it feels like being stabbed in the heart. I am shaking and nauseated right now. These are human beings you’re talking about. Children. And their parents love and want the best for them the same as you do for your children. Have some compassion. You don’t have to love our school, you don’t have to want to go there, but you don’t have to talk about us like we’re a toilet, either. Geez.
And for what it’s worth, my children attend B.F. Day and their test scores are outstanding.
4/10. This is why I’m worried.
What parents of kids worried about their own kids’ tests scores need to research is impact of a school’s average test score on a high achieving student. My understanding is that high scorers score high no matter what school they are in. Perhaps the causality that you are worried about doesn’t exist, and perhaps your kids would have an amazing experience at a diverse urban school.
Ditto for property value. I expected to see values plummet and houses sit after the boundaries moved from Stone to Corliss. They didn’t at all.
I have very high hopes for BFDay.
@Floor Pie:
I certainly regret causing you any emotional distress, that was not my intention. Nor do I think your school is a “toilet”. Many anecdotes, and most importantly all available data, indicates that BF Day is not a high quality school. I am aware of the many reasons behind this; I sympathize with the hard-luck folks who made up BF Day’s earlier years – homeless youth, youth in transition, first-generation immigrants. Nevertheless…
“Floor Pie”, as hard as you’re working, I would also ask that you recognize the many Wallingford parents who are working hard so that their children can have “better” than a 4/10 school.
Many people complain about “privileged” Wallyhooders. Most of us aren’t privileged; my family and I certainly aren’t. We work extremely hard jobs, many hours, to afford a home in this neighborhood, all so that our children can choose to go to top-notch schools.
That choice – that prize we worked hard for – has been stripped from us by Sherry Carr and the SPS. We don’t have a choice now. So, our families look at what else we can cut to send our kids to private school, or seriously consider sending them to one of the lowest-performing schools in the city.
We weren’t asked by SPS, we were told.
We are angry at the Seattle Public School system. We are not angry at you, nor do I in any way seek to cheapen your good work.
@Anne:
I disagree with your logic. Of course environment impacts achievement. If the logic you present is factual, I don’t have to send my kids to any school, anywhere. They’ll just test well at home. 🙂
It’s parent’s like you, Wallydad, that makes me relieved we got zoned out of John Standford and put into B.F. Day. I’d be so miserable if I had to expose my children to the likes of you who don’t approve of “class mixing”. Then you must also be against racial mixing as well!?!? Like Floor Pie, I, too, felt nauseated reading your post! You sound like an ignorant, elitist, and entitled jerk! Test scores aside, your opinion is very hurtful and disrespectful to the families who have to go to B.F. Day and *CHOOSE* to go to B.F. Day because we choose to go there for more than those arbitrary test scores. You can’t be a total outsider and judge a school because of it’s test scores. You have to go to the school and see first-hand how passionate most of the teachers and staff are. It’s also so pleasing to watch the beauty of class and ethnic mixing in action which is teaching my daughter a valuable education you simply can’t get from test scores. It’s exciting to see how their hard work and dedication is and has positively influenced my daughter’s love of learning and reading. I’m proud we don’t rub elbows with the likes of you, Mr. Wally Dud. I’m proud we are a B.F. Day family and I will continue to defend our school because we’ve only had the best experience there so far. It’s nothing like the garbage receptacle of a school you’re implying B.F. Day is. Don’t hurt yourself getting off your high horse!
@VickiSeattle206:
I appreciate and cheer your passion for your school. I would never condone racism; I am not a racist. I do not condone elitism; I am not an elitist.
But I am entitled. I do feel entitled. We are ALL entitled.
All law-abiding, hardworking families are entitled to a great neighborhood school for their kids.
That is what *we do not have* in this current proposal, folks. We do NOT have a high-performing, local, neighborhood school anymore.
Stop voting against your interested due to some misplaced loyalty or emotional reaction. Send a clear message to the SPS via email – and when Sherry Carr comes up for reelection, your vote: it is time someone on that council started giving a damn about rank-and-file Wallingford families!
