By Tracy Record
West Seattle Blog editor
Toward the start of Marty McLaren?s first community-conversation meeting since her election as West Seattle?s representative on the Seattle Public Schools Board of Directors, there was a sudden wave of suspense.
Three days before the Saturday morning meeting, McLaren had told her fellow board members (WSB coverage here) she would seek to amend the district?s recommendation for short-term school-crowding relief (aka ?capacity management?) by removing the plan to open the ex-Boren Junior High (5915 Delridge Way SW) as temporary home for an ?option? elementary school focused on STEM (science/tech/engineering/math).
But suddenly on Saturday morning, there she was, saying, ?Personally, (a STEM option school) really resonates with me.?
Was she about to say she had changed her mind? You could almost hear a few people holding their breath. Then: ?In spite of how enthusiastic I happen to be, I think it?s premature, I think we need a master plan, especially after all this turmoil.?
Moments earlier, McLaren, a Puget Ridge resident, had actually apologized for that ?turmoil? ? though it predated her board tenure, now in its second month.
For most of the 2-hour meeting, she listened, as the 17 attendees took turns speaking, often with passion and emotion. She led the meeting humbly, relinquishing timekeeping control to the attendee who proved most dexterous with the timer used to ensure everyone got a turn, apologizing when she couldn?t find a letter she had wanted to read to the group.
She began with her backstory (much of which we detailed in our post-election interview, here), time as a classroom teacher, involvement in the school system as a parent, and then an epiphany about the math program?s inadequacies ? the issue that brought her some measure of semi-fame before she ran.
And then, after asking for self-introductions from the attendees, who sat in a wide circle in the Southwest Library?s upstairs meeting room, there was that apology.
?We have to clean up the mess that was made a couple of years ago,? with two West Seattle campuses closed in two years (Fairmount Park and Genesee Hill), and one elementary program ended (Cooper), with assignment of its campus to one of the programs moved from a closed campus, followed by the implementation of a ?neighborhood schools? philosophy that came with attendance boundaries many saw as illogical, and beyond. ?It?s a real mess because of the boundary issues and the pain that has been caused to so many families and students.?
That pain took many forms ? the pain of being ousted from a closing school, or the pain of being vilified by members of other school communities who claimed certain schools were throwing others under the bus, or the pain of living yards or blocks from a school your child couldn?t attend because of a seemingly bizarre boundary, and now, the pain of overcrowded schools with oversized classes.
The introductions at Saturday morning?s meeting included mentions of affiliations with many of the district?s schools in the area, including Arbor Heights, Gatewood, Lafayette, Sanislo, Schmitz Park, West Seattle elementaries. One woman with a preschooler, looking toward her child?s future as an SPS student, said her family ?can see Fairmount Park (Elementary) from our house? but is in the Gatewood assignment area.
The future of Fairmount Park ? closed in 2007, a candidate for reopening next year or later ? loomed as a subject of concern and curiosity, particularly in connection with the proposed STEM elementary at Boren, and where it might be permanently housed once the district has a few more years for bigger renovation and construction projects ? would FP be its permanent home, or become a neighborhood school?
No answers yet.
But many tried to turn the talk to logic. A strong sentiment: Don?t create one new school for a science/tech/engineering/math focus, strengthen the science/math curriculum at all schools.
This sentiment intensified after the group heard from Schmitz Park Elementary teacher Craig Parsley, who strenuously advocated creation of the new school. He spoke of Schmitz Park?s now-famous rise to exceptional student success in math and science by refusing to settle for the district?s curriculum mandates, particularly the ?Everyday Math? coursework that SP has replaced with rigorous, traditional ?Singapore Math.?
Imagine an entire school focused on math and science excellence, finally preparing the next generation for the jobs that require such expertise, he said.
He was so compelling, McLaren had even said that after talking to Parsley about his interest in and advocacy for that kind of school, she grew more excited about it. But ? not immediately, since, she said, ?the root issue is the siting of more neighborhood schools and the boundaries for them ? option programs might start out in neighborhood schools.?
