Open thread

Discuss what you like!

New APP middle school at Jane Addams

Please use this thread to discuss the new APP middle school at Jane Addams that will be set up next year.

New APP elementary in West Seattle at Fairmount Park

Please use this thread to discuss the new APP program (blended with Spectrum) that will be set up next year at Fairmount Park in West Seattle.

APP moves and splits

With the board vote last night, APP will be seeing some changes. The APP AC sent out an excellent summary of what will be happening:

The final outcomes for APP from the Board Vote last night are as follows:

South APP

• The current guaranteed pathway for all APP students will remain the same (Thurgood Marshall Elementary, Washington Middle School, Garfield High School).
• There will be a new optional pathway for APP Elementary at Fairmount Park Elementary School (FPES) in West Seattle in 2014 (a "blended program" with Spectrum, details unknown at this time).
• The optional Southeast pathway and the site at Madison will not happen until some date in the future.

North APP

• APP Elementary will stay at Lincoln (until the 2017 move to Wilson Pacific)
• APP Elementary will share the Lincoln building with AS#1 and the Indian Heritage program (AS#1/Indian Heritage will be housed in the South Wing)
• APP Middle School will be split into 2 cohorts in 2014: the NE cohort going to Jane Addams Middle School (JAMS) and the NW cohort staying (for now) at Hamilton International Middle School (HIMS). Northeast APP students will not be grandfathered at Hamilton.
• The NW cohort will either move to Wilson Pacific Middle School (WPMS), or be split between HIMS and WPMS, in 2016 or 2017 depending on the size of the cohort.

I'll be opening individual threads for parents to discuss the new programs at Fairmount Park Elementary (West Seattle) and Jane Addams Middle School (North). Please use this thread for general discussion of the changes and what it all means for the future of APP.

Final boundary assignment plan

Looks like it is here. There is no information in it about APP splits in the current plan. The document that apparently would cover that, Appendix B, is missing, but several amendments might change the plan. The best that can be said is that the future of where APP will be is unclear.

There are links, in Appendix C and D, to what feedback was provided from the community. For example, 24 responses said, "Oppose spilling APP north MS," 15 said, "Don't add additional APP paths in South/Southwest,", and 15 more asked to delay any action on major splits and moves. In general, community feedback was overwhelmingly against further splitting APP. It remains to be seen whether that makes any difference.

Another open thread

The board is voting on the boundary plan soon (on Nov 20). What else is on your mind?

Open thread

Discuss whatever you like!

Update: This thread is now dominated by discussion of the SNAPP PTA. Feel free to keep discussing that here, we can make this thread about that, and I'll start another open thread.

Even newer assignment plan

Update: Kellie LaRue and Melissa Westbrook, among many others, are now asking board memebers to vote down the plan, saying it does more harm than good and that it needs to be replaced with much more limited and targeted changes.

Original post:

The Nov 6 plan is here.

From the page, quoting the part on APP:

North APP elementary (now at Lincoln) will stay at Lincoln until Wilson-Pacific Elementary opens in 2017. North APP elementary will be located at Wilson-Pacific Elementary as a free-standing APP school beginning in 2017.

Two sites (co-located with attendance area students) have been designated for north APP middle school: Eckstein and Whitman. APP at Eckstein will begin this coming fall. When APP at both Eckstein and Whitman are in place, enrollment data will be reviewed to determine if Hamilton would continue as an APP site. Depending on the number of students to be served, Hamilton APP may be phased out in the future.

Eckstein and Whitman were chosen as APP sites because by far the largest numbers of APP students live closest to those schools. Note that Eckstein, currently very overcrowded, has its current enrollment reduced significantly with the opening of Jane Addams Middle School. These changes will also provide some relief to over-enrollment at Hamilton.

The changes from the last version for APP appear to be in the north and mostly center around reducing splits of APP in the north. APP in the south is still getting split into a lot of little pieces, no change in that plan it appears despite lots of "public input" against it.

If you are trying to find what is happening to APP in the documents, oddly APP mostly only is mentioned in the document titled "Reference materials for the Board".

Please discuss.