Wallydad,
There really isn’t any logic in my response to accept or reject. I am merely suggesting a rational approach. You are concerned that low average test scores in an elementary school will negatively impact an individual student’s test scores. I am skeptical of this assertion. If I can find the research that I heard on this topic that showed no such causality I will report back.
JSIS scores shot up a few years ago. This is not because the teaching has suddenly improved nor are the children suddenly learning more; it is because children from less privileged backgrounds lost transportation to the school and had to enroll elsewhere. My children are not performing better because those children are gone. It was a tremendous loss to the school.
Sherry Carr really hasn’t taken anything from you. The simple fact is that many more people want to enroll their child at JSIS than can fit in the school This popularity is your thief.
There are many great things about JSIS, but there are some major drawbacks too, and you may find yourself disappointed when/if your child starts going there.
@Anne: To some degree, you are of course right. Small fluctuations in testing can derive from things like X number of unprepared students leaving a program.
I think the difference between 3-5% bumps, and 20% below state average (~49% below neighboring schools), are indicative, however, of larger social and cultural problems that accompany that many “high-needs” students attending a classroom.
This is why the New Orleans Public School system, with a dropout rate of 42.7%, is not some undiscovered educational gem.
@Anne: — and to your point about Sherry Carr:
I vote for, and want to elect, officials who will defend my interests and my district. This is the point of democracy.
Sherry Carr has not done that effectively. Wallingford was the loser 3 years ago when they shrunk JS, and is the loser again. If she permits these changes to happen to our small slice of Seattle, she will need to be held accountable next election.
The irony though is that the new plan may actually work to your advantage. Something I’m not sure you are aware of is that the school is full. By full, I mean there is no computer lab. No art room. The music teacher teaches on the stage in the cafeteria. The only room left to lose is the library, and that would buy one measly classroom. It is in everyone’s interest to manage capacity. To do otherwise would have been wildly reckless.
It is very likely that you will still be in the geozone when your child is ready for kindergarten. Then once your first kid is enrolled you won’t have to sweat, like so many families have, that your younger kids might not get into the school because of every shrinking boundaries. (As a neighborhood school shrinking the boundaries is the only way to maintain capacity. Your house would quite possibly fall out of the boundary under the neighborhood school paradigm.) And your kids will probably get to enjoy a dedicated art space, a computer lab and a music room with four walls.
Sherry Carr may lose her seat, but it won’t be because of this issue. The new plan helps more Wallyhooders than it hurts.
@impliedobserver
please read the parent’s reviews of the schools rather than just looking at the number ratings. Greatschools.org uses some sort of algorithm that obviously factors in test scores. Like I said above, a school is more than it’s test scores. I would encourage you to visit B.F. Day and actually talk to parents who have children to go there to get a sense of the school. Both of my kids flourished there and both are in Spectrum.
School digger also has some interesting stats about Washington schools.
http://www.schooldigger.com/go/WA/schoolrank.aspx
Our local school rankings in the state. (Out of 1023 schools)
John Stanford Ranked – 15 .
Greenlake – 206.
BF Day – 709.
And they’re all doing better than the previous year.
WallyDad, so now you are comparing B.F. Day to the entire New Orleans School System? Not even close. New Orleans has a long history of social and economic factors that are very different from Seattle’s. Not to mention Hurricane Katrina also did a number to that city.
Also, are you under the impression that somehow poverty, special ed, and having English as a second language and the corresponding lower test scores is contagious so it will spread to the other “normal” students?
I get it, you are mad that you could be zoned out of the school that you wanted to have your child/children go to. You probably paid a premium for your house so that you could. You feel entitled. Fine, but that does not make it right for you to talk trash about another school.
You even have the gall to infer in your pat responses that our reactions are emotional. Darn right it’s emotional especially when you are posting such ignorant spew. Data mine all you want, it seems you are missing the emotion and compassion chipset.
Also BF Day has joined the Fully Funded all day Kindergarten program.
http://www.seattleschools.org/modules/cms/pages.phtml?pageid=222322
So parents of kids that attend BF Day for kindergarten will save about $3000 per kid.