Again, her dilemma was right out there in the open: She acknowledged hearing from people ?who have been working on this for a long time,? who believe that doing something ? launching a STEM option elementary at Boren ? ?will show some forward motion among the chaos. ? I can see both sides.?
?But we don?t,? interjected an attendee.
Here are highlights from what was said in the first turn around the room:
*?Every kid can get a quality education if we invest in the schools we have,? said a mom who?s also a teacher. If ?best practices? are used, she said, ?all of our schools will rise up together.? She declared the option school to be a ?bad idea.?
*A mother who said her child?s kindergarten class has 30 students said she does support opening an option school now, because ?something needs to be done now.? She predicted it would draw better than school officials think, saying her child had been #30 on the waitlist for Pathfinder K-8, West Seattle?s only option school (and did not get in). Asked whether she would send her child to the Boren option school if it?s opened next year, she could not say ?yes? for sure because she and her child are fond of their neighborhood school, and because she doesn?t know where the option school eventually would be housed.
*A father was one of several to express intense concern over the issue of attendance boundaries. He said he had moved from another part of the city because of them. He advocated drawing up ?a long-term plan? so that families will know where the boundaries will be in one year, two years, three years, and so on down the road ? including the longer-term decisions to be made about building new schools. ?Show me a plan and execute it.?
*The next participant to speak picked up where that left off. ?To introduce something like Boren without a long-term plan is just (unthinkable),? he said. ?People have made decisions based on boundaries? as they stand now.
After him, two women both took the stand that instead of creating a new school, resources should be channeled to the ones that are in the system now. ?Fix the math and science in the schools that are failing! The math and science curricula are horrible ??
Teacher Parsley?s first turn was after that. He declared Schmitz Park ?the closest thing (West Seattle has) to a STEM school,? but added that the crowding ? 475 students now, a more than 50 percent increase from the 315-student population of just a few years ago ? is giving the staff trouble ?maintaining the focus we started with.? If the math program is not ?text-based like Everyday Math is,? he said, ?we have no achievement gap when it comes to mathematics,? neither economic nor ethnic. ?We don?t have an achievement gap in science either ? staff works together on a focused, articulated program.? Math and science excellence is the only way to ensure ?an economically viable future? for today?s kids, he said. After an anecdote about employers having to seek qualified, math/science-capable people outside of this area, he said, ?If we wait on STEM and let (it) just happen somewhere down the road, there?s another 10,000 jobs down the road we are not going to have.? He insisted that a STEM-focused option school ?will be the #1 elementary school in Washington State? within five years. (Schmitz Park, he said, is currently #3, after two schools outside this area that are focused on gifted students.)
?Living in Seattle, nobody would argue that math and science are not important,? the next person began. ?But the point is that we have a huge capacity problem, and STEM does not address capacity for two or three more years. Meantime, the surge of enrollment will continue ? at some point we have to stop the building.? Her preferred solution: Reopen Fairmount Park as a neighborhood school.
Expanding and enriching neighborhood schools were what the next person wanted to do see, too. He was the first to suggest that West Seattle could be a ?lab? for developing a better math and science curriculum.
Parsley and McLaren both pointed out along the way that Schmitz Park had offered to coach other schools, but the concept always gets bogged down in the district?s central bureaucracy (McLaren at one point went so far as to say ?district ideologues? blocked prospective curriculum changes; the board currently is considering a policy meant to spell out how schools can get ?waivers? to use different materials, as did Schmitz Park four years ago).
That led in turn to a suggestion that Schmitz Park should be analyzed to ?understand why the program is working, to make sure that the things that are right about it are right at? any new school opened with that kind of a focus.
