Friday, December 5, 2008

Seattle Schools Community Workshop - Saturday Dec. 6th

I encourage any and all to attend Saturday’s Community Workshop. It would be great to have Arbor Heights representatives at many of the tables; that way every group reiterates the Arbor Heights talking points.

Recap of Thursday's Meeting:
At the community workshop last night (at the Stanford Center), Arbor Heights was represented by 3 parents and 1 teacher. The West Seattle Herald was there. (side note: Lowell was represented by about 30 people.) We need Arbor Heights to be well represented at all school closure meetings. The more times we can get our "safety green and yellow" shirts glowing at these meetings the better. The School Board has stated they want suggestions earlier than later – the time to strike is now!

At Thursday's community workshop, the Superintendent gave a rundown of the criteria used for picking schools to close. Attendees then divided up into tables of eight people. Reference information was provided at each table (maps, building enrollment, building scores etc.). The people at each table came up with alternative solutions to what was provided on the table. They also discussed the closure criteria being used. A spokesperson was selected for each table, and they presented a 2 minute synopsis of their ideas to the group. It was a loud and hurried process with lots of staff stopping by to listen, to see if we had picked a spokesperson, to see if we had a note taker etc.

Call to Action:
If you can attend Saturday's Community Workshop, come prepared to share ideas of what alternatives you would like to see. The information the PTSA shared at Wednesday’s board meeting is exactly the type of info we need to share. We need to reiterate our stance. Don't close “Neighborhood Schools”, especially ones that are working.

The workshop is: 9:30 – 11:30 @ the Filipino Community Center 5740 Martin Luther King Jr. Way.


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2 comments:

Tammy Wooley said...

On the http://WestSeattleBlog/blog/, they have a great recap of the Thursday Evening workshop:

School-closure fight: Arbor Heights parents at district "workshop"

Anonymous said...

In addition to reporting on last night's workshop here (WSB co-publisher Patrick Sand, was at Stanford Center to report on it - we are both veteran journalists and on nights like this, both of us are out covering stories for WSB), I also published an update on the holiday bazaar while it was happening, with photos - that link is here, just in case you missed it since it was such a busy night!