Unfortunately Green Lake and John Stanford are not part of the program.
Wallydad, it does not matter what school your kids go to. Certainly not in this neighborhood. What matters is that they work hard. If they work as hard as you have, I am sure they will get that spot in Harvard you think they deserve.
Thank God my kids are going to BF Day.
While I agree that WallyDad’s posts are pretty offensive, I just want to point out that VickiSeattle206’s post is equally offensive in the opposite direction. The trouble with every discussion about schools on this blog is that it turns into BF Day vs. JSIS with name calling in both directions. Not very helpful.
The opinions I am most interested are from those who have real experience in these schools – not those who are being judgmental about a school that their child has never attended. My experience is with JSIS, so here are my thoughts:
In my experience, JSIS parents are part of a caring and supportive community and I enjoy the families I have met through there. I think that the language experience is strong (and yes, we are in Japanese and do value it) and the teachers we have had through the school have been great. The new principal seems wonderful. JSIS is still tied to the curriculum of the Seattle Public Schools and, thus, shares some of the overall weaknesses in approach to math and science which is made more challenging by the fact that these subjects are taught in a different language. I think that JSIS has been great for our family, but it is not the be all and end all.
Each school has its strengths and weaknesses, the key is to actually go and get to know them, rather than pre-judging them or the people who choose them for their children.
I’ll speak as a BF Day parent. When the boundaries moved two years ago and we were moved out of the JSIS area, we visited the schools we were offered. We were impressed by what BF Day offered and the new principal, Kati Pearl. The parents we met at the PTSA were great. Everyone involved in the school feels its our responsibility to give all the kids enrolled the best education possible. Its not about my child, its about our children.
Since all the data points to parental income, parental involvement, and parental level of education as the most important indicator for educational success my plan is to try to be involved in my kid’s education and help the school he’s in. I can do that at BF Day.
@All:
What I said, specifically, was that BF Day was not a high quality school, and that moving Wallingford out of the #15 school zone in the entire state, into the #709 school zone in the entire state, will have a detrimental effect on our home values.
Both of those things are true. Home values are partially driven by school district.
By every possible measure, BF Day does not offer students a high quality education. Especially compared to other neighborhood schools mere blocks away.
Those statements are not even remotely “pretty offensive”.
They should not cause this level of “nausea” and rage.
I’ve been really civil. I think someone called me a racist or segregationist a few posts ago.
Time to put on your “big-boy pants”, neighbors!
I CHOSE to put my son at BF Day. I can afford private school but I made a late game decision and started him at BF Day for Kindergarten this year. I haven’t met a single parent that doesn’t rave about the school and my own experience has far exceeded my expectations. I am delighted at each and every turn. Don’t let the comments, from the Wallyhood blog posts surrounding the school boundary issues, get to you. BF Day is a wonderful school with a reputation problem, mostly lit by word of mouth, not personal experience.
WallyDad,
So is the only measure for you for a high quality school is the test scores? The fact that there is “class mixing” going on also lessens the value of the education too? What is it? Have you ever visited B.F. Day or spoken to parents who have children there? Have you done the same for the other schools in Wallingford? or do you base decisions in your life just based only on numbers? test scores, your home value?
How is calling B.F. Day a bad and undesirable school not even remotely offensive according to you? especially to the children and parents of the school. Reducing the quality of a school to property value liability as not also offensive? Proclaiming that “class mixing” is detrimental? And you expect that your statements would not cause nausea and rage? If you can’t see the reason why these would, then I think you have other issues to deal with.
Also the patronizing (intentional or not) “Time to put on your “big-boy pants”, neighbors!” statement does not help you either.
