In a post on Facebook, Lisa Maves says:
Went up to Wallingford Park tonight with my daughter. We saw this and it brought both of us to tears. 3 portables at Hamilton, presumably to house overflowing students this fall. And the basketball courts are gone.
Presumably, these portable classrooms will be in place only until the new Eagle Staff Middle School is completed and opened in the fall of 2017.
In a letter to Hamilton Middle School families, Principal Tip Blish writes;
As I write, we have permits for the electrical work and we expect them to be powered tomorrow. A fire inspection (expected Saturday) will allow us to move in. That’s tight for our teachers but Brandon, Erin, Dan, and Nichole are ready for all contingencies.
The playspace that is now the site for the portables isn’t completely gone, but it is a learning space now. Students will be able to use that area, and we are also planning to use part of Wallingford Park as the weather and field conditions allow. Half of the gym is open for our use as well, but, with a PE class held in the other half, we will be limiting its use to ensure those students are getting an optimal learning environment.
It’s great that Hamilton students will still have some space to be active. The rest of us will just have to wait for the court to open by the transfer station in order to shoot some hoops.
Image courtesy of Rachel F.
Please start calling the portables “johnsonville” in honor of the city council member we ended up electing for our district. Since being voted in he’s done absolutely nothing on developer impact fees that could fund more schools and playgrounds, instead putting all his energy into the upzone of Wallingford. So when people ask about the portables at Hamilton, say “oh you mean johnsonville?” It might be a good start to getting him out of office.
That’s not how school funding works.
Yes it is, for new capacity. See page 15 of this report:
http://www.seattle.gov/dpd/cs/groups/pan/@pan/documents/web_informational/s010015.pdf
Bryan just believes everyone else should subsidize developers, rather than of make developers (gasp!) actually pay for their impacts on neighborhoods.
As for school funding, it’s funny how the urbanists love to paint themselves as pro-environment. But they’re more than happy to perpetuate the clear-cutting of state-owned lands by the DNR to fund schools, just so long as their developer friends don’t have to pay their fair share.
“Enabling other human beings to live here” is a positive, not a negative impact.
The only people who are being enabled are developers who don’t give a rat’s a55 about providing affordability, or about their impact.
The homes they are building stand empty? In that case they are losing a lot of money and should go bankrupt soon!
Oh no, they most certainly won’t go bankrupt. That’s because they won’t be AFFORDABLE.
I’m not saying it can’t be done, but it’s a heavy lift and blaming Johnson for it not happening is like a gazillion steps removed – read the recommendation on page 23 of your link. Basically “we have no idea how or what to do at this time, more study”
This is the connection I see- The old city council pursued this developer impact fee study, the new city council put it on a dusty shelf on behalf of their developer-sponsors. Johnson in particular is the worst of the lot- he’s spending 100% of his effort pushing the downtown developer-created HALA legislation down our throats and completely ignoring the impacts of the legislation. Where does funding for new schools and land for new schools come from in HALA?
Look, I’m all for more density, but how Johnson is going about it is nakedly political and we’re getting screwed as a result. Not only is he avoiding offending developers by not speaking of developer impact fees, he’s leaving the wealthiest communities that voted for him completely untouched- neighborhoods with much lower density and with very low walk scores- basically everything East or North of the U-District. He’s certainly not upzoning or looking to convert the private, invitation-only golf course at View Ridge to public housing, is he?
I think the reason is that Wallingford supported Maddux 60% to 40%, so Johnson sees us as an expendable community that can’t get him voted out of office on our own. The result is he’s wrapping Wallingford with a bow and handing it to developers and density advocates. His reelection relies on using developer money to persuade the idealistic density advocates and rich folk on the other side of I-5 to vote for him again. We’re his sacrificial lamb.
I doubt he cares about Wallingford votes one way or the other. We’re going to be bedrooms on the fringe of his colossal U district Son of South Lake Union upzone. That’s the neighborhood he’s handing to the developers, kicking and screaming and fighting for its life. I suppose you’ve read the comments section in the transit blog, that’s his constituency, and unfortunately it works – ordinary voters don’t care about this stuff.
You have a good point efbrazil.
That makes me wonder, is Councilmember Johnson going to do anything about the proposed loading zone that Seattle Public Schools wants to site for Lincoln High School right along the new greenway on 43rd? Is that his version of “Transportation Choices”. Is he going to fight the school district to keep our kids, family and community members safe as large capacity trucks back up on our residential neighborhoods during our heaviest commute times for walkers and bikers? Is he going to fight for us and tell Seattle Public Schools that they’ll have to shift their loading zone to the parking lot at the north end of Lincoln High School so our streets will be safer? I hope so. But I doubt it. He has written off Wallingford…. and he hopes we suffer collective amnesia when he goes up for re-election.
I sure hope the buses load an unload NORTH of the school. Plenty of room, and it is not a giant thruway. AND as i write this, I sure hope parents slow down when driving down N. 43rd. If they don’t, sooner or later there will be a car/pedestrian killing…not “accident” it does not deserve to be called that.
At the Lincoln public meeting earlier this week the School District rep said that the portables at Hamilton are temporary. They have several middle schools opening next school year and will redraw the Hamilton catchment area boundaries so that the student population matches the design capacity of the building. He promised the portables will go away next year and will not come back. Of course we all know how worthless SSD promises are but we can try to hold them to it.
Do you know if they are moving APP / HCC out, or will it just be a catchment area change?