Results tagged “schoolclosures”

Hell no! They won't go! To a different school! Central District News documents school-closure protesters marching downtown. CHS is not a high school, but it sounds like one, and the cool kids there are talking about the hill's newest resto, The Tin Table. Over in SoDo, where things change faster than you can say Rocky Mountain News, new blog Sodo Agogo is going bye-bye already.

The Seattle school board voted last night to approve Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson's proposed list of closures, which means that a total of eight programs will be re-located or shut down completely. The following schools will close: Genesee Hill, T.T. Minor, Mann, Van Asselt, and John Hay the Old Hay building. In addition, the following programs and school entities will be discontinued: African American Academy, Meany Middle School, Cooper Elementary, T.T. Minor Elementary, and Summit K-12. Cooper Elementary's building will house Pathfinders K-8, displaced by Genesee Hill's closure. See the Seattle Public Schools press release for more detailed information about program relocation.

Rainier Valley Post has a few reasons why it's wrong to close the African American Academy. (Sable Verity wholeheartedly disagrees.) West Seattle Blog was on the ball this afternoon and has an updated post about the school board's proposed amendments to what were supposedly the final recommendations for school closures. The board votes on the recommended list tomorrow. Not everyone was thinking about school, though. MyBallard, for instance, was contemplating cottage-style housing developments. And Central District News learned from SDOT that 23rd Avenue is in such bad shape, it will take more than the usual time and effort to repair it.

The vote on school closures is fast approaching! On Thursday, the city school board will make the official call--and emotions are running high. Parents and teachers at the schools on the final recommended closure list made sure their voices were heard this weekend at a rally at T.T. Minor Elementary, one of the schools on the recommended closure list. Though it's possible the school board will vote not to close any schools (a strategy recommended by former school board director Dick Lilly over at Crosscut), it's not likely. Money is just too tight, and something's gotta give. The complaint, however, is that the "somethings" taking the brunt of the cuts are Seattle's poorest, least lily-white neighborhoods--and some are going as far as to call the selective closures racist, flat out. The local chapter of the NAACP is on the case, though last we heard, NAACP national leadership hadn't heard about or approved any legal action.

We had no idea Seattle Metropolitan even had blogs, but they do, and the fashion one (the first one we clicked on) by Laura Cassidy is fun. Cassidy was not enamored with Michelle Obama's white ball gown but really dug her lemongrass suit. Seattle Weekly's new music editor, Jonathan Cunningham, introduced himself over at Reverb ("I'm not a hipster. I pull no punches"). Over at Sound Politics, Stefan Sharkansky is freaking out about mail-in ballot signature verification. And the great debate about school closures continues, respectfully, at Crosscut: they've published the School Board's rebuttal of Dick Lilly's argument that the SPS shouldn't close any schools at all.

• West Seattle Blog was at the Seattle Public Schools board meeting last night to hear the discussion on final recommendations for school closures. She posts running updates from the conversation and links to the Save Seattle Schools blog, which was also posting to-the-minute commentary.
• Burien's B-Town Blog has also been busy going to city meetings. Gina Bourdage has detailed notes from a recent City of Burien open house about the planned partial annexation of North Highline.
• Is Massline faux-beefing (no soy) with itself? Raindrophustla posts the latest video riff on the Blue Scholars' much-snarked-about "Coffee And Snow," this one produced by BS label-mates Common Market.

• The winds, they are coming! West Seattle Blog has our area's official wind advisory re-published on their site, and the advisory includes a mention of possible local power outages.Time to charge up your computer batteries and boil a few eggs to last you for the duration.
• Pedestrians and cyclists, remember to wear bright-colored clothing or reflective gear when you're trekking through the dark and rainy city. And drivers, you're in charge of heavy machines barreling at potentially dangerous speeds, so watch where you're going. A woman was hit by a car last night at 23rd & Cherry and a cyclist was the victim of a hit-and-run by someone driving a blue Olds Cutlass or Chevy, reports Central District News.
• The Sable Verity goes into detail in her analysis of the final school closure list released yesterday. While she's upset about some of the closures, there's no love lost on the African American Academy: "I say tread lightly and don't wear yourself out for a lost cause."

There may very well have been fuckery afoot in the decision to close/re-purpose Cooper Elementary's building rather than close the more affluent Arbor Heights Elementary. (Why are we not surprised?) In a controversial series of posts over the weekend, blogger Sable Verity alleged that Seattle School Board District 6 Director Steve Sundquist was discriminatory and unethical in the way he interacted with parents and students at the two school. This morning, KUOW reports on their investigation into the role that poverty may have played in the school closures conversation.

• We knew we'd heard that name somewhere--Steve Almond, who wrote a lovely innocuous column for Martha Stewart Living about Christmas candy, is familiar to us through his at-times NSFW short story collections. Matthew at Roots & Grubs points out that he, too, can write about Christmas candy, and his bibliography is 99% safe and Martha-approved.
• West Seattle Blog breaks out the snow talk! They're pointing everyone towards a community Christmas tree lighting, and as is the usual, WSB also has a scoop: the weatherman has a blog.
• The school closure meetings have everyone in a tizzy about their neighborhood schools. Capitol Hill Seattle reports with relief on their beloved Lowell, which was removed from the closure list, and the commenters react with skepticism and challenging questions (like, what happened to all the rhetoric about Lowell's building falling apart?).

The proposed school closure list has been changed, yet again! The big news is that Rainier Beach High School (previously announced as considered for a merger with Cleveland High School, to the chagrin of almost everyone) is off the closure table. Instead, the plan is to either move Aki Kurose middle school students into the RBHS building or to close down the Center School Program and request that those high-schoolers attend Rainier Beach.

Facing a $37.1 million dollar budget shortfall, the Superintendent of Seattle Public Schools announced her updated plans for school closures: Summit K-12 will shut its doors entirely, rather than moving to Rainier as had been previously discussed, and Cleveland High School and Rainier Beach High School will merge. Superintendent Goodloe-Johnson's presentation from last night's meeting can be found online here [pdf], and here's the summary [pdf] of what will probably be final recommendations for closures. Someone (or a group of someones, more likely) is bound to be unhappy about whatever solution is suggested, but we're concerned about the gap left by the Summit closure in alternative, arts-friendly education in our district.

• We're going to start with good news, rather than bad today. One guess where the opening game of the coming MLS Season is going to be? That's right, Seattle: the first Sounders MLS game will be the season opener for the whole league. Maybe, just maybe, the Sounders will actually win that game.
• The West Seattle Blog reports a really lovely random act of kindness, with photo evidence. Basically impossible to not feel warm and fuzzy about this story.
• Central District News has what must seem an all too common refrain for parents and teachers of Central District Schools; this time the plea is why T.T. Minor should not be closed.