Student Assignment Plan’s impact on Salmon Bay & Families, by Kelly Bryant
Known features of SAP:
- North end HS boundaries will be revised; first iteration due next week
- Implementation to begin 2010-11 for grades K, 6 and 9
- As an option school, Salmon Bay will enroll based upon sibling and lottery tiebreakers
- Option schools lose feeder patterns once SAP is approved. Thornton Creek K-5 will no longer feed to our middle school
- Transportation svcs. offered for students living within the Whitman attendance area, plus students living within a linked attendance area (linked because the attendance area contains no option school)
- Once boundaries are approved, District staff will begin work on Transition Plan
As-yet unknown features of SAP:
- Transition Plan priorities: Geographic Zone tiebreaker creation, sibling grandfathering, middle school and HS transportation bugaboos (reliance on Metro for transport vs. Metro’s cost, service cutbacks, and route safety for minors)
- When these individual Transition pieces will be implemented
- How the 10% of Open Choice seats at HS level will be determined: Class size? Functional capacity? Geographic Zone (perhaps--didn’t hear zone mentioned in relation to HS specifically)? Other? Combination?
Hunches based on SPS information:
- Hamilton MS attendance area will be linked to Salmon Bay for assumed student draw and transportation eligibility purposes
- Geographic zone will be created for inclusion as a second tie breaker for enrollment purposes; will be created close to school campus to give neighbors a better chance to attend.
- North end HS boundaries are undecided. Board member comments and requests for data, combined with upcoming public comment, indicates changes to come
Philosophical issues for Salmon Bay:
- Without Option feeder patterns and with a move to deliver services “closer to home”, our middle school will lose both the predictable education philosophy of Thornton Creek families and the socio-economic diversity of citywide draw.
- District acknowledge SAP’s lack of predictability and avenues for cooperation among option schools. How to coalesce the existing system of alternative/option campuses was determined to be an educational/curriculum issue, thus falling outside the scope of SAP.
- Option schools were glossed over for this particular District project. In terms of the losses to our school created by the trend to deliver services closer to home, do we as FOSB want to ‘take a hit for the team’ or more vigorously defend and protect our unique program and advocate for alignment opportunities with other option schools? Hmmmmm....
