Monday, February 13, 2017

Lincoln High School Planning Meeting this Friday

Fri Feb 17th, Hamilton Commons 6:30-8:30 PM

From email from SPS Board Member, Rick Burke:
"I’m contacting you because you have attended meetings about, or expressed interest in Lincoln High School, which is planned to reopen in Fall of 2019. I’m pleased to be hosting another community engagement meeting to talk in greater depth about our timelines and the work currently underway to make Lincoln an amazing destination for Seattle students.
My last meeting, held on October 27th at the Lincoln library was quite well-attended. With the large number of people and range of questions, we didn’t have the opportunity to have in-depth conversations about the school. This meeting will be held in the Commons at Hamilton International Middle School, which has the potential for more seating and better participation.
The agenda will include general information updates about the current and near-term work on assignment boundaries and principal selection, 24 credit graduation requirement, and some Q&A to get started, and then folks will have a chance to circulate through multiple stations and share concerns, ideas, questions that can help us move the school planning process forward.
Get your ideas brewing about the following topics:
- Enrollment & Boundaries
- Academic Programming
- Music and Fine Arts
- Athletics
- Building/Facilities
- Community-Building and Family Engagement
- Community and Higher-Ed Partnerships
- Anything that doesn’t fit in the above…
Please feel free to share this information with other interested families, and I hope to see you at Hamilton, Friday Feb 17th 6:30-8:30 PM"


Note: if you can't attend this one, Dir. Burke is also having a community open house on Sat. Feb 18th 3:30-5:30 at the Fremont Public Library. I'm sure there were be an opportunity to bring issues related to Lincoln up there as well.


Official Renovation Plans:
https://bex.seattleschools.org/bex-iv/lincoln-building/

Current design plans: https://bex.seattleschools.org/bex-iv/lincoln-building/current-design/
(includes blueprints and visualizations)

Note: there have been updated plans and info in the last week including proposed building layouts.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

re-posting what I posted to the SaveSeattleSchoolsBlog:
I hope the tone at Friday's Lincoln meeting is not combative toward Director Burke, but rather appropriately combative/constructive toward District staff. At least to me, facilitating the parent engagement for a new school planning effort shouldn't be the burden of a school board director. I hope school staff sit right up front with Burke, rather than in the back of the room. Thanks Director Burke for taking this on, and sorry you have to do this!

Odd

JulietteF said...

Athletics would be fairly difficult to prioritize in this locale/space, and the building/campus is hurting in other ways too.
However, with a real, committed investment, music & the performing arts could shine here: the 2 theatre spaces could be upgraded, a black box added (I would site it around where the south parking lot/breezeways/playground are now), and this could become a "NY School of the Performing Arts" type site. (And there'd be built-in interest from both RHS and BHS families to have a PAC that might draw them to Lincoln. And Arts are a curriculum focus item under which many other (popular-in-seattle) magnet areas can thrive, such as technology/communications; & physics/engineering; & video projection/production.
Most importantly, it would give everyone, SPS and community alike, a (realistic) banner under which to rally.

/Soapbox

grittier details:
The larger 1000-capacity space from the old LHS (c.1959) would need to be virtually gutted, but with the addition of a dance floor, new soft goods, and a 15-20 batten fly arbor added above (and good tech/lights/sound) the space would SHINE.
Our city (and SD) could add a north end Performing Arts Center not unlike the rentable & revenue-generating spaces that other neighbor districts have created (Eastlake PAC in LWSD -in particular- was built [and funded] with this double-use utility in mind, and now, for 15+ years, not only supports a union-wage staff of theatre artists/technicians, but clears a profit from rentals to groups lining up to rent a seattle-based auditorium/PAC!).
We also have a tremendous potential 'brain trust' with roots in our Seattle-metro community who could help guide/advise such a choice, including outstanding theatre/Perf Arts educators (such as RubenVK, Mr. E, Jill Landback, Hjalmer Andersen, & others) who may love to see a vision like this come together for kids in our region.

#ICanDream

Anonymous said...

It has the potential to shine, but I think it's not up to earthquake code (what about lead and asbestos?). Don't the initial schematics have the auditorium physically detached from the main building? Was that done to avoid the expense of an earthquake retrofit?

Benjamin Leis said...

I added the official links for the renovation plans at the top. Note: the budget for the project is currently at 93.3 million dollars. To respond to above, yes this includes bringing the building fully up to code. Currently, the plans show the existing auditorium in the south part of the site being renovated and continuing to serve that function. Its always been physically detached.

Benjamin Leis said...

Based on Dir. Burke's comments at his community meeting there are 3 new pieces of information.

1. There is a commitment to hire a planning principal 2 years out. Hopefully there is a chance for community input on the hiring process which I imagine might interest many readers.

2. A task-force is going to be formed to recommend the High School attendance zone boundaries.
(Note: since the expectation is that this will likely be the north end HCC pathway school, the actual boundaries may be a moot point for many.)

3. He's leaning towards a 9-10 or 9-10-11 rollup. Although it remains to be seen if this emerges as a consensus among the staff and other directors.

Anonymous said...

Thanks Benjamin. Is it an expectation Lincoln will be the north end HCC pathway school? I did not attend the meeting but heard that they won't announce program pathways for Lincoln until sometime in 2018.

Wondering if there even will still be an HCC pathway high school at that point or will neighborhood high schools be expected to serve all students. In that case Lincoln opens as a comprehensive high school similar to Ballard or Roosevelt without an HCC pathway-meaning without multiple sections/offerings of AP courses. What do you or others think?

I also heard IBX may not be an option (IB only) for incoming students after this next year.
-SL

Benjamin Leis said...

Its my opinion and this is shared by others (nothing is certain until SAP vote) that Lincoln will be the pathway. The capacity constraints at Garfield make this the most likely outcome. But yes there are other less likely possibilities on the table that could still happen.

Anonymous said...

I am wondering if since HCC kids take AP and honors classes at Garfield and are not in a "contained" cohort, if additional AP sections and courses at area high schools (or IB like Rainier Beach, Ingraham) might be the direction the district is heading instead. In other words, no "HCC pathway" for high school. However, don't know if this is feasible for all high schools.
-SL

Benjamin Leis said...

I suspect there are two issues with serving at reference high schools.

1. Not all the reference high schools even with all the HCC students present would have sufficient numbers to offer a robust selection of advanced courses which would satisfy the state requirements for HCC. You'd really want the master schedule to see how many sections of the advertised classes were given. I don't have the time to analyze the course catalogs across all of the High Schools to even see what's present and also factor in the HCC students per zone to see if this is the case. It would be an interesting project to look into. If there was an issue it would be most likely in sites like Rainier Beach, Chief Sealth, maybe Nathan Hale.

2. Not all the sites could accommodate the return of their student population. So for instance Roosevelt and Ballard even though they are over-crowded would be much worse off if their reference students who go to Garfield came back. This is probably the more serious blocking problem. Again its a numbers game to see what happens once you redistribute adding on Lincoln.


Its also possible that you could build a hybrid system where there are more high school pathways but you consolidate in high school reference zones where there are less students.

In an ideal world, If I were going to step back a step, I'd also probably ask the question what kind of program do we really want in High School? Is relying on IB/AP + honors classes the way to go?