We have a daughter that is entering kindergarten next year. Due to the 2 class limit next year we will very likely not be able to send her there even though we are 2.5 blocks away. We watch tons of kids walk by every day and it hurts to know we will have to get in our cars to drive to Green Lake. That is the hardest thing for us. Green Lake or BF Day, for that matter, may be a better fit for our daughter, but we haven’t determined that yet. The test scores of 4/10 for BF Day is largely irrelevant due to the external factors that cause it (primarily socioeconomic). Our own Wallyhood has previously written about this.
http://www.wallyhood.org/2010/11/seattle-schools-releases-district-scorecard-school-reports/
Our son will be entering kindergarten next year at BF Day. We’ve watched the school boundaries change over the last few years with interest, knowing it would affect us eventually. My feeling is that the overall plan to switch to neighborhood schools will help ALL the schools, especially a school that was poorly rated in the old system. Previously, parents in the BF Day area would pull every trick in the book to get their kid in another school because they’d heard BF Day had issues- which created a downward spiral. Now their choices are more limited, so kids with a good support system will stay in the school and we, as parents, can work together to make it a great school for our neighborhood.
And what a bonus- now we don’t have to pay for full-day kindergarten! We would’ve had no problem paying, but now we are planning on giving a significant portion of that money back to the school to benefit the PTA. And we plan on being very active to support the school. If other families do the same, there is no doubt in my mind that BF Day will continue to improve and be a great strong focal point for our neighborhood.
Our friends had a similar problem a few years ago, when the boundary changed and they got shifted from Bagley to Greenwood. Greenwood was economically diverse and had lower test scores at the time, but they got a new principle and an influx of neighborhood attendees, and now it is an AWESOME school. I see the same thing happening at BF Day right now.
I’m tired of waiting for the school board to solve every school’s problems- clearly they are not the most effective of organizations. I think the families in each neighborhood need to be accountable for our own schools, and if we see changes that need to be made we can fight for them, just like the parents of BF Day did to get the boundary shifted westward to their school’s advantage. Neighborhood schools build strong neighborhood relationships too, and maybe we would do better to be thinking of two to three schools that are all of 1 1/2 miles away from each other as all being interrelated rather than being islands over which we do battle.
Wallydad, if you mean “class-mixing” as in economic class, sorry but that is patently offensive and I think the school board and most Wallingfordians will rightly completely disregard your opinion. If you mean “class-mixing” as in mixing students with special needs, such as having a poor grasp of English, in with students who do not have special needs then you have a good point. The extra time the teacher has to devote to the special needs students can be detrimental to the non-special needs students in the class.
We purposely chose not to have children since we feel the earth is overpopulated so we don’t pay a whole lot of attention to school boundaries. However, I can tell you we have lived in the BF Day zone for many years and houses are selling just fine around us and we are amazed at the prices people are paying for them. We love lower Wallingford. An easy fifteen minute walk to the west by the troll and we are in Fremont, best of both worlds.
BTW, I hope the teachers at John Stanford are being well compensated for their work. I was unaware that they are doing such a spectacular job as shown in the statistics. Kudos to them.
We live just four blocks from JSIS and have an incoming kindergartner. Every day we watch streams of kids walk by our house for the final 3-minute tumble down to John Stanford. My daughter currently goes to a pre-K that’s also just blocks from our house, and she begs us, rain or shine, to walk every day. So like you, Brady, it is painful watching all of these children walk, ride, or scoot past our house every day knowing that we will be getting in a car or my daughter will be standing on a street corner waiting for a bus next year to go to a school that is two miles away. For us, it is not about attending the number 15 school in the state versus the number 206 school in the state. It’s about neighborhood–the joys of walking to and from school, crunching leaves under feet, getting to know the neighborhood dogs and cats who camp out on walls and stairs. And it’s about my daughter connecting with kids who live nearby and us connecting with parents who live nearby so we can get to know our neighbors and have each other’s backs. That is what this proposal is taking away from us as a family.
Is there no “walk zone” at all? so, in theory, someone like Baby Z who lives literally across the street might not get to go to JSIS?
Surely, there must be some walk zone of some sort to avoid the patently insane situation of children across the street not being able to attend?
just curious about this?
How can you live 2 blocks from the school and no t be able to have your child attend?
@Gary – There is a “geozone”. Everyone in the geozone gets higher priority than people out of it but it is not based on distance, it is based on lottery draw.
