Program PlacementDW writes, "This may have been implied previously, but this is the first I've seen where it's spelled out in black and white as THE result if the APP/IB plan doesn't pan out."
Advanced Learning - APP
Current Pathways
Lowell > Hamilton > Garfield
T Marshall > Washington > Garfield
Add for 2011-12
APP at Ingraham
Optional alternative if sufficient interest and other measures can address Garfield overcrowding
New pathway for incoming 9th graders (Lowell > Hamilton > Ingraham) if other solutions cannot address Garfield overcrowding (to be included in Transition Plan for 2011-12)
For more discussion on this topic, you might also be interested in the earlier thread, "APP at Garfield threatened?"
Update: In a new post about a recent board work session, Melissa Westbrook writes:
They started talking about program placement and the new possible Accelerated IB program in response to the overcrowding at Garfield. It would be modeled after the program at Interlake over in Bellevue. (I'll just say here that I think it's done. The community would have to rise up, en masse, to prevent it. I just think there's way too much work already done for this to be just a "possibility." The question is whether it will be optional or mandatory.)
6 comments:
There's a new agenda which has a different set of slides:
http://www.seattleschools.org/
area/board/10-11agendas/120110agenda/nsap1201.pdf
Slide 21:
Garfield Overcrowding
Goal: Implement strategies to reduce and/or manage over-enrollment without having to create a mandatory new APP assignment pathway.
1. Open Choice Seats
2. Boundary Changes
3. Transition Tiebreaker
4. Expand Nova GeoZone
5. New APP program at Ingraham
- Optional program if at all possible
Bob Vaughan also said he'll be sending out letters soon to APP families and APP-qualified (but not attending) families, informing them of an official Advanced Learning survey to gauge interest in this new APP/IB program.
This is supposed to happen on 12/09, although it was unclear to me whether the letters would go out on the 9th or the survey would be published on the 9th. Either way, watch your mailbox or emailbox for info.
Does anyone really believe they're going to do options 1-4? Not gonna happen!
The district deliberately drew the boundary around Garfield this way so that they would be able to use the overcrowding as a reason to finally split APP High School. (Anyone remember the promise not to split high school APP?)
If a large number of APP-qualified students had wanted the IB program, they would have been going there all these years. I know they're "souping up" the IB but that's different than APP.
We've got to find a way to get APP-friendly people on this school board, directors who won't make wholesale changes to a successful program just to show that they're doing something.
stu
Stu: You're right, no doubt. But as I've argued throughout the blogosphere, we APP folk need to get behind the option of Accelerated IB and hope and pray it grabs some attention. The district's ammo is next year's 8th grade class, which will be the biggest APP class in awhile. There's no guarantee that kids won't go elsewhere, but SPS makes its plans by February, so those are the numbers we're dealing with. You're right about the boundaries, especially in the South, right near Franklin. If we are able to show we can control the APP growth at Garfield, or keep it in check, our doing so will hopefully get the board to focus on the other 400+ non-APP/non-neighborhood kids now at Garfield. Why aren't they part of the solution too?
If changes have to be made, and it's a certainty some do at this point, I'd rather have Bob Vaughan and a deferential board than having those clowns splitting the program right in two, again.
pj manley
At tonight's meeting, Kay Smith Blum was advocating drawing Garfield's southern boundary at I 90 and sending the kids to the south to Franklin. There didn't seem to be much support for messing with the northern boundaries (too many repercussions for the crowded north end schools). The IHS accelerated IB was spoken of as a carrot not a stick. Kay S B also advocated schedule changes (double shifts) at GHS as a solution (short term in theory, but she seems to believe they will end up being of value even without capacity issues.)
APP is fortunate to have KSB on the Board right now.
Check out this complete miracle of spin concerning the program at Interlake: http://www.learningfirst.org/visionaries/SharonCollins
It's all about how de-tracking made them terribly successful. Not a SINGLE WORD about how the gifted high school program was placed there, and that's why they have so many more IB participants and so many more are passing the tests. Not a SINGLE WORD about how the accelerated IB classes are completely separated from the regular IB classes. It's all about how remedial efforts and high expectations for everyone have brought up the bottom.
It may indeed be that Interlake has done very well by their less-prepared students, dunno. But the terrific hypocrisy in claiming de-tracking was responsible... wow. Just wow.
Helen Schinske
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