Ed. note: Learn more about how the New Student Assignment Plan will impact Mount Baker at a community discussion on Mon., Oct. 19, from 7 to 9 pm at Mount Baker Community Club (2811 Mt. Rainier Dr.).
By Eric Brown
I’m sure most of you have heard by now that Seattle Public Schools is overhauling their student assignment plan which I think is positive and will overall help foster better public schools and neighborhoods for the city. Whether you have kids or not, whether you send your children to public schools or private, this effects you as stronger public schools makes stronger, more desirable neighborhoods.
Unfortunately the proposed plan has serious, negative, lasting implications for the Mt. Baker neighborhood and community.
According to the City, South Irving Street is the northern boundary, South Genesee Street the southern and Martin Luther King, Jr. Way and Rainier Avenue South are the western boundaries. Very likely what you also consider our great neighborhood.
Seattle Public Schools is proposing to cut the Mt. Baker neighborhood in half, sending our children to two different schools elementary schools, one of which is not in our neighborhood, and two different high schools. See the proposed redistricting maps here.
You will see they effectively want to split Mt. Baker as follows:
- For elementary school they want to use McClellan as the divider – they are proposing sending children north of McClellan to Leschi Elementary and children south of McClellan will stay at John Muir Elementary
- For high school they want to use Walker as the divider – kids north of Walker will go to Garfield High, kids sound of Walker will go to Franklin High
What makes our neighborhood so great are the people – being able to come together around common interests and principles to support and serve the community. In part what is so great about sending our children to the neighborhood public schools is it promotes and fosters community commitment and builds stronger community relationships. By splitting our neighborhood in two, much of the natural common bond of having all of our kids at the same school is severed and community commitment across the board suffers.
Seattle Public School’s proposed boundaries for assigning Mt. Baker children needs to change to reflect and be consistent with what the City defines as, and most of us consider to be, the Mt. Baker neighborhood.
Our Mt. Baker children all should be able to go the same neighborhood school together K-12. This is especially true for the elementary level, McClellan is an absurd northern border for John Muir and southern border for Leschi. Our kids should be able to stay in Mt. Baker neighborhood and attend John Muir as they have for decades – not have to go over on the other side of the I-90 lid.
Learn more about the proposed New Student Assignment Plan here. Comment via e-mail here.
John Muir Elementary School is located at 3301 South Horton Street in Mt. Baker. Photo/do communications, inc.
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{ 11 comments }
So tell me, if your children aren’t already in school, what community are you splitting? Sports teams have kids from a number of schools already, so that wouldn’t change. What, from the kids’ perspective, is being lost?
In addition, given that elementary capacity numbers are on the rise, where would you move the line? In order to include all of Mt. Baker at John Muir, you’d have to kick out kids who live south of Muir. Where do you propose they go to school?
And in my opinion, this is more of an issue that many say that Leschi isn’t a high quality school. Call a spade a spade and say that people don’t want to send their kids there.
That leads me to my biggest complaint about the new Student Assignment Plan: Quality Schools and equitable access to them. If we had schools that were high performing in every part of the District, we wouldn’t be having these petty conversations about the lines “tearing up our beloved communities”.
We should be focusing our efforts in advocating for high quality schools in SE Seattle. That is worth being up in arms about. That is where our kids are being screwed over.
That needs to change!
I’d also like to add that many families in and south of Mt. Baker would prefer to be a part of the Central area because that means their kids would feed to Washington and then on to Garfield. They’d much prefer that to the John Muir, Mercer, Franklin feeder pattern.
This might be a case of “be careful what you wish for”. While you might prefer John Muir to Leschi, families in your area would want the opposite at the middle and high school levels.
This again isn’t about “community”! It’s about getting the best school in your area. Just ‘fess up!
The quickest way to raise test scores (so the Administration looks good) is to shift higher achievers from one school to another. It’s the dilution factor.
Check out the 5th grade Science Scores
(Muir vs. Leschi)
3rd Grade WASL Reading (66.1%/50.0%)
3rd Grade WASL Math (64.5%/47.1%)
4th Grade WASL Reading (75.0%/50%)
4th Grade WASL Writing (79.5%/43.2)
4th Grade WASL Math (64.3%/31.8%)
5th Grade WASL Reading (80.4%/55.0%)
5th Grade WASL Math (58.8%/52.5%)
5th Grade WASL Science (56.9% /22.5%)
It’s not neighborhood schools the the Board wants…it’s PR.
What’s the alternative here? Is John Muir big enough to guarantee spots for all the kids in the entire Mt. Baker neighborhood as shown in that map? It doesn’t seem like it.
Do you think we get bad schools in the south end because some push for low-income housing? Or do bad schools in the south end cause low-income housing? I hear push for low-income housing but I do not hear a push for better schools or for better paying jobs in the South end.
Anonymous, if you haven’t heard about a push for better schools in the South End, it’s because you haven’t been listening. For several years at least!
Whenever the Seattle School District comes out with “a plan” I feel very distrustful because they do not disclose the decision making process. In this case, what is the demographic data that led to the boundary maps. What are the anticipated numbers for each school vs capacity. Etc., etc., etc. They only talk in very general terms (Excellence for all). They also do not detail how they plan to help make a failing school more successful (Rainier Beach High School). It’s impossible to hold someone accountable if you don’t know what they are doing.
I can look at the proposed boundary maps, and, except for my little corner of the world, not have a clue as to whether it’s a good plan or not. If I looked at a boundary map and saw that my friends’s/neighbor’s children, living a couple of blocks away, are not going to the same school as my kids, I might come to the conclusion that it’s a bad plan.
I don’t think we should be criticizing each other for our dismay at the boundary map. I think we should be holding SPS accountable on their decision making process, and demand that they tell us EXACTLY what that decision-making process is.
Living in the deep south (south Beacon Hill) the situation when my kids were high school age was great. They both got to go to Garfield, one because Music was important to him, the second because his brother went there. They both had a very positive experience in that school.
It didn’t bother us that they had to take city buses, we felt that was enlarging their horizons. Not sure I like the new policies though.
I respect the opinions of those thinking this is only about school quality – of course that is important and both Leschi and Muir should have solid programs, maybe both Spectrum and APP – but this is a much bigger issue. There has been increasing momentum in the past few years to rally Mt. Baker families around the neighborhood public school. To that end, more and more families are choosing John Muir over private school. Children and their families are walking to school, meeting at the park, gathering at the community club. This has been a vision many years in the making and is finally coming to fruition. Mt. Baker families are coming together and building a strong sense of neighborhood and community for confronting crime, pedestrian safety, traffic and schools.
Additionally, John Muir is .5 miles from my house and a 10 minute walk for my children. Leschi elementary is over twice as far away – 1.5 miles at least a 45 minute walk, we recently walked the route and timed it. The bottom line is, this plan is bad for the neighborhood and my children will not be able to walk to Leschi Elementary. This is true for every child who lives close to the new southern boundary for Leschi Elementary and Northern boundary for John Muir in Mt. Baker. These kids will now be bused to school. This plan is not in the best interest of my children’s health, the health of Mt. Baker children, our neighborhood, or keeping a green community.
Why do white people have a problem with the school boards redistricting? Why should the white enclave of Mount Baker be held together? The north end has less low income housing and poverty – go there if you want better schools – you can’t have it all.
so the south end wants more low income housing, poverty and bad schools?
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