The Seattle School District wouldn't save the $3.6 million a year superintendent Marie Goodloe-Johnson says it would by closing five schools, relocating eight programs and eliminating five programs, according to Madison Middle School teacher Jessie Hagopian.
And Hagopian, the son of former school board member Amy Hagopian, has helped found Educators, Students and Parents for a better Vision of the Seattle Schools (ESP Vision) to keep the schools open.
The money-losing premise is based on an analysis done by ESP Vision parent Meg Dias, he said. Roughly 20 percent of the students in a previous round of school closures left the school district, according to the district's own analysis.
The number of students affected by the current proposal is 3,733, and if the 20-precent mark holds true, that means 746 students will leave the district, each taking $5,311 in yearly state funding and $485 in yearly Initiative-782 funding with them, according to the ESP Vision analysis. The total loss would be $4,323,816 a year, according to figures from Dias.
Seattle Schools disagrees, said spokesman David Tucker, who referred to an analysis prepared by Rachel Cassidy. Schools such as Whitworth that were closed last year already had higher rates of attrition than other schools in the district, she wrote. "So we would have expected high rates of attrition at these schools even if they had not closed," Cassidy added.
New students coming into the system also change the equation. Between January and October 2007, the Seattle school district as a whole lost 4,643 students in grades K-11, according to district figures. "But it gained 4,318 new students," Cassidy wrote, "so the net loss was 325 students."
Numbers aside, there are also broader implications in ESP Vision's focus. Parents, teachers and students of five Seattle schools slated for closure have fought to save each of their individual schools at often-heated school board meetings. ESP Vision, on the other hand, wants to save all of them, Hagopian stressed. "We're trying to unite all the schools."
SASC is planning a rally at school district headquarters at 4:30 p.m. on Jan. 29, the day the school board is scheduled to vote on the school closures. ESP Vision is planning a march starting at 2 p.m. on Jan. 25 at T.T. Minor, one of the schools slated for closure, Hagopian said.
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