West Seattle, Washington
09 Wednesday
At its first meeting after the big Denny/Sealth vote, the Seattle School Board has something else of West Seattle (and beyond) interest on next Wednesday’s agenda: Changes in its policy on how to deal with what the district now considers “surplus properties” no longer being used as schools. 
The Fauntleroy Schoolhouse (1951 photo @ left), home to Fauntleroy Children’s Center among other businesses/facilities, is now on that list, and many people have been working hard to figure out how to keep the district changes from resulting in dramatic neighborhood changes. The proposed new policy is now posted online as part of the Wednesday school-board agenda (find it here), spelling out details such as the plan to end the renting of these properties at “below-market” rates and a multiyear transition in certain cases to the full charging of the new rent, while also making some provision for reduced rates at sites like this that are home to “youth education” programs. The new districtwide policy is scheduled for introduction this Wednesday and a final vote two weeks later; as always, the district takes sign-ups for public comment (on any topic, not just what’s on the agenda) starting first thing Monday morning – the online agenda explains how to sign up. Also, the Fauntleroy Community Association is scheduled to discuss the situation at its Tuesday meeting, one day before the school-board meeting; its webpage about the schoolhouse effort, including last April’s gathering, is here; West Seattle State Senator Joe McDermott briefly outlined the situation here – but of the bills he mentioned, neither one appears on this list of bills that survived the most recent cutoff before the Legislature ends its regular session this week.)
Footnote to last week’s vote … the permit application for the CSHS work is now on file with the city.
AdamOnAlki reported it in the comments late last night:
74-43 in favor of Squalicum. Great season, boys. You surprised and impressed us all!
And as David went on to add, the West Seattle High School boys’ first trip to the state basketball tournament in more than 30 years isn’t quite over yet:
(Today) they play Auburn (22-3) … They have the potential to finish in 5th place, if they can win 3 straight games. It’ll be tough but it’s not over.
Today’s WSHS-Auburn game is at 2 pm at KeyArena.
The state boys’ basketball tournament starts tonight, and West Seattle plays Squalicum (from Bellingham) at KeyArena at 9 pm. (Here are the brackets.) If you can’t go to the game but you want to follow closely online, it appears that’s possible through this site ($10 for tournament-long access).
We found those two Girl Scouts selling cookies outside Thriftway this afternoon – second day of local Scouts’ sales – their West Seattle cookie-selling locations are listed here. (We got Thin Mints, $4/box, yum.) More West Seattle Saturday scenes ahead, including the rainbow-and-hail video link:Read More
Per the Times, the West Seattle High School boys’ basketball team fell short in their game against Seattle Prep this afternoon. And the Seattle Lutheran High School boys and girls didn’t make it to the final rounds of the tournament in Spokane. Nonetheless, we want to send out a hearty “congratulations” for the kids, their families, coaches, and supporters; good job! SUNDAY NIGHT UPDATE: Here are the brackets for the tournament WSHS is in; thanks to David for pointing us to that site where the Wildcats can be tracked through the next rounds. They play Squalicum at 9 pm Wednesday, KeyArena.
So much happening today that we have another round of reminders to come in a few hours — but first, some events that begin this morning: 9 am, the West Seattle High School Class of 2008 fundraising car wash starts at the WSHS parking lot; 10 am, the West Seattle Family Wellness Fair starts at High Point Community Center; also at 10, the Sanislo Elementary used book sale and bake sale gets under way. Much more on the Events page.
Thanks to Eddie for the tip: Seattle Public Schools is raising a little extra cash by auctioning a lot of stuff off at Boren tomorrow, starting at 9 am. More info (list, photos, etc.) here.
Thanks to Paul Cozens for the latest update:
In a hard-fought battle which went down to the last second, the West Seattle boys beat Cleveland 56 – 53 Thursday night at Bellevue Community College (BCC.)
West Seattle now plays Seattle Prep for third place in the Sea-King District. The game is at 3:00 PM on March 1 at BCC. Win or lose, the Wildcats are going to the state tournament!
