Email 18: HiCapSeattle Advocacy Alert: Contact the Board about Washington Middle School

[Seattle Public Schools Highly Capable Services Advisory Committee]

Contact the Board about Washington Middle School – Your Middle School Could Be Next

•  HiCapSeattle
• 2019-03-31

Washington Middle School (WMS) has experienced a lot of upheaval this school year. Some of this is because of the style and choices made by a new principal, but many relate to how the District handles capacity management, HCC, and school oversight, including curriculum and funding policies.

We urge everybody, especially North End parents, to e-mail spsdir...@seattleschools.orgasking for the following (please rewrite these talking points using your own words):

• Standardize the breadth of course offerings at all comprehensive middle schools so that students south and north of the Ship Canal have similar academic opportunities. For instance, world languages have been all but scrapped at Washington, while students at other middle schools (with and without HCC) can choose among two or three languages starting in 6th grade.
• Standardize HCC course sequences so that students have similar opportunities at each HCC pathway middle school.
• Require principals at HCC sites and teachers who teach HCC students to have professional development in highly capable identification and education.
• Create a “program placement impact analysis tool” that must be used as part of the process when changes are proposed to the enrollment pattern for any school currently housing a specialized academic program. Such specialized programs include Advanced Learning/HCC, ELL, Dual Language Immersion, Special Education, Alternative Concept Schools, Option Schools, and any other school with a program fitting this description.
• Ensure that the District does not short-change the increasing number of students of color who are served by Advanced Learning programs. For most of these students, the designated HCC middle school will be Washington, and they must have the same opportunities as any other.
• Ensure equity in funding across all schools. Washington, by being an HCC site and an attendance area school in a lower-income area of the city, requires extra resources to meet needs, especially those of the District’s new highest priority, students of color furthest from educational justice. These students are NOT receiving the extra funding required.

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Background

By serving a 360-student HC population and about 300 attendance area students, Washington Middle School attempts to meet needs unlike any other SPS comprehensive middle school.

Of the attendance area students who don’t have HC or Advanced Learner status, 79% are eligible for free lunch, and about 70% are in groups identified in the new SPS Strategic Plan as “furthest from educational justice” [all data come from this WMS principal handout]. More than two-thirds of these students are not succeeding on SBA tests and other measures of academic success.

Yet, when this population’s demographics and test scores are combined with those of the HC and AL students, Washington appears very “average” within the District. However, an “average” amount of staffing doesn’t enable the school to properly educate both the many at-risk students as well as HC students.

Here is some information about the crisis at Washington Middle School:

1. KOMO report: https://www.kiro7.com/…/students-at-washington-mi…/912724476
2. Seattle Times report on use of public shaming: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/education/up-there-to-humiliate-is-a-seattle-schools-detention-list-bringing-shaming-back/
3. Melissa Westbrook’s blog has three important news items from the past year—some of this may be new to you. Despite some comments from trolls, there actually is important contextual and statistical information in some reader  comments: https://saveseattleschools.blogspot.com/2018/09/washington-middle- school-woes.html
4. https://saveseattleschools.blogspot.com/2019/02/washington-middle-school-upheaval-update.html
5. https://saveseattleschools.blogspot.com/2018/09/washington-middle-school-meeting.html

Thank you for your advocacy!