In the upcoming year, there are many siblings and, if they keep JSIS to 2 incoming kindergarten classrooms, they will probably have less than 1 classroom worth of spots for kids in the geozone. The proposed geozone is 1.5-2 times the size of the current JSIS boundaries – with which they have consistently been requiring 3 incoming kindergartens.
So yes, kids who live literally across the street could be bussed up to Green Lake and the fact that the school board has chosen to draw the geozone larger in order to not have any Wallingford parents who are currently in an immersion school out of the geozone (apparently, based on the most recent changes, U district parents don’t count) means that kids who live close to JSIS have an even lower chance of getting in (and probably means that those McDonald parents that have been drawn out of their geozone have a lower chance of getting in to an immersion school).
If you are concerned and this doesn’t make sense to you, I encourage you to write to the school board at [email protected] to support a more rational geozone that is based on distance from the school to encourage walkability (and that doesn’t have to be changed from year to year as suggested in the post about Sherry Carr’s take on the zone above). Some predictability and sanity in school board planning would be nice.
My experience at Greenlake a few years back was not so hot- they promised advanced learning for gifted kids but it was in name only. All the test score lunacy meant they focused their attention on the kids just below standard. We had to put our kid elsewhere after he nearly died of boredom. He’s been happy enough in SPS since then.
It is best socially if your kid is exposed to more races, cultures, and socioeconomic backgrounds. Also, demographics determine test scores much more than school quality. On the flip side, it is best if your kids are in a classroom that will challenge them academically, and a school with lots of behavior problems or that’s focused on getting kids to standard may not do that.
That final statement is not a popular opinion here.
I have no kids, but I do pay taxes that support public schools. As someone said above, `we’re all entitled’ to a great neighborhood school. If Seattle Public Schools has allowed BF Day or any other public school to become a place where your kid isn’t going to get a great education, then they should certainly fix that – and it seems very likely to me that part of that fix is to keep the social mix from leaning too hard to low income, recent immigrants, etc., because while a little diversity is probably a good thing, at some point there could sure be too much of a good thing. If that means some affluent kids get to go to a school their parents wouldn’t have picked, well, that’s how it works in the big city.
ok – so there is no “walk zone”, just a geo-zone. so kids literally across the street from both option schools (jsis and mcd) have no more priority in the “geo zone” lottery than kids on the edge of the border. seems really crazy to me – you can see a school but might be arbitrarily denied the ability to attend it. is this the case with all option schools in the district? i thought some had “walk zones” that guaranteed a spot to those within a very close radius?
anyone know?
@Gary – I think the original idea behind geozone was something small. Certainly no guarantees in the current setup, just an earlier spot in the line. It’s worth pointing out that the current Eckstein boundaries have kids across the street going to Jane Adams instead. Those families have complained loudly enough, that I think that’s likely to be changed. If you don’t like the plan, you should speak up and send feedback.
Personally, I’d rather see the geozone much smaller and, most of all, in a non gerrymandered shape.
I’ve never supported the neighborhood school concept and this thread reinforces my opinion. We all live in one school district, and no one has any ownership of, or right to, a place in any school. School directors who act otherwise are violating their responsibilities to every student in the district, even those who do not have parents who can mount a campaign to change school boundaries and assignment policies in their favor. Moreover, every citizen of Seattle has a responsibility to the entire district, something that is lost when people act as though their sole focus should be on the schools nearest to them.
Our kid faced a long bus ride every day from kindergarten through the end of high school, but got an excellent education that exposed him to people who don’t live anywhere near Wallingford, and exposed them to a Wallingford kid. I think he and they are better for it.
I am frustrated with trying to understand some points here. I am for neighborhood schools. Look! Kids do nOT nee dto be on buses for 30-45 minutes each way each day. kids need to be in reading, drama, playing outsidee, in tai chi, in tennis basketbal, dog training, leaf raking extra tiem each day.. BUT NOT in buses being forced to sit when their bodies naturally need to move.