Let’s see how many fans we can pack in the BCC gymnasium Saturday.
Go West Side!
9:50 PM: Back at WSB HQ now. Processing video for a separate wrap-up post on tonight’s School Board vote.
9:10 PM: Just back from wading into reaction interview central in the foyer outside the board room. Talked to Sealth staffers Delfino Munoz and John Wright, both of whom spoke against Option 2 tonight. Munoz quote: “It’s not over.” But what’s next – he says it’ll take some time to step back and reassess. (The board meeting continues, by the way; we will continue monitoring in case of anything WS-related.) P.S. The opponents were clearly disappointed as they cleared the chambers after the vote, but were classy about it – no loud boos or other disruptions – in case you were curious (and didn’t happen to be watching on TV). The board’s now discussing future transportation plans for students; high-school students are scheduled to stop getting “yellow bus” transportation as of next year, and are to be given Metro passes instead. WEST SEATTLE-SPECIFIC NOTE: District staff confirms this is the last year that Spectrum kids (one of the district’s gifted programs) from West Seattle who go to Washington Middle School will have the opportunity to ride regular school buses; that ends next year, though Metro passes would be made available for them too. (Meeting adjourned at 9:20 pm.)
9:05 PM – The vote is 5-2 for Option 2. The no votes are from Mary Bass and Harium Martin-Morris.
After the jump, the rest of our liveblogging of tonight’s meeting, in reverse chronological order, exactly as we filed it during the meeting:Read More
Tonight, the Seattle School Board is scheduled to make its decision on the Denny Middle School/Chief Sealth High School shared-campus proposal. (All WSB coverage is archived here.) What board members specifically are being asked to approve or reject is a resolution to move $10 million from elsewhere in the budget to support Option 2 (district rendering below), the option recommended by district administration — going ahead with building a new Denny on the Sealth campus, but adding money to the required renovations CSHS was already scheduled to get:
WSB will be there tonight with live online updates; as the day goes on, we’ll report any late pre-vote developments, starting with this: Sealth teacher John Wright forwarded a petition signed by staffers who support Option 3 (building a new Denny on its current site; renovating Sealth with the basic upgrades it is scheduled to get no matter what). Here’s the petition text; Wright says of the 93 CSHS staffers contacted yesterday, 83 signed it (they hadn’t yet reached 16 staffers):
We the undersigned staff at Chief Sealth High School strongly urge the School Board to vote for Option 3 to keep the campuses separate. We strongly urge all available funds be utilized to build the absolutely best possible Denny Middle School to support our entire community.
There have been multiple admissions of community and staff engagement flaws in this entire process, some accidental, some intentional. Ultimately, however, we request Option 3 be chosen as there has been no evidence towards academic benefit for any co-location campus model.
1. All or almost all of the existing 6-12 models in the country referred to by the school district are either private, charter or magnet schools with self-selecting application processes. The models of 6-12 schools which exist were pre-planned projects, not mergers of existing schools. Successful 6-12 models had staff heavily involved in every phase of the development of the school and, in many models, the schools were created gradually (ex. one grade level at a time).
2. There is no academic plan for a 6-12 co-location model. Vague affirmations from the district that it “could work†as well as the Facilities Department website’s Academic Benefits (actually just copied from the Denny principal’s letter) do not constitute an academic plan. An academic plan requires considerable deliberation and intensive wide-ranging input prior to construction according to best practices.
3. Any large-scale educational program change absolutely needs teacher support for it to be successful. Combining the campuses without an educational plan for shared programs, shared planning and collaboration time for teachers, will lead to a lack of support and poor implementation.
Ultimately the reason why Sealth staff cannot find a single research study to clearly refute the proposed 6-12 model for Sealth & Denny is because something like this appears to have never been tried before. Never before have two existing schools with a significant FRL rate and no self-selecting application process had a building built prior to the development of an educational plan with the expectation that it would somehow work out. There are no studies to support or refute this exact model because it is a massive experiment on our kids – it has not been tried elsewhere and we believe it has not been done because it is an inadequate model.
