I didn't agree w/ the other lawsuit and I don't agree w/ your threatened one. While the Plaintiff's can probably get pro bono counsel, the district cannot and it's an incredible waste of dollars that are truly needed in the classroom.

You don't have kids in public schools (per your earlier post) – not sure if that means your children are too young, or too old or if they are in private school.

True advocates for public schools get in there and do something locally. You could volunteer at one of those schools you are so concerned is being mistreated or the victim of the segregation.

Community/ parent involvement has a huge impact on school success.

That said, it's not true that Phinney is closer than 85th. The north and west boundaries to BHS are the same: 0.87 miles. In other words, both boundaries are less than a mile, i.e. walking distance.

I've heard quite the opposite. But lets hope you're right.

“Honestly, people – why don't you spend your energies improving the schools? Have you not noticed that they stink?”

Improving schools w/o school board support is extremely difficult. I do agree that Seattle schools stink (for a city of this size they're just horrible). What I think you will see with this new plan is that BHS will become the shining star of the school system. Garfield and Ingraham will quickly go down the tubes. And this will all be done with the full approval and cooperation of the school board.

I think the best thing parents can do to help our schools is demand vouchers.

I love how these incidental patterns all seem to look like ridiculous racial divides. Wow, that's convenient for you Magnoleum.

“Have you talked to the Board members who formulated the assignment plan and who are about to vote on these maps?”

I have. Some frankly seem to pass this on the M/QA parents (as a previous post states). Probably the most influential, the president, has his district being M/QA (with a part of Ballard) and of course his monthly meetings are located in Magnolia. I've never seen him even seem to indicate that this issue matters at all to him. Not even a token “I understand this is not ideal”.

I wish I could believe that this was a sincere effort to get children to the best school. Everything points to that not being the case. And one thing I've learned over and over again, is that racism and classism (which is a major component here too, not just race) is that purveyors of it in business and government don't put up “Whites Only” signs (anymore). It almost always takes place in things like how the lines are drawn or new sentencing guidelines or patrol allocations or tax policy.

The boundaries were drawn to exaggerate segregation? Really? Have you met any of the District staff responsible for these boundaries? Have you talked to the Board members who formulated the assignment plan and who are about to vote on these maps? If what you're saying is true, there are a LOT of black people (as well as Asians and other minorities) on the Board and on staff who are completely on board with the wicked plot to segregate Seattle schools and screw all the minorities. Funny, that. I'd have thought they'd probably be against something like that.

Or is it just possible that this is a case of lots of people of all sorts of backgrounds trying in a completely sincere way to do the best job of assigning kids to schools? Oh, no, no, no, no, it couldn't be that. Where would be the fun? Where would the conspiracy be? Where would we get to call people racists? No, couldn't be that. No joy in that at all.

I think the trend here is obvious. When affluent whites can do things around neighborhoods that are “incidentally segregated” by some unexplainable cosmic phenomena then things are “fair”.

The reason why busing came about at all was that whites went to the good schools and blacks the horrible ones. Whites effectively protected that, even after the end of legal segregation by things like neighborhood boundaries. I do think that busing is problematic. But I think its completely disengenious to pretend that the neighborhood plan doesn't put the poor and minorities at an even greater disadvantage than they already are.

And while a neighborhood-based program is problematic in of itself. What made this program in Seattle especially bad is that the boundaries were drawn in many cases to exaggerate the already segregated city. It was if someone said, “Sure Seattle is segregated… so my challenge is if you can make the schools even MORE segregated than the city”.

This is so far from even-footing that its laughable. And that's even ignoring the Ballard/QA border issue. You can also look at places like Chief vs West Seattle to see how absurd the boundaries are.

Magnoleum, “your group” won this round. Bask in it a bit. No one knows who you are. You don't need to pretend that this is good for everyone. It's clearly not. A lawsuit may not make a dent in this status quo, but at least it may draw a little light on it.

Those were great days for the Seattle Public Schools, and the advent of busing just about destroyed the District. The quality of education, District-wide, was simply better then, and it will be better again. The idea that neighborhood schools will bring about the end of the world is a bit much–most cities do this and haven't seen the Four Horsemen quite yet, and Seattle's finest days in education were those days before social engineering took priority over educational service delivery.

Nothing in this plan is about inflicting harm upon anybody. But part of this plan is to stop inflicting harm upon the QA and Magnolia communities (as well as other smaller enclaves around the city which have suffered likewise). We have already seen at the elementary school level (where something more like a neighborhood school system has already been in place for a while) how important the restoration of neighborhood assignments is, and now we finally have the chance to do it at the high school level. This is not being done to give one part of town an advantage over another; it is finally putting us all on an even footing.

The great thing is that now the decimation of the school system will effect poorer people who can't spend $10-$20k/year at Seattle Prep Academy Harvard Feeder. Instead will probably just see higher drop out rates. But of course that will be easily explainable. Poor kids are dumber, hence will drop out more often. They deserve it.

As Freddie put it, thank goodness for our new overlords…

Of course the M/QA parents seem very pleased with an equally terrible system that they've been able to put together. I guess nothing is better than inflicting harm on other families now, since you had to endure it, right?

Now are you really, really sad, for what our kids went through for the past 10+ years?

Doesn't fit into the prevailing entitlement/victim mentality of those on this thread, but true nonetheless.