And our school district does not have money for extra stupid forced bus rides.( ok well, there is some recent tv investigation re misuse of funds). Or, think environmentally- reduce use of gas, keepo freeways and streets clearer from extra buses.
I would agree that we don’t have a right to a spot in a specific school. The boundaries have and will continue to change. With constantly changing demographics and school popularity, that’s really unavoidable.
That said, I think we deserve some consistency and common sense from the school district. The new plan aspires to support neighborhood schools, but it looks like SPS planners were drunk when drawing Wallingford boundaries. We’ve got kids whose closest school is BF Day being sent to Greenlake (the 4th closest school). We’ve got kids whose closest school is JSIS not in the geozone. We’ve got kids for whom JSIS is the 4th closest public elementary school, and yet they are *in* the geozone.
@jsh – You make an interesting point. I hadn’t noticed that the outpouching to Stone Way area is actually closer to McDonald, BF Day and West Woodland than it is to JSIS.
@parent – I was actually looking at Greenlake Elementary, not West Woodland. But it looks like you are right.
So let me amend: The SE corner of Stone and 50th is in the JSIS geozone, even though JSIS is the *5th* closest public elementary school by Google Maps walking directions.
Wow, go away for a week and you miss a lot.
@ Wallydad. My neighbors have already done a great job calling BS, but I’d like to take a quick pass of my own at your greatest hits in this thread:
You said
“Half of Wallingford being in BF Day is going to hurt our children’s educations and our home values. It takes 10 years to turn around a bad school. Is our little corner of Seattle going to wait that long?
What makes BF Day an undesirable school include factors such as:
1. “Class mixing”, where low-income, high-needs students are mixed into general classrooms. This is a bad policy that, in California, has been definitively proven to be destructive to the education of both low-income students and students from a more privileged or gifted background. Everyone loses.
2. Unstable leadership, where successful principals and teaching leaders have been moved from school to school. The SPS, more than BF Day, is to be blamed for this.
3. Poor test scores, well below the state average. Whatever else you want to say about BF Day, by every benchmark available it’s a poorly performing school.”
———–
1. You are not God, so please bring your data on “class-mixing”.
2. The last principal at BF Day was there 14 years. What instability are you talking about?
3. My neighbors have done a great job explaining this already, but BF Day historically has had 40% or more of their students participating in RFL (Reduced Free Lunch). This will eventually come down to under 10% now that BFD isn’t an Option School for the south end. There was a pretty clean mapping to the performance of poor kids (usually with parents that either don’t value education or aren’t able to spend time with them on their schooling due to working.)
If you look at the actual data from SPS, you can see the RFL performance broken out and recalculate BF Day’s scores without it. In 2010 I did just that and found that if you pull out the 42% of kids who got a 46% in reading proficiency, the remaining 58% not living in or near poverty averaged 76% proficiency
Since that time BF Day added Spectrum, so the best learners don’t have to leave for another school as they get older (bringing average scores down) and NSAP will reduce our RFL to, at most, the state average within 5 years.
So I would expect a miraculous turnaround in 5 years, and guess what? Nothing changed about the education!
The ironic part of your argument is that you are trying to do for your kids what those poor families were trying to do for their kids by putting them on a bus 2 hrs a day. They too wanted their kids to go to a better school and be safe.
But yet, what you are advocating now is to keep out the riff raff out of Wallingford so our average test scores are higher and our home prices stay up.
@WallyDad continued
You also said
“So what Carr is saying is that all the folks between he number streets and Stone Way, and south of 40, are expendable. They don’t deserve access to quality public education or a viable shot at an option school (getting into Salmon Bay outside the geozone? Fat chance.)
It’s clear now that Sherry Carr has sold Wallingford out. Next election, we will remember this.
Many people complain about “privileged” Wallyhooders. Most of us aren’t privileged; my family and I certainly aren’t. We work extremely hard jobs, many hours, to afford a home in this neighborhood, all so that our children can choose to go to top-notch schools.