Another Schmitz Park parent spoke next, saying that while her daughter is at SP now, the most recent boundary changes left her family ?jerked around,? and they?re now in ?the Alki (Elementary zone) lip that is close to The Junction.? She echoed the sentiments of those who want to get on with the long-term planning, and the boundary changes expected to come with it, so they know where things will be in a few years.
Next, another boundary-change supporter: ?I fought against closing Cooper, I saw this coming ? I fought against the boundaries because they don?t make sense, we have people two blocks from schools who can?t go there any more.? She voiced skepticism that a STEM school would be opened next year and then a new neighborhood school in 2013-2014. ?We need time to figure this out together.?
Boundary changes can?t be done for next year, said the next speaker, identifying himself as a Schmitz Park PTA board member, since they are inevitable a few years down the line: ?We want to have to avoid redrawing them twice.? The SP PTA, he said, supports adding more portables at this point ?because we love our community.?
A Gatewood parent who is now in the Roxhill attendance zone said she had just heard about Singapore Math, looking it up after seeing it mentioned on WSB, and wondered: ?Why can?t everyone have it??, perhaps with the funding currently earmarked for fixing up Boren.
McLaren explained that money ?is operations money, and would not be available to propagate (a new curriculum).?
The last person to speak in the first round was a visitor from outside West Seattle, who had words of caution about pushing the potential option school back a year: ?Every year you allow a school to be overcrowded, you are welcoming in a large group of kindergarteners who expect to be there for six years. It?s not a one-year problem, really, at all.?
What our excerpts above don?t adequately reflect is the undercurrent of skepticism and distrust that the district could deliver on promises; there were a few side mentions, for example, of what were supposed to be STEM programs elsewhere that apparently hadn?t turned out the way they were described or envisioned. McLaren, responding to some of the voiced concerns after the first go-round, spoke directly to ?the fact that there is so much distrust of the district,? and asked people to give her, fellow newly elected board member Sharon Peaslee, and newer board members Kay Smith-Blum and Betty Patu a chance: ?We have the possibility of people who are sympathetic and tuned in.? She declared emphatically that ?redraw(ing) the boundaries twice is not anybody?s plan.? And regarding Pathfinder K-8, of which someone had asked ?Why is it ?immune??? she pointed out that it?s West Seattle?s only option school, saying she had visited it on Friday. ?It is a beautiful school ? and yet how unfair, how unfair.?
A woman who yielded her speaking turn in the first go-round suggested Pathfinder be moved to Boren ? where it had been years ago ? and that Cooper return to being a neighborhood school for northeast West Seattle.
And then there was one observation regarding the potential Boren STEM school that hadn?t been voiced previously: If despite the crowding, families at Schmitz Park and Lafayette were likely to stay at those schools because of their academic success, then who would attend the new option school ? students from schools that did not have much if any capacity trouble right now? (The district had said in the last round of community meetings on the topic that, in the south end, Arbor Heights, Roxhill, and West Seattle elementaries all needed more homerooms.)
After the questions and the concerns, McLaren asked the group to ?see what we all agree on.?
There were two main points of agreement: ?Strong math and science? at all schools; new schools for West Seattle.
And with that, McLaren had two more things to say: One ? ?My vote and my recommendations to the rest of the board about West Seattle are going to be informed by these conversations.? Not just the conversation on Saturday, but also the two others coming up tomorrow and next Saturday, as well as online conversation (including this recent WSB comment thread) and what she?s heard directly from constituents. She says she hopes to set up an e-mail list soon, as well as an online place for ongoing conversation (so far, you can find her website here, her Facebook page here). Two ? If you want to address the entire board, don?t wait till the January 18th meeting at which they are scheduled to make the short-term capacity-management decision, amended or not. But don?t unleash a barrage of e-mail, either: ?I encourage you to think about ways to have your input be organized concise and compelling.? (If you do want to speak at the board meeting, signups are usually the preceding Monday ? January 16th, in this case.)
Source: http://westseattleblog.com/2012/01/how-to-clean-up-the-mess-mclarens-first-community-chat
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