The Seattle school district is seeing a surge in student enrollment after almost a decade, but administrators are too busy figuring out logistics to celebrate. With 47,043 students—that’s 684 more students than projected this year—a number of schools are complaining about over-crowding.
For example, Garfield High School had enrolled 1,790 students as of Oct. 1, compared to the district’s original projection of 1,656 (it was updated to 1,778 in June). Garfield’s PTSA co-president Jayn Foy testified before Wednesday’s school board meeting that there were more than 1,800 students at the school right now and 140 staff members, bringing the total to about 1,980 people in a building that was originally built for 1,600.
Garfield’s PTSA is fuming, as is apparent from their October newsletter (.pdf): “GHS has no authority to set capacity limits, and the overcrowding means we have insufficient teachers, counselors, security, maintenance, and administrative staff; students have reduced choices for course of study; and there are negative effects on school culture and unity.” Things are so bad that kids are still standing in the lunch line three minutes until class begins, Nancy Coogan, the district’s executive director of Central Region schools admitted at a PTSA meeting last month.
The big question is, if the district was expecting more students since summer, then why didn’t every student get a schedule and why were classes understaffed the first week of school? Pretty simple: The district messed up. According to the PTSA newsletter, Coogan “acknowledged that staffing needs were recognized too late.”
Roosevelt High School reported that over-enrollment resulted in over-crowded classrooms, with administrators scrambling to provide additional teachers to confront the problem. In an act of desperation, the school asked students to voluntarily change their schedules to accommodate the sudden influx. Others were randomly selected. Other over-enrolled schools include Jane Adams and Lafayette elementary schools and John Standford International School in Wallingford.
The district is blaming the over-enrollment on its New Student Assignment Plan, which was pushed by SPS Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson. At Wednesday’s school board meeting Goodloe-Johnson said that adjustments to capacity would be made before the next school year.
“It’s an exciting problem,” the district’s enrollment planning supervisor Rachel Cassidy said of the over-enrollment. “The issue is with finding space for the kids. There are a number of schools that are over-crowded right now and there are huge capacity issues.” Cassidy added that some schools were under capacity, including two of the district’s three new elementary schools, McDonald and Sand Point elementaries. Final enrollment numbers will be out in a few weeks.
Roosevelt High School is a feeder school for the UW. The downturn also may have caused a lot of parents to realize that it’s a very good school and maybe sending the kids to private school was a waste of money they should be saving in GET program investments for their college education.
This says more about how good our schools actually are and how expensive college is becoming for the parent base who make too much to get federal student loans.
super great. my kid will be at garfield next year. sigh.
We’ll see school overcrowding for quite a while as families realize the benefits of living in a city. If only we hadn’t sold our nice old schools and turned them into condos…
Yeah, all those school closures a couple of years ago = overcrowding now. Nice work, Seattle Schools, typical of your usual brilliance.
@2 hope they like the trailer classrooms.
Cities rock!
School overcrowding is largely due to America’s distaste for modular school design that can be moved around to follow the changing demographics. Have a permanent hub building and then add/subtract spokes of classroom units as needed instead of insisting on giant brick boxes.
@6 do they do that in Finland or Denmark?
They closed too many schools when the kid population was growing. You’re correct Will, that some private-bound kids went public, but the private #’s haven’t changed much. Some have grown, at SPS’s expense, because of all the turmoil.
MGJ said we had to close schools that weren’t full because it wasted money to heat, clean, and keep the lights on. Hmmm. I guess nobody in SPS has ever heard of a light switch, an in-line valve, or a register or baffle for heat ducts. Closing schools: Supposedly saved 3 to 5 mil. Opening schools: 46 mil. Could we try turning off some lights & steam valves next time. Seems about 9x cheaper than closing and reopening. But who really needs an extra 40 mil in times like these?
@8 my guess is closing and reopening them means you have to recertify the boilers and ventilation, and may cause a reset to modern standards for their heating, cooling, and ventilation, and school kitchens.
Sometimes continual operation allows them to avoid that (grandfather clause/exemption).
But we’ll never know, because everyone around here just likes shouting at each other instead of getting things done.
Wonder if our 3rd world buddies are to thank for this?
This is why we need a $6 billion dollar tunnel.
Because there aren’t enough teachers.
Add this to the ever growing number of reasons that Goodloe-Johnson was given a vote of no confidence by the teachers union. Three years ago I was fighting to keep my son’s school open, now schools are overenrolled. Goodloe-Johnson is incompetent, arrogant and beneath contempt. Ship the bitch out of here on a rail.
@11: There are more than enough teachers in the greater Seattle area…there are a WHOLE bunch of us that don’t have jobs.
@9 you are correct: So long as a school is in continuous operation, it need not be brought up to current code — but if it’s closed, before it can reopen it must be brought up to code. Since the maintenance backlog on SPS buildings is about a half a BILLION dollars at this point, it’s pretty much a certitude that any school, once closed, will require serious bucks to reopen – bucks which aren’t there, because the Superintendent NEEDS that money to wallpaper her office. Or something.
It’s not just building code. As long as the school is open, people are there keeping an eye on it. Viewlands closed three years ago, and the school was left vacant. Thieves stole the copper plumbing and wiring. To reopen the school, the District has to spend $11M to replace the plumbing and wiring.
It’s not just the building code. When a school is open, people are there keeping an eye on it. Viewlands closed three years ago, and the District left it vacant. Thieves stole the copper plumbing and wiring. Now the District is reopening the school, they have to replace the plumbing and wiring, which will cost an extra $6 million plus beyond what it would have cost for code changes.
uh whatever jnonymous. the nwea says it’s a known part of the test that nationwide scores go down in the 2nd of 3 tests. just because of the time of year the kids take them. we pay $4 mil for that sort of insightful data and sophisticated testing?
forget it. i want my teachers spending (and that is in “allocating time” not $$$$$pending) time on direct assessment.
and i want my 10 weeks of library time back dammit. we are one of those losing 10 weeks schools. it sucks and it especially sucks for the population of kids for whom access to library happens only at school.
can’t get MGJ and her Big Ed Theories out of here fast enough. hope it’s this year.
The newly reopened schools – Sand Point, McDonald and Queen Anne – are very underenrolled. And why? The district gave them no focus. No language immersion, no gifted programming, nothing. Why would parents go to a school (2 of them not even in their own buildings but rattling around in Lincoln) with nothing to hang their hat on? These are parents who found themselves drawn outside the lines of John Stanford Int’l or other well-established schools. I understand that the scrappy parents at these schools really are trying but it would have been nice for the district to try harder so those schools get filled and not have the popular ones straining at the seams.
And Garfield is now officially our most expensive rebuild ever – $120,000,000. Oh, and the gym floor is buckling, the teachers’ lounge has gone dark (and they can’t figure out why) and part of the roof leaks. And there’s still outstanding claims from various contractors. Your tax dollars at work.