Wright says Sealth principal John Boyd (WSB interview from yesterday morning is here) was presented with this petition late yesterday afternoon, before it was sent to the School Board. He also notes “this is a staff petition because the district still maintains that all of the other ‘Sealth staff polls’ were unofficial. So to avoid charges of ballot stuffing or any other classic attempts to discredit the integrity of the staff’s position, the original petitions will be given to the Board along with the staff list so they can verify the accuracy by contacting anybody they want.” He says that will be done at tonight’s meeting.
The West Seattle High boys lost yesterday’s basketball game to Rainier Beach, 68-45, according to a brief mention in this Times roundup, which notes they play Cleveland next in this double-elimination round, 6:30 pm Thursday, also at Bellevue Community College.
The agenda for tomorrow night’s Seattle School Board meeting, including the vote on the Denny-Sealth combined-campus project, is now updated on the district website. In the public-comment section at the start of the meeting, 18 people are listed as signed up to speak about the Denny-Sealth proposal (you can see the entire list on the agenda posted online). Also added to the agenda since this morning is the “updated report” on the actual item on which board members will be voting, whether to “transfer” $10 million to the Denny-Sealth project in support of Option 2. Here’s a link to that; its list of the sources for the $10 million is: “$1.5 million from Debt Service Fund, $3.5 million from BEX III Technology, $5 million from BEX III Infrastructure.” Again, the meeting’s at 6 pm tomorrow, district HQ in Sodo; we’ll be there and plan to liveblog it with continuous updates here, start to finish (you can also watch live on cable channel 26).
Within the past half-hour, as promised, several dozen Chief Sealth High School students walked out in protest of the proposal to build a new Denny Middle School on their campus. They walked up Thistle and past Denny, as shown in the clip above. We watched the walkout from their Sealth departure and it appeared orderly; according to an e-mail sent to the CSHS staff by principal John Boyd, any student who missed a class will be marked for an unexcused absence in that class. ADDED 4 PM: Another angle from our video, as the protesters walked uphill on Thistle toward Denny:
Tomorrow night is a particularly important night for Chief Sealth High School principal John Boyd (left). Not just because the Seattle School Board is scheduled to make its final decision on the controversial proposal to build a new Denny Middle School on the CSHS campus — two other events will keep him from being at district headquarters for the vote: A mariachi concert with the CSHS musicians and visitors from California, and a basketball game with the 8th graders he’s coaching (including his son) across the street at Southwest Community Center. This morning, though, not quite as hectic, so he made time to talk with WSB — not just about the much-discussed impending vote, but also about what else is happening at his school:Read More
First – just got word that West Seattle Little League is planning a “late registration” event tonight at West Seattle High School, 7-9 pm, room 212. Full details plus forms, at the WSLL website. Also, West Seattle Pee Wee baseball has a few spots left (find out more on their website). And a photo followup to last night’s post about big games this week for WSHS and Seattle Lutheran basketball teams — this morning, Walking on Logs (along the westbound Fauntleroy path off The Bridge) is decked out in honor of SLHS with a banner congratulating the “Sea Lu girls” (sorry we only had the cameraphone in tow so no zoom):
Some big games ahead this week for three of West Seattle’s high-school basketball teams — first, thanks to the proud Seattle Lutheran High School families who e-mailed WSB to say the boys and girls teams are both en route to the tournament in Spokane – here are comprehensive details from Mike and Stephanie Jensen:
On Saturday, both the boys and girls basketball teams from Seattle Lutheran High School qualified for the State 2B Basketball Tournament. This is the first time since 1987 that both boys and girls have qualified for the State Tournament in the same year. The boys team is coached by alum Jack Menashe while the girls are coached by longtime coach Bruce Carlson. The entire SLHS community (faculty, staff, students, parents and alum) are excited to have our teams headed back to the tournament representing the school and our West Seattle community.
