Seattle Schools Community Forum: Tonight's Board Meeting: Waitlists and Ethnic Studies

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Tonight's Board Meeting: Waitlists and Ethnic Studies:

Tonight's Board Meeting: Waitlists and Ethnic Studies

On the Work Session on the Budget and Waitlists, here's the presentation.  The waitlist section starts on page 14.

Staff is insisting: 

Waitlist moves are predicated on staffing, not just space capacity.

 

That may be true in internal practice.

 

Long standing actual process/practice is that both physical space and staffing determines the number of waitlist moves at a school. 

 

I sure wish former head of Enrollment, Tracy Libros, was here to verify that because that may be true internally but that was never transmitted to parents.  What WAS very clearly stated - over and over and over for decades - said is that the district's biggest commitment to families was to keep sibs together.  That I know for a fact.  It was not a guarantee but it was stated in that manner repeatedly by superintendents, staff and boards.

As well, for something as key as waitlists, then it should be clearly stated in the procedure that follows the policy.  It is not.  And, it also isn't clearly stated in the current Enrollment plan.

 

They list four issues:

• Is there capacity within the WSS staffing allocation?
• Is there physical room to add another teacher/class? 
• Would it create more split classes? Overage costs? 
• Would it negatively impact/deplete other schools? 

I believe the key issue here is the last one - hurting other schools.  

 

My stance is that when you have a growing city and a growing district, you Seattle Schools Community Forum: Tonight's Board Meeting: Waitlists and Ethnic Studies: