Community members and faculty were shocked and then disheartened last week after learning about the Seattle School District's cost-cutting proposal to close 10 schools.
Faced with a $20 million budget gap for the 2006-07 school year, the district has recommended closing three North End alternative schools. Bagley Elementary School and John Marshall Alternative High School are slated for closure, while Summit K-12 would become a middle school.
These are all schools that currently house alternative-learning programs, and each one plans to prove to the district's leadership that their programs are successful and will continue to be.
Rallying support
While the initial reaction was disbelief, members of Bagley's Parent Teacher Association (PTA) and site council have already begun to rally against closure in an attempt to change the district's perspective.
"We are ready to show the district that we are not the weakest program," said Bagley PTA president Don Materson.
The district's rationale for closing Bagley is that it has the fourth-lowest student capacity in the region and is in a building that is in the second-worst shape.
However, Materson notes that if closed, children in the school's Montessori program would be moved to Greenwood Elementary School, while children in the regular program would be dispersed to other schools.
Bagley's Montessori program allows students at different grade levels to work together and learn in a collaborative environment.
"Our Montessori and regular programs are so beautifully integrated and work as a cohesive whole," said Gretchen Schlomann, site council co-president. "It is going to take a long time to rebuild that if they are separated."
This will also affect many parents who enroll their children in both programs. These parents will be forced to either leave the Montessori program or send their children to two different schools.
To prevent this, parents with careers as business analysts have been evaluating the criteria used to select Bagley for closure, as well as giving testimonials to Seattle School Board member Darlene Flynn and other community and district officials at PTA meetings.
Materson, who took his second-grade daughter Madeleine out of private school to attend a first- through third-grade Montessori classroom at Bagley, said he loves the leadership and diversity that this program offers. He, like an overwhelming majority of parents polled at a PTA meeting last week, said he would look at other programs before sending his child to Greenwood.
'A battle to the very end'
A community of students educating one another is something that Summit K-12 also would lose if the school is transformed into both a K-5 and 6-8, said Summit principal Ryan Stevens.
"We have multi-age classrooms where students are learning and teaching one another," Stevens said. "That doesn't happen in a regular school."
The school's Parent Group Board funds a dance program, a pottery program and a yearly drama trip to the Ashland Shakespeare Festival. All of which Sue Nevins, co-chair of the board, fears will be lost.
"We get a lot of parent support, so it is going to be a battle to the very end," Nevins said. "We are not just going to accept it."
Parents and faculty have been working together to write vignettes about students who have retuned to either teach or enroll their children in Summit's program.
Nevins plans to have the board members and superintendent walk through the school so they can see all that Summit offers.
"The fact that a school is closing does not reflect that it is a bad school. It is based on region-by-region analysis" said Patti Spencer, the school district's communications manager.
There are 400 more middle-school students than seats in the North East region, which is why the district proposes moving Summit's grades 9 through 12.
John Marshall Alternative High School also is being considered for closure because of its more than 400 empty seats, the state of its old building and its small school site. All of Marshall's programs would move to the Wilson-Pacific building at 1330 N. 90th St., except the night-school program, which will move to Meany Middle School in the Central Area.
Students' reactions
In the midst of proposed closures and rallying to keep schools open, Bagley principal Birgit McShane has had to figure out a way to discuss school closures with her elementary students.
"Some of the students coming off the bus had tears in their eyes, and a first-grader gave me a card that said, 'I love my school. I don't want to leave my school,'" Mc Shane said.
Bagley, like other schools, will hold an assembly and send memos home to explain school closures to their students and parents.
"Closing schools is the last thing that the district wants to do," Spencer said, "but we believe ardently that it is in the district's best interest."
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