Every since John Stanford died, Seattle Public Schools have become a mockery.
Actually… I should say the parents and the school board have become the mockery.
In Seattle, there is the unfortunate case where rich parents make the sad choice to put their children in private schools and be extremely elitist. Who can blame them. Private schools do not fall under No Child Left Behind requirements, they have no state mandates, and a private school can practically kick any student out for any reason. Public schools are not allowed to do this.
The other problem that Seattle faces is a growing single population. Families are moving. Or in reality the people who want to families can not afford to buy in Seattle and do not want to live in crappy town-homes or condos with children. So the student population takes another hit. Seattle is no Sleepless… it is becoming Childless in Seattle. Most married couples here have made the choice not to have kids because they are so expensive (and good for them!).
The most reasonable solution to this problem is to condense schools. When a school is meant to hold 500 elementary students, it is not economical to have only 100-200 students. If a school is a dump and there is room to consolidate, it should be done.
But what has happened is that there are uptight parents who do not want to face the facts. They want to have smaller classes sizes and bla bla bla, but they are not willing to close down the school they like. So they bully the school board and the school board allows to be bullied for some reason and so all the schools remain open and money is wasted. Funneled away to heating and support staffing like custodians and such. It is a shame.
I am not a complete expert on all the school buildings in Seattle, but I can tell you a couple things:
Rainier Beach: The school is a dump. I should say the classrooms are a dump. It has a nice sports facility, but no one has bothered to update the classrooms. Rats run rampid at anything they can eat. I taught summer school there a few years ago. The building is a dump. Students are great. Classrooms a dump. They have recently remodeled Cleveland High School. Consolidate the schools. Change the name so it becomes a new school.
Too many Elementary schools: Schools with only 100-200 that were made for like 400-500 are so wasteful it makes my head spin. I love the Lowell school. It is 3 blocks from my home. It has a folksy feel to it, but if it can not get the numbers, close it.
Middle schools: Most have bad raps. Middle schools are poor choices anyway. I would suggest elementary schools become K-8 and then you have 9-12 high schools. Middle Schools/Junior Highs are feeding grounds for naughty behavior. When you consolidate raging hormonal students all at one school, there is bound to be trouble. And most middle schools in Seattle are located at the neither regions of the district. Bleck.
And I can go on and on and on. In a nut shell, there are not enough students to keep all the buildings sustainably open. So schools must be closed. But selfish lame ass parents are fighting this, but then go back and vote no on the school levy. They bitch and complain about this and that with schools when money is being sucked away because their prized dump of a school always remains open. Get over yourselves. Put your home made card board signs away and let the school board do its job.
School Board. stand strong. Let these bullies yell and scream. The worse they can do is take their children to private school. Let them. You do what is good for the district and teaching and learning. When those parents get masters in education and PHD’s in administration, then they can tell you what to do. Until then, they are just being selfish whiners.
December 18, 2008 at 3:28 pm
“Schools with only 100-200 that were made for like 400-500 are so wasteful it makes my head spin. I love the Lowell school. It is 3 blocks from my home. It has a folksy feel to it, but if it can not get the numbers, close it.”
Lowell DOES have around 500 students, and is totally jammed. There are so many students there that they can’t have all-school events because the fire code won’t allow it. The original reason for closing it was the building condition, not underenrollment.
December 18, 2008 at 7:35 pm
Ok… So Lowell is full, but here is what I expected. It is a dump. Do you know how much is wasted on a school that is in poor condition? Tons. I am sure that all 500 students do not live on Capitol Hill. Let’s bus them to a school that is not crappy and not waste money. Other schools are not full and are in better condition. Close the dumps down.
December 19, 2008 at 4:31 pm
In fact the cost per student is relatively low. The building doesn’t cost any more to run than others, and being full has relatively low administrative costs. The building is already modified for the dedicated special ed classes (which they finally got around to realizing would cost way too much to disperse, as a lot of the schools where these kids would be going didn’t have the facilities to handle them and would need retrofitting). Given that they decided to keep the special ed students on site, it wouldn’t make any sense not to have another program there as well, whether APP or regular ed or both.