The scenario to move the Ballard High School boundary from NW 85th to NW 80th St has been taken off the table. The plan was being considered by the Seattle School Board as a way to deal with overcrowding at Garfield High School. “Overcrowding at Garfield High School will be addressed in other ways, such as starting a new APP/IB program at Ingraham, by making changes in the way that students are assigned to Garfield, by adjusting boundaries between Garfield, Franklin and Rainier Beach, and possibly by adjusting class schedules at Garfield,” Seattle School Board member Peter Maier tells us. “In my view, these approaches make more sense than revising the 85th St Ballard/Ingraham boundary that was the subject of much community controversy last year.” (Thanks Lisa for the tip!)
Ballard High School boundary to stay at NW 85th
Oh thank goodness – it’s about time SPS makes some sense regarding Ballard High School.
“by adjusting boundaries between Garfield, Franklin and Rainier Beach”
Rainier beach is WAY under-enrolled. Time to start sending all the kids of really liberal parents there so they can live by their own beliefs.
lol, win
Silence, the grand Poobah has spoken, again. Pleasing all the people all the time = impossible. Seattle + kids =giant petri dish. Now back to “educating” the little skulls full of mush!
Seventy-five or eighty percent of the out-of-area students at Garfield are NOT in APP. That’s five or six hundred kids who have neither a program assignment nor a neighborhood assignment. You would think that’s got to go down over the next few years, with the new student assignment plan.
We need Michelle Rhee to come in and save the SPS….SOS!
B.W. we already have a Michelle Rhee-style superintendent. What more do you want?
Angeline — I can’t believe you’re comparing MGJ to Michelle Rhee! I don’t see the similarities at all. Michelle is creative and passionate and wanted to make real change. MGJ is out of touch, talks in sound bytes and has been completely ineffective. She is also really inauthentic.
look a tiny bit closer. rhee and MGJ are both into the same thing. ultimately privatizing public schools. high stakes testing, _private_ charter schools, etc. one may speak a little better on oprah, but don;t be fooled.
Rhee laid off half the central office staff….Goodloe has increased the number of bureaucrats. Goodloe was right about the new assignment plan but buckled on accountability.
How did Rhee (or MGJ) privatized the DC public schools…give me one example…….I’m waiting.
That’s what I thought….all bark, no bite.
not wanting to bark or bite. but that is what the charter schools are (most of them, there are a few public ones, but most of the them are private charters)– they don’t have to take all students, they don’t have to take esl students, or special ed students, etc. they do not have to educate everyone. google michele rhee, private charter. better yet, go to seattle school blog and read up on the broad foundation and find out about what is happening here in seattle.
So, if you like the old model so much – unfireable teachers, busing, racial tiebreakers, no accountability, heavy administration – will you be volunteering to send your kids to rainier beach high school they can enjoy the resulting fruits of that system?
heavy admin? MGJ has increased it!! read the audit! and teachers are not unfireable. “tenure” does not mean that. it means due process, not that they can’t be fired. in my experience, getting rid of a bad teacher– the hand up has been with the central office, with the principals. look at the audit though. MGJ has vastly increased central admin while decreasing teachers.
It’s sort of a liberal dilemma. I’d love for my kids to attend a more diverse school, but the idea of burning a bunch of fossil fuel to bus kids all over town is sort of sick-making.
I’m a “really liberal parent”, myself, but I can see the humor in that dilemma.
Yep. Just look at Milwaukee for an illustration of the types of disasters charter schools can be. Better to put all we can into strengthening the public schools!
Have them ride a bike or take public transit…or better yet, move down the Rainier Valley. Of course, being ‘green’ is a convenient excuse, I use it all the time.
So come on, you want to force your beliefs on the rest of us, why not practise them yourself?
‘Due process’
Yeah, right.
“MGJ has vastly increased central admin while decreasing teachers.”
Which is why we need someone lie Rhee, she fired half the admin people her first year.
That’s not privatizing, that’s called setting standards; an idea that is anathema to SPS.
You call it ‘privatizing’ because it makes a great straw man and provokes a response rather than gets people to find solutions.
When has Milwaukee done anything well? Rhee brought results to DC, higher scores, higher enrollment…why not use her as an example?
Hapster… I’m not sure who you think I am or what beliefs you think I’m pushing. You seem to be attacking someone, but I’m not sure whom, or what for.
I was pointing out something I see as funny. You seem to want to be more serious, if insulting. OK, fine. The real solution isn’t busing people around, or having schoolkids bike 20 miles a day, or having me move 10 miles away from my work and thereby use up more fossil fuels getting to work. The real solution is to reduce wealth inequalities throughout the country so that, eventually, the difference between rich and poor areas isn’t as great. This can be done with progressive taxation and with programs that help the poor participate more fully in the economy. This requires sacrifices from the rich and even from the kinda-rich.
