On Washington Middle School; Why That School?
I did not attend last night's Board meeting but it sounded lively. (I had a ticket to hear Anita Hill speak and to the entire audience's great pleasure, Christine Blasey Ford introduced her. Powerful stuff to hear from both of them.)
I heard from tweets that the discussion around Washington Middle School, HCC and STEMbyTAF was over an hour long. And Geary's amendment to somehow bypass the SAP to put in that program went down.
And it is very hard on TAF because they do have a good model and yet the district hasn't had a meeting for them with Gen Ed parents? What?
The question for me is, why Washington? They had a terrible year last year - across the spectrum of students ending with the principal begin found to have verbally abused a black Sped student. It seems a bit of piling on to then flip their school in a totally different direction.
There are other choices like:
1) Aki Kurose - TAF had their after-school program there years back and Aki has more minority students than WMS.
2) Rainier Beach High School - I think that RBHS is ready to embrace this program and the two could share a wonderful new building. And again, the minority students that TAF seeks to help.
3) Madrona - That building WAS built for K-8 and it is woefully underenrolled as a K-5 at 251 students. It's 39% African-American, 36% White, 16% biracial with 49% F/RL.
And do you know what all three have in common? No HCC program in their school.
Why continue on with WMS when there has been no/little outreach to Gen Ed CONTINUE READING: Seattle Schools Community Forum: On Washington Middle School; Why That School?