The tournament starts this Wednesday in Spokane, and concludes on Saturday. It is a double elimination tournament. Here are links to the boys and girls brackets.
We also wanted to mention again that the West Seattle High School boys play Rainier Beach at Bellevue Community College tomorrow, 3 pm, after their big defeat of Bellevue last Thursday. (And if we’re missing any other WS schools in big tournament/playoff action right now, our apologies; please let us know and we’ll add to our coverage!)
Seattle Public Schools, and some private schools, just finished “mid-winter break.” Next up, spring break, semi-early this year – for SPS, it starts Saturday 3/29.
Not only is it school-choice season (Seattle Public Schools‘ deadline is Friday), it’s school-auction season. The photo above is from the Our Lady of Guadalupe GAIN auction last night at SSCC, courtesy of a mysterious correspondent calling himself “Rock Steele, Man About Town.” Before showing you a few other pix he sent, we want to note that at least five other local schools have auctions in the next month: Schmitz Park Elementary at the Hilton downtown on March 1 (flyer here), Arbor Heights Co-op Preschool at Youngstown Arts Center on March 8, West Seattle High School PTSA dinner/auction at SSCC on March 14, Gatewood Elementary (kicking off a centennial celebration) at The Hall @ Fauntleroy (also on March 14), Pathfinder K-8 at SSCC on March 15, Madison Middle School PTSA at The Hall on March 22. Again, that’s just the next month; others are on the WSB Events Page, and if yours is missing, please let us know so we can add it. Now, those other photos from last night’s OLG event:Read More
In case it’s fallen off your radar — the Seattle School Board‘s final vote on the Denny-Sealth project is four days away, at the board’s next regular meeting on Wednesday night. The agenda for the meeting is now posted online (including information as always on how to sign up to speak at the meeting – you can call starting Monday); find it here. There are two items on the agenda regarding Denny-Sealth:Read More
No, that’s not a file photo of kids in class BEFORE the midwinter-break week that wraps up today for Seattle Public Schools; those are kids in class DURING the break, photographed at Denny Middle School on Thursday, getting math coaching from teacher Gary Lai as part of a reading/math camp that’s been under way since Wednesday — with free lunch every day plus a bowling party when it’s all over today. It’s one of two midwinter-break camps wrapping up at Denny today — the other is 4th-8th grade music camp, where we videotaped participants on Thursday getting ready for a casual concert they’re planning today. Denny’s well-known music director Marcus Pimpleton is leading this first-ever program, with help from some student assistants, such as 11th-grader (and Denny grad) Chloe seen here helping a breakout group improvise a drum riff:
Another set of drummers worked indoors – the steel-drum players; what a lovely sound, even in short practice bursts:Read More
That picture just in from Paul Cozens (thank you!), with this news:
The West Seattle Wildcats defeated the Bellevue High Wolverines in boys’ basketball today 82-76, in overtime. West Seattle will play for the District Championship next Tuesday at Bellevue CC, opponent to be determined.
2:15 AM UPDATE: Here’s what the Times wrote about the win; the Wildcats’ next opponent is now set – Rainier Beach.
Tonight at South Seattle Community College (in West Seattle), the Japanese American Citizens League of Seattle and SSCC presented a program for the Japanese American Day of Remembrance — commemorating the internment order signed February 19, 1942. As the years go by, we have fewer survivors left to tell the story firsthand; one of them, 81-year-old Sam Mitsui, spoke last night about having been interned, and having served as one of the celebrated, decorated WWII Nisei fighters:
Sam is not only a veteran and internment-camp survivor, but also a UW graduate and Boeing retiree. Though he doesn’t live in West Seattle, SSCC tells WSB he had local ties, teaching martial arts at the West Seattle YMCA in the ’60s and ’70s. Also featured at tonight’s event was Suma Kato Yagi; she was a high-school freshman when her family was ordered to leave Seattle. Suma and Sam were among more than 13,000 Seattle-area residents of Japanese descent who were ordered to the internment camps.
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