Oh, wait. I was serious, but I forgot to be insulting. Sorry about that.
Lots of solutions there I can support because, you know, they won’t mean sacrificing MY kid’s education and putting my words into action.
Why not buy an electric car and drive your kid to Rainier Beach? I’m sure they’d welcome the diversity, as you would.
I’m going to continue to pretend that you’re being serious. Buying an electric car that I don’t otherwise need for transportation is the opposite of environmentally friendly. It requires the creation of a huge amount of steel and batteries that will eventually leak toxins into the soil for years. Also, electric cars don’t magically make emissions go away, they just move them to the power plant. Which is great if power plants are converting to renewable sources, but in 2010 that’s not so much the case.
Put my words into action? I vote. How do YOU bring about the world you want to live in, citizen?
I’m going to continue to pretend that you’re being serious. Buying an electric car that I don’t otherwise need for transportation is the opposite of environmentally friendly. It requires the creation of a huge amount of steel and batteries that will eventually leak toxins into the soil for years. Also, electric cars don’t magically make emissions go away, they just move them to the power plant. Which is great if power plants are converting to renewable sources, but in 2010 that’s not so much the case.
Put my words into action? I vote. How do YOU bring about the world you want to live in, citizen?
Private charters are, unfortunately, often the only way to get around ridiculous union rules. Screaming ‘privatization’ at private charters is like an arsonist standing outside a building he just torched and screaming ‘fire’.
look, i call it privatizing because public schools have to take call students and the private charters do not. i don’t believe that is the kind of public school system that our kids need. but my point was not that you have to believe what i do. my point was not even that rhee or MGJ are good or bad. i originally posted in response to someone who wished that seattle has someone like rhee instead of MGJ. i said look a little closer, we do. MGJ may not have the tv-ready flair, but they are of the same mold, believe in the same type of reform. if you do as well, then you should be pleased. SERVE did not pass, but she is still working on those types of reforms. if you like them, be happy. if you don’t, work against them. i do think that good people who love kids and believe in education can have differing views on the right thing to do. i think rhee is doing bad things for education, but i think she is doing them for the right reasons, and i think _she_ thinks they are the right things to do.
even waiting for superman, which praises charters as the answer, says that only 17% of the charter schools do better than the terrible public schools they are trying to save us from. whats up with that? 37% do worse!
Voting? Yeah, that’s helped a lot.
So if an electric car isn’t green enough for you to send your kids to Rainier HS, why not take the bus down there? Come on, don’t just throw away your vote on the progressive dream, head on down there and live it!
I just spent rather too much time explaining to you that the progressive dream doesn’t involve shipping everyone all over town.
Don’t just throw your comments away on the troll’s dream, Hapster! Head down under a bridge and live it!
“progressive dream doesn’t involve shipping everyone all over town.”
Well of course not, not when it’s your kids. But progressives spent the last 30+ years in Seattle doing just that until we finally got the new assignment plan that stopped busing, and gave us back neighborhood schools. All thanks to the Supreme Court.
Does ‘troll’ = someone who exposes Seattle progressives as hypocrites?
I think the belief of liberal parents is that all kids get access to an equal education. I have no problem with my kids going to Rainier if Rainier is just as good as any other HS in Seattle. Sign me up. But if its not, then the city had better make it just as good.
Well THIS got pretty far off track, but believe me you can’t count on the district’s insanity to end. I live in West Seattle and some “neighborhood school” boundaries are across the street or one block from the school. If the district had its way, it would put Ballard High School inside the Ingraham boundaries! You better watch out – we didn’t and we got screwed out in West Seattle.
They do have access to equal education…..equal parenting, though, is a different matter.
Thank goodness! And thanks to all the parents whose involvement in this issue and steadfast support in communicating with School Board members. Your time and energy was critical, and is appreciated!
No, Hapster; the definition of a troll, at least on MyBallard, is someone who keeps on attacking another person after the maximum reply depth is hit.
Oh noes! What have I become!
Can you expand on access to equal education when the schools offer different programs? Unless you simply mean that they all can sit in a chair and have someone lecture in front of them?
Equal parenting we can’t do much about. But it is simple to say, “Every school will have the same programs”. But of course I’m sure that will make you unhappy. You want your school to have the best programs and other schools to have crumbs.
I’d love to see the BHS boundary in the IHS boundary. It would be comedic, yet I actually wouldn’t find it surprising with this school board and administration.
Hapster your a loser, stop griefing people.