You don't need actual evidence to charge 'defacto racism', you simply need to throw the incendiary charge out there and hope your opposition will buckle.

The reason QA and Magnolia got screwed for 30 yrs was because they were seen as white and rich, therefore without rights to the ultra-leftists who until recently ran the SPS, and have thankfully been tossed out. The QA and Magnolia kids were thrown on the BBQ of political correctness which is why so many went private, decimating SPS enrollment numbers.

SPS is only now treating all neighborhoods equally.

But I agree with you on vouchers, so we can choose any school in the city of Seattle, public or private.

I will say that I am familiar with the old choice model that Seattle used. And I agree, it was a terrible plan. Note that in my “open choice” the tiebreaker is simply lottery. In this case M/QA are not disadvantaged beyond the standard fact that they're not close to any school.

Regarding the Metro, the parents in North Seattle have the same concern.

At high school, students could choose any school they wanted. If more students applied to a school then there were spots available, then SDS applied the following tie breakers: 1. sibling, 2. racial integration (before the lawsuit; diversity afterwards I think); 3. DISTANCE (also known as the “concentric circles”) and then 4. lottery. So it wasn't really an open choice system at all. Or, more accurately, it was open choice if you lived nearby, but not so much if you fell outside of the circle. (Magnolia, Queen Ann, Downtown, Belltown, (now Lake Union) and Laurlhurst all fell outside ANY circle….) (NOTE: the district redrew these circles every year (or few years), so even if you fell w/in the circle one year, it was no guarantee that you'd be in the circle the next).

I'm sorry you ran across a Magnolia parent who seems to have tarred your opinion of us all and left you with the impression that Garfield isn't a good school (now or in the future). I'm not niave enough to think there's not thinkers like that our there (in Magnolia, or in any other neighborhood) but one parent does not a neighborhood consensus make. Most parents I know just don't want their kids taking a Metro bus to Pioneer Square in the early hours of the morning and waiting for their transfer for up to 30 or more minutes to take another bus to their High School.

And we want a predictable assignment path for our children, like most other neighborhoods have had for years.

A simple solution is to simply keep “Open Choice” with lottery as the tiebreaker. That's it. Those that want to attend BHS all have an equal chance at going regardless of where they live. That's fair to QA residents and Ballard residents, and South Seattle residents if they wish to make that commute.

Another option is to get rid of the option schools altogether. Move to a standardized curriculum, and minimize commutes for students.

I think vouchers would be another very reasonable option, but I know that's a whole 'nother tale.

In any case, there are other options. The most straightforward is to move a tail of SQA to Garfield. But alas the issue is not downtown traffic, but it's that they don't want to go to the “new” Garfield.

My big concern with Ingraham is safety. Ironically, from my house my kid can get to Nathan Hale, Roosevelt, Garfield, The Center School, and NOVA on one Metro Bus ride. And of course walk to Ballard in 20 minutes. To get to Ingraham, however, takes two busses and a 20 minute wait on 85th and Aurora at 7:15 in the morning. It's this that makes me want to tear my hair out. It is unacceptable that kids will have to do this to attend their mandatory assigned high school.

Also, please don't misrepresent my position. I have no problem with Magnolia student going to BHS. They have no high school and BHS is the best choice for them. What I do have a problem with is a large number of QA students who are closer or equi-distant to Garfield going to BHS, pushing kids from a 15 minute commute to an hour plus.

It really is not reasonable to expect people to send their 15-year-olds on through-downtown rush hour commutes. That much, I think, is obvious. District staff have treated the downtown zone, in this plan, as the obstacle that it ought to be treated as.

Nobody denies that on the face of it, a person who lives just north of 85th and who wants to go to Ballard High School seems to have a reasonable case. The problem is of course that the District has to serve everyone equitably, not just those who happen to live on one particular side of a school that has an oversized natural service area. Magnolia and Queen Anne have gotten screwed in this process for years, and when I hear input from Ballard parents on the subject most of it, frankly, comes across as “let's continue to screw Magnolia and Queen Anne so that we can have what we want.” There is no reasonable alternative view being offered. I'm surprised that someone from Ballard hasn't tried to take the position that QA should be assigned to Roosevelt–that would be much more reasonable than the silly idea that kids should commute through downtown morning rush. But, then, I am not hearing a lot of acknowledgement from people north of the canal that the QA/Magnolia problem needs to be solved at all, so why should there be constructive suggestions?

But it is reasonable to expect Ballard kids to spend an hour+ on the bus to go up to Ingraham when they can walk to BHS in minutes!

Hold on a second, I have to wipe the hypocrisy that is dripping down from your post.

I believe speaks to the fundamental difference he and I have. I believe (a) that the boundary maps are drawn specifically to exclude certain groups from certain schools and (b) I don't think the de facto segregation that created the current housing situation exists in isolation. This was all done with a wink and a nod.

Now I will say that I don't think the majority of M/QA folks are racist. But even among those that aren't you'll get some surprising responses to questions. For example, I asked one about attending Garfield rather than BHS. Someone a tad more clever would have given the answer that Mag gave (“traffic, yada, yada, yada”). The answer I got was “Ballard is a better school.” My response was, “Really? Everything seems to indicate quite the opposite”. Their response, “That's how it is now. But after our maps go into play Garfield won't be good.” (or something to the effect). Unfortunately, she wised up and wouldn't clarify what she meant about Garfield not being good after the maps.