That choice – that prize we worked hard for – has been stripped from us by Sherry Carr and the SPS. We don’t have a choice now. So, our families look at what else we can cut to send our kids to private school, or seriously consider sending them to one of the lowest-performing schools in the city.”
———–
You chose to put your kid in public schools. There are not supposed to be “better” public schools than others. We are not supposed to be trying to game the system, then get upset when the boundaries change. If everyone moves into the JSIS district, then of course the boundaries will need to contract because the school itself is not getting any bigger.
@WallyDad continued
You also said
“I disagree with your logic. Of course environment impacts achievement. If the logic you present is factual, I don’t have to send my kids to any school, anywhere. They’ll just test well at home. ”
———-
FloorPie is right. Study after study shows parents/home life are the number one factor and peers are 2nd in most every study. This is why all of the poorest schools serve breakfast, have after school homework programs, etc. To give the kids some stability and a full stomach, at least until dinnertime.
The major impact of environment is when your kids don’t feel safe. Once that’s taken care of it’s parents and peers, in every study. So hopefully those extra hours you work to live here don’t cut into your time with your kids, because you are the #1 factor in their education.
Last I checked, there are no poor-cooties to worry about. The kids from 98103 with their stable homes and involved parents are doing just fine at any school they attend. –And as peers, they are invaluable to the less fortunate.
@WallyDad continued
You also said
“I appreciate and cheer your passion for your school. I would never condone racism; I am not a racist. I do not condone elitism; I am not an elitist.”
————
Yes, yes you are to both. I know you don’t see it and aren’t going to join the klan any time soon, but it’s a subtle racism like saying “white trash” which on the surface denigrates a subpopulation of Caucasians, but insidiously implies that all of the “usual” trash is of color. And you are wanting the 1-10% of upper income household Tail to wag the SPS dog, so by definition, you are an elitist.
We are ALL entitled to a good education. -But not better than any other place in SPS and not at the expense of the less fortunate.
@WallyDad continued
You also said
“I think the difference between 3-5% bumps, and 20% below state average (~49% below neighboring schools), are indicative, however, of larger social and cultural problems that accompany that many “high-needs” students attending a classroom.
This is why the New Orleans Public School system, with a dropout rate of 42.7%, is not some undiscovered educational gem.”
—————-
No, no, no. I know that’s a simple, convenient thing to believe, because it puts it in your power to just up and move to a magically better school, but the scores don’t indicate the education when the 42% of your school that is on RFL averages 46% on the test. 98103’s scores are just fine.
@WallyDad continued
You also said
“I vote for, and want to elect, officials who will defend my interests and my district. This is the point of democracy.
Sherry Carr has not done that effectively. Wallingford was the loser 3 years ago when they shrunk JS, and is the loser again. If she permits these changes to happen to our small slice of Seattle, she will need to be held accountable next election.”
————–
Self interest is not the point of democracy. Do you seriously think any SPS school board member’s focus should be Wallingford at the expense of the poor?
@WallyDad continued
You also said
“By every possible measure, BF Day does not offer students a high quality education. Especially compared to other neighborhood schools mere blocks away.
Those statements are not even remotely “pretty offensive”.
They should not cause this level of “nausea” and rage.
I’ve been really civil. I think someone called me a racist or segregationist a few posts ago.
Time to put on your “big-boy pants”, neighbors!”
———–
Big boys dig in and find the real problem and deterine fix it. They don’t have a tantrum and try to oust their elected official for not being focused on privileged white people’s problems, and they don’t think they deserve a better experience in SPS than the whole of SPS because they paid a lot for their home.
Before they rant, big-boys see through the information cascade that JSIS test scores have become. (Educated, high income families paid the inflated prices to get language immersion. Not surprisingly those families that value education have kids that do well. (and their peers are from the same sorts of environment. Other well-meaning families see those kids’ scores and want their kid to go there too, so they buy their way in too. Lather, rinse, repeat. Ask yourself, Would one of those kids going to JSIS suddenly become stupid if they change schools? What happens when they all go to Hamilton? By your logic, Hamilton scores should be hampered by the BF Day students.
