"Due to increasing enrollment and growth in the northwest region, the Robert Eagle Staff Middle School and Licton Springs K-8 campus is unable to accommodate the number of students assigned in future years. Two classroom portables were already added for the 2018-19 school year, and student enrollment is expected to increase.
In addition to serving neighborhood students, Robert Eagle Staff is a Highly Capable Cohort (HCC) pathway school, serving students who live in the Robert Eagle Staff and Whitman middle school service areas. This cohort of students is also growing.
Student enrollment growth in the region and growth of the HCC population has resulted in building capacity constraints that need to be addressed. District staff have been exploring options to address these capacity challenges.
Potential options will be shared with families at two upcoming community meetings. No decisions have been made. Staff will share scenarios being considered, answer questions, and listen to your feedback.
Potential options:
*Create an additional Highly Capable pathway at Whitman Middle School and assign students receiving Highly Capable (HC) services to Robert Eagle Staff Middle School and Whitman Middle School based on where students live. HC eligible students living in the Whitman attendance area would receive HC services at Whitman, and students living in the Robert Eagle Staff attendance area would continue to receive HC services at Robert Eagle Staff.
*Move Licton Springs K-8 school to the Webster School building in Fall 2020. As a result of this move, both Licton Springs and Robert Eagle Staff would have their own buildings rather than be co-located.
*Make Licton Springs a K-5 school given the lower enrollment at grades 6-8.
*Adjust Olympic View Elementary feeder pattern so that all Olympic View students would be assigned to Jane Addams Middle School rather than the current split of Olympic View between Robert Eagle Staff and Jane Addams Middle School.
The same information will be presented at both meetings.
Wed., Nov. 7, 2018
6:30–7:30 p.m.
Robert Eagle Staff Middle School Commons
1330 N. 90th Street, Seattle
Tues., Nov. 13 2018
6:30–7:30 p.m.
Whitman Middle School Library
9201 15th Avenue NW, Seattle
Any changes will take effect in school year 2019-20 if approved by the Seattle School Board. If you have any questions, please email enrollmentplanning@seattleschools.org."
What's on your minds?
10 comments:
Why are they so intent upon moving or splitting HCC, when they could just as easily adjust the size of the neighborhood school boundaries, as everyone suggested they were going to need to do when they decided to add Licton Springs to the RESMS building that was already slated to be both a neighborhood school and an HCC pathway?
Typical Monday
I believe this is a good opportunity for us to advocate for what HC students need:
1. a cohort to ensure availability of classes and peer interactions
2. a specific description of what HC service means, including class progressions and differentiated goals
3. a consistent implementation of that description - this will mean the district must step back from principal autonomy to ensure that every school with an HC program offers the same service
Just came back from the meeting at REMS today, I think the board and decision makers will look at other options. Keeping LS at the REMs site was heard loud and clear as well as having other options on the table, some that came up were
1. Whitman as HCC
2. Moving Greenwood elementary to WMS and Olympic View to JAMS
3. Moving LS to Cascadia and then having some Cascadia zoned kids to Decatur
4. Dealing with the space issues for another year until Webster opens up and moving Cascadia there
5. Fixing the space usage at REMS today for short term fixes to address the lack of LS class rooms -not close to this but apparently there is wasted space right now.
6. Cascadia 1-6
Some capacity context: Webster will house up to 450 students once renovated.
Cascadia has capacity for 600ish depending on configuration.
Decatur has capacity for 340 based on the official estimates before the split occurred (That seemed a bit crowded at the time since 13 home rooms * 25 = 325 but its a starting point)
LS K-8 Size: 175
Cascadia ES Size: 512
Decatur ES Size: 246
Why is the bar for private appeals continuing to rise? Now it's 99.6% up from 99% last year? Is this due to capacity constraints or some actual data indicating that students testing below 99.6% in private testing are not successful in the HCC program?
-MovingTarget
Where on the AL website is appeals info shown? The ever moving bar needs to be challenged. On top of it being questionable policy, the current HCC program services are not even geared to the 99.6%.
Did the achievement portion for HC qualification go down, or has it been 95% for some time? Also, the HC options show IBX (Grades 9-11) as one of the enrollment options. What happened to 12th grade?? Are they now being upfront with families that IBX kids are essentially on their own for 12th? Wow. Way to go, SPS - cohort the students, allow them to accelerate, then leave them high and dry. Running Start is not an option for some students.
https://www.seattleschools.org/departments/advanced_learning/testing/results/appeals
requirement is 99.6% for both IQ and achievement testing.
testing through normal channels has the same qualification bar as before
-MovingTarget
The more one thinks about the appeals change, the more one has to question the true intent of SPS. If SPS wants to serve the educational needs of students, how can they justify such a change? And why 99.6%?
Suppose a student meets HC eligibility requirements in all but reading achievement testing. Perhaps they miss it by one percent. They can test again the following year (meaning potentially 2 years before accessing appropriate services) or appeal with additional test results. With additional private testing, that student now needs to show they are achieving almost 3 standard deviations above the mean in reading instead of around 2. That's a significant restriction.
Does the district have data indicating privately tested students are not successful in HC programs unless they are achieving 3 SD above the mean? Doubtful. Do they even try to appropriately serve students achieving 3 SD above the mean? They are potentially blocking students from services for whom HC services may be most appropriate, yet only admitting students on appeal for whom the program is not truly designed.
They are basically just trying to reduce the numbers, in particular the number of white/Asian students who qualify. Adding small numbers of historically underrepresented students via the high FRL school screening won't make much of a dent in the overall racial demographics disparity, so they need to also attack the calculation from the other side--by reducing the overall denominator and thus the number "over-represented" students as well. There's no other rationale for the appeals change. It's just optics. That, and perhaps they've also partially fallen for the BS argument that there are all these unqualified students getting in by essentially bribing the private testers to fake their results, even though most data I've seen show most students in HCC do perfectly fine there--as SPS itself reported to OSPI in their required HC services evaluation, it should be noted.
Oh, and I should add that I hope someone sues them over the appeals process. It's clearly discrimination, especially if your child has an anxiety disorder or something else that makes the group testing approach inappropriate. Maybe a group of families with 2e students can team up to challenge the district on this.
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