A group of parents from Stevens Elementary School were able to convince a Seattle school board member against changing the boundaries of their school, which would have resulted in new school assignments for their neighborhood for the fourth time in four years.
Board director Kay Smith-Blum proposed that a portion of the attendance zone for Stevens be moved to the Madrona Elementary School attendance area starting fall 2011 barely five days before the board was scheduled to vote on the proposal Wednesday, alarming parents and setting off a flurry of emails and phone calls. Current students would still attend Stevens, new and entering-kindergarten students would be reassigned to Madrona.
Smith-Blum said the boundary changes would solve Stevens overcrowding problems (the school is at 111 percent capacity right now, according to her) and help out an under-enrolled Madrona. Parents charged that she was looking for a quick-fix for the loopholes created by the New Student Assignment Plan (NSAP), which has created overcrowding and under-enrollment in schools since it was introduced last year.
They complained at the board meeting that they were tired of being jerked around continuously (their kids have been transferred from MLK to TT Minor to Leschi or Lowell elementary schools since 2006, finally settling down in Stevens in 2009), and would not tolerate the district’s bad planning any longer. “The boundaries were set 14 months ago and we were given reassurance that it would be fine,” said Mark Aiken, a Stevens parent. “Obviously somebody somewhere screwed it up.”
Smith-Blum’s proposal was introduced as part of the transition program to the NSAP, but was scrapped the morning of Wednesday’s school board meeting. The board voted to approve the overall transition plan. “As a new board member, my take-away from this is never propose a boundary change on a full moon again,” Smith-Blum said at the board meeting.
“new and entering-kindergarten students would be reassigned to Madrona.”
Wow, white liberals don’t want their kids to be sent to the black school. What a surprise. Do as we say, not as we do.
Stevens = 17% black
Madrona = 71% black
I wish the endless back flips, deck chair arranging, and shuffling the school district does would just fucking stop for one god damn year.
Every fucking year there is some random bullshit like this.
Close a school, wait two years and open it up again, awesome!
Move the boundary, had that happen last year, my kids were then slated to go to a worse school FURTHER away, double-rainbow awesome!
Fuck ’em.
If you don’t like a decision they think they have made you gotta do what these folks did, and bitch as loud as possible.
@1, you didn’t actually read the story.
Their kids had been shuffled through 4 schools in 4 years. They didn’t move, the district kept moving the fucking lines. It is disruptive to move and have kids go to a new school, in this case the only thing moving was the school district.
How is it that the district, with their brilliant planning, managed to draw a line around a school so that it ended up with 111% enrollment in the first place?
I don’t know exactly what Kay Smith-Blum was thinking with this one, but don’t write her off. She did withdraw the proposal, after all. On the whole, she is really clued in–so much more than the other board members. She’s one we want to keep. The others…NOT SO MUCH.
I’ll ask again, happy with your school board members?
Yes, what was she thinking? Was she thinking just about the families around Stevens who may now be drawn into other areas or was she really thinking about all of the families, especially those in Area 4? Before this I would have agreed that Kay was doing OK especially in comparison to some other Board Members. Now I feel that she is basically pushing the agenda of a few in North Capitol Hill and Madrona at the expense of others and with no regard for genuine public engagement. Tell me again why we want to keep her.