It was a bright, sunny Saturday, the first of October. Up on Beacon Hill, the Rainier Valley Co-operative Preschool held a harvest festival. Apples from the orchard at Dr. Jose Rizal Park were pressed into cider. A bake sale and no-pressure collection cans brought in cash to pay the teachers who make a difference for a small school in the basement of the Beacon Hill Lutheran Church.
Preschools and most kindergartens are small and very local. Public elementary schools — often the next step in children’s education — attract a larger level of parental support and perhaps the most support of any pre-college school.
In Seattle, the large learning facilities are universities and colleges; yet, the ones that matter most are Seattle Public Schools, K-12, arguably the private schools where the fortunate go, certainly community schools from Ballard to Beacon Hill, where moms and dads, sons and daughters, make education real.
What’s happening in our schools arose in the headlines recently.
At University Prep, a multiracial student was allegedly so bullied that his parents complained, and he was expelled for not fitting in after his third year.
Following two years of torment, he told his folks. They engaged the school, which made up a reason to force him out, rather than take on the privileged. The reason? Why, he allegedly didn’t fit in.
Balance this with the hazing of Garfield High School kids by upperclassmen at the arboretum. At last count, 9 kids were in the docket.
Organized bullying at a public high school gets more notice than three high-schoolers and one middle-schooler at Lakeside School recently getting tossed out for allegedly using drugs off-campus. Lakeside is Puget Sound’s most exclusive, prestigious, private school; Bill Gates calls it his alma mater. It’s a powerful, influential spot, with a lot of money.
It’s no wonder rich kids don’t make the headlines.
It is a wonder why the most controversial issue facing education in Seattle is not being covered by The Seattle Times, the weeklies and on-line sources of news.
The biggest issue confronting Seattle schools today isn’t drugs. It’s not the chowderheads who briefly took over the arboretum and turned it into a diaper-and-spanking initiation extravaganza. It’s not those Lakeside teens who allegedly got busted by their classmates, either. It’s not the alleged institutional racism that now colors University Prep.
It’s the redistricting of elementary schools.
Neighborhoods consideration?
Seattle Public Schools is redrawing the maps of our neighborhoods, without considering what neighborhoods mean.
In implementing the Building Excellence IV Levy passed last February, the district is now engaged in enrollment planning based on what it calls “growth boundaries.” As new schools are built and existing ones expanded, the district argues that, “to use this increased capacity efficiently, school attendance boundaries must be re-aligned.”
You’ll find literature on-line at the seattleschools.org website; yet, nowhere will you find stated — as was clear at the five public meetings held the week of Sept. 23 through Oct. 1 — that walking access to neighborhood schools is not a factor in the decision-making process. It was so grossly ignored that parents citywide are planning a response to force Seattle Public Schools to maintain neighborhood schools, ones where kids can walk to class.
In a bizarre transportation scheme, grade-school students who live close to School A would be forced into a more-distant School B, while School B students would end up at School A. This demonstration of circular logic does belong in a classroom as an example of uncritical thinking, though it should not be applied to classrooms.
On Oct. 8, the Seattle Council Parents Teachers Student Association (PTSA) organized a strategy meeting at the Lakewood-Seward Park Community Club. No district representatives were invited, so tactics could be freely discussed. A public statement has not been made from this working group, yet things are obviously in the works.
On Oct. 10, the most influential pedestrian advocacy group in Seattle, Feet First, demanded the school district change its “growth boundary” criteria to include walkability.
Jen Cole, the Safe Routes to School program director with Feet First, said, “If the Seattle School District successfully incorporates walkability into its boundary calculations, we will see benefits in student health, learning and economic savings for years to come.”
Feet First executive director Lisa Quinn added, “With one yellow bus route costing roughly the equivalent of a new classroom teacher, there’s great sense in maximizing safe-walk options.”
Taking apart the village
It’s not just the children who will be affected by Seattle Public Schools’ plan. The neighborhoods and the communities they support will also be adversely affected should the plan go through. Families with commitments to their local schools have commitments to their neighborhoods. The informal villages we create in our urban setting help raise children by encouraging safe environments where they can walk to school, make friends and grow civically.
Seattle Public Schools’ “Growth Boundaries” initiative would take that village apart.
So, this modest proposal to the administrators who are cooking this plan: Take it off the stove. Is defeating community a lesson we really want to teach the children of Seattle?
CRAIG THOMPSON is a longtime community activist. To comment on this column, write to CityLivingEditor@nwlink.com.
[Editor's note: Craig Thompson’s statements about “organized bullying” and “institutional racism” at University Prep are the opinion of the author and reflects only one side of the story.
University Prep has publicly denied these allegations and, in the months following the filing of the lawsuit, has found no evidence to support them. At University Prep, discrimination or bullying in any form are never tolerated, according to the school’s policies and culture.]