This deal was to be settled quite some time ago, according to the Memorandum of Understanding penned by Stuart Sloan and Joseph Olchefske on June 7, 2002.
But the School Board never formalized the deal between Sloan, the philanthropist behind the New School Foundation, and Olchefske, the then-Seattle Public Schools superintendent. So since then the New School at South Shore has been operating under a similar sort of uncertainty that faces the other occupant of the South Shore building, South Lake High School.
The saga goes back a few years earlier, at least as far as the 1999 decision by Olchefske to move the South Shore Middle School to the larger Sharples building on South Graham Street. Sharples (since renamed Aki Kurose) had been home to the Seattle Alternative Secondary School (SASS), the school that eventually morphed into South Lake High, and the Bilingual Orientation Center, which relocated to the old John Hay building on Queen Anne Hill. SASS moved into the South Shore facility, which also served as the interim home to Dunlap and Emerson elementary schools, while their home buildings underwent extensive renovations.
The New School at South Shore was to be the sole occupant of the South Shore building, according to the Memorandum, and renovations to the building were to commence this year.
But it hasn't worked out that way, and just how it will all work out is still up in the air.
What will become of the New School and South Lake High School were discussed at a meeting at the South Shore building at Rainier Avenue and Henderson Street last Tuesday night. Three School Board members were in attendance.
Supporters of South Lake High School and other local schools were angered by the deal between the New School Foundation and the school district back in 2002, and, judging from comments made last Tuesday, nerves are still raw. Courting the Sloan dollars left the district, in the person of Olchefske, blind to the effects on other schools, they said.
Gary Tubbs, the New School principal, said he and his school are supportive of South Lake High. The "school and staff were unaware" that South Lake's future had not been adequately addressed back in 2002, he said.
Love Denton, assistant principal at South Lake, said, "During Olchefske's tenure, we never had a clear understanding of where South Lake would be."
And John Vacchiery, the district's director of facilities, planning and enrollment, who attended the April 27 meeting, said later in the week, "The facts are clear: when Olchefske entered into this agreement, he was focused on it and had no firm plans where he would place the South Lake program."
Olchefske, during a telephone conversation on Monday of this week, defended his actions in regard to the South Lake program and took exception with some of the criticism.
Moving the South Shore Middle School program made sense because the Sharples building could accommodate more students and because the Sharples building was underutilized as the home to the alternative high school and the Bilingual Orientation Center, he said.
"I went through a very lengthy public process which lots of people participated in," Olchefske said. "The argument that I didn't care was false, I think. I gave it a lot of my time."
And besides, Olchefske added, the South Shore building was to be a temporary home for the alternative high school.
"I was hugely explicit with everyone involved in the alternative high school that it was a temporary location," Olchefske said. "You agree that this is a temporary site and that you will participate in finding another site ... We got a nice site for a while for the alternative high school and a good interim site for Dunlap and Emerson."
Options for South Lake discussed then included relocating to East Marginal Way South, in cooperation with a community college, and moving to Holly Park.
"I personally was heavily active in researching a lot of places for the alternative high school's permanent site," Olchefske said. "The folks from the alternative high school were heavily involved ...To say there was no energy and no effort is wrong."
It's no great wonder that the New School would have a waiting list. The school offers a pre-kindergarten program, a year-round instructional schedule and small class sizes. It is slated to add one grade level per year until it becomes a pre-K through grade 8 school. In addition to the New School at South Shore, the New School Foundation also endows a program at T.T. Minor Elementary School on East Union Street.
Holly Miller, the New School Foundation's director, said her organization wishes for the outstanding issues regarding the South Shore facility to be resolved and that they are concerned for the alternative high school now located there.
"From day one, there was much concern on our part about South Lake and we urged [the school district] to resolve it," Miller said over the telephone. "We wanted to make sure they stayed in that part of town. The district told us they had a lot of options. We wanted to make sure they had a home."
And without a firm agreement in place, the New School at South Shore is also left to wonder what will become of its program.
"I know that the district is looking at a lot of options, including closing us down," Miller said. "All options are on the table."
Miller said the Foundation remains "flexible," but that it has not been presented with any solid options from the School District.
"No one has made any proposals to us," she said.[[In-content Ad]]