You declare “By every possible measure, but you only look at one score and the test scores it draws on. You misinterpreted all the data, choosing instead to take the simple average of the test scores. You ignored the 10/10 parent comments on Great Schools to focus on the 4/10 test scores that could possibly lower the value of your home as an investment.
Big boys don’t cry when their house value drops a little. (Were you planning on selling this year or next?) They buy at a price they can afford to pay so they don’t have to worry about market fluctuations. My house has gone up as high as 373% over the last 15 years and is now up around 257% and has been in BF Day zone for the last 14 years.
If you are right about home values being affected by that 4/10 score, then people should be scrambling to buy inside the BF Day boundaries because the demographic changes over the next 5 years will magically rise even if the education wasn’t getting better. Which it is.
@Chris:
I checked out of the thread after a reader (and now yourself) called me racist. This indicated to me that people had stopped talking/listening and were just raging. I get it: proposing that a school with really, really low scores might not be a great school is a crazy, controversial, dangerous idea. I will be sure never to base my beliefs in data ever again. 😉
Thank you for taking the time to read and respond point by point. I disagree with you; you make naive assumptions (a five year miracle?) and would be happy to share data around California’s failed experiment.
Regardless, this is demonstrably not the best forum to answer your rebuttal – and ultimately it doesn’t matter. We’ll see what the council decides soon and as a ‘hood “vote” with our feet and dollars. I will only reiterate that I admire the work of any educator, and salute BF Day’s efforts to improve. This is my final post on this thread.
Not sure how you are going to provide the data if you are done responding. In general though, your response was a defensive, dismissive and cowardly take-my-ball-and-go-home after dominating much of this thread with your “data” and callous concern for your property value, whereas I have taken the time to show you the math.
But I know you need to get back out on Zillow and hold down F5 for realtime updates, so I’ll let you go.
yowie,,, people do look at test scores and that does not make them racist.
This really is a nwighborhood blog and at some point namecalling etc.. may be a reason to delete or block people’s comments. Just a suggextion.
Chris, kudos to you for taking on epistemic closure. It shows that not only are you thoughtful, you are an optimist.
@eeeeew, My presumption of prejudice/racism had nothing to do with the test score comments. It was the initial comments on class-mixing coupled with a seeming belief that 98103 kids will suddenly become stupid if they go to school with lower income kids with miscellaneous disadvantages to overcome. The RFL population in SPS is predominately non-Caucasian. You can’t send your kids to public school with an expectation they will be sheltered and only interact with gifted kids from stable homes. If you want that shelter, send them to private school.
And calling someone a racist is not a direct insult or namecalling intended to hurt them and should not be banned. It’s an opinion based on the interaction. I myself have been called a racist by a reader on Wallyhood for a comment I made. Rather than be insulted, I took it as a cause for introspection on how I was being perceived at that moment and finally understood that reader’s perspective.
@ Anne. Thanks.
Sherry Carr was at JSIS this week to talk with families about the proposed changes to the school. One issue that was raised was the size of the geozone. Sherry Carr was tentatively supportive of a proposal to reduce the size of the geozone to the current JSIS boundaries for the upcoming year in order to increase the chances of acceptance for kids who are close to the school and who are likely to walk to school. She was going to confirm with enrollment the planned number of kindergartens (she seemed a bit surprised that we may only have room for 2 classes) but also wanted to have a clear message that this is something that the community and parents support. We have generated a petition with the goal of gauging community support for this proposal and showing evidence of this support to Sherry Carr and Tracy Libros.
If this is something that you wish to support, we would ask you to please sign our petition (link provided below). Thanks for your consideration.
http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/seattle-public-schools?source=c.em.mt&r_by=9482428
@Parent: do you have a pointer to what the current JSIS boundaries are?
@jsh: Here’s the current attendance area for JSIS:
http://www.seattleschools.org/modules/groups/homepagefiles/cms/1583136/File/Maps/boundarymaps/pdfs/AA_ES_JohnStanford.pdf?sessionid=e661f2433232dd93d13236ffeac4a308