Seattle School Closures: Excellence For Some – Same Old Story For Others
On November 25th, The Seattle School District Superintendent announced the proposal to close a number of schools in our District. TT Minor was one of those schools. For those of us who have children at TT Minor this was not a surprise, just another example of the lack of support this school has received from our District.
TT Minor is a neighborhood school. A high proportion of the students at TT Minor are African-American and low-income, which reflects the historic population of the community. Over 85% of the children at TT Minor qualify for free or subsidized lunches. Some children at TT Minor have already been shuffled around by the school district after the closure of Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary three years ago. These same children are now facing another transition to a new elementary school. How sad, and yet unsurprising, that it is these children, the ones most in need of consistent structure and support, are the ones being asked, once again, to move and start over somewhere else.
The School District has shown a distinct lack of planning for how to make these transitions smooth for the families that could be affected in all of the school closure scenarios. To date there is no specific information about how TT Minor students will be moved or what accommodations will made to ensure their academic success through this transition. In fact, it is clear that the majority of the District’s “fixes” are ledger based, and give little or no thought for how our communities will be affected. A “We’ll just send ’em somewhere else and worry about it later” attitude was pervasive throughout the recommendation meeting. For example, there has been no realistic proposal about how they plan to integrate a co-ed APP program into Thurgood Marshall, a school where the classes are gender separated.
TT Minor has all of the right pieces in place to become a great local school and a regional draw. Our neighborhood is rapidly gentrifying and we have been working to recruit new neighbors through a dual-track program of Montessori and traditional instruction. We are located in a popular neighborhood where birth rates indicate we have more children coming up to school age that other areas of Seattle. In moving the Montessori program, dispersing the traditional program, breaking up the current staff, volunteers, and other excellent programs such as our chess club, it will be “start all over again” again. If history is any guide, it will be a long time before the Central Area has another shot at having an excellent elementary school.
It is evident that the District has an agenda to shut down this historic, perfectly located, and very special school. Over the last six to eight years there have been multiple attempts at shutdown, and over an even greater period the building has been allowed to fall into disrepair while other facilities have received improvement. The children who attend TT Minor have had their resources cut to the point of neglect: the roof leaks, bathrooms are outdated, there is no running water in any of the classrooms, the 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders have no access to a restroom or water fountains on their floor, staff turnover is fast and furious, there is no vice-principal position at the school and only a part-time librarian, part-time art teacher, and very few extra-curricula activities offered. And yet the school continues to improve its test scores, maintain a tournament-winning chess club and trophy-winning band, and continues to garner support from within its community. We have a charismatic, enthusiastic and dedicated new Principal, and the Montessori program at TT Minor has waiting lists to rival the most over-subscribed schools in the District.
After hearing the District’s proposal it’s apparent that the people who actually care about our schools, our communities, and our children are us, the families who live here, and the families who choose to send their children to TT Minor from other areas.
Clearly the folks from the Center for Educational Excellence, with their “Excellence for All” motto have a bureaucratic need to make bureaucratic choices. However, what this community and our children need are consistent, centrally located programs. We need to be able to trust in our public school system and believe that the District are really working for us and driven by the needs of our children and the future of our communities. As a community we need to work with the Seattle School District to develop TT Minor into the school we all know it has the potential to be. Budgets do need to be managed, but it’s time to stop doing more of what hasn’t worked so far, and to start looking at new solutions and sources of support.
TT Minor MUST stay open. We MUST stay engaged. The alternative will be more fleeing from our central area public schools to schools in the north and to private schools for those who can. Basically, it means more of the same. Change is in the air. Let’s make it happen.
There will be a community meeting at TT Minor School on the evening of December 15th with representatives from the Seattle School District. We would like to encourage our neighbors and fellow community members to attend this meeting and help us in the fight to keep TT Minor open.
– Parents of TT Minor Elementary School
FYI, Lowell parents are none too pleased about the APP program being split up. They’d rather keep it all together at Lowell (though the building is in sad shape).
I’m a Lowell parent from the Thurgood Marshall reference area, and I care about both groups of students. I find it hard to believe that inserting half of APP into Marshall will help the kids at either school — as much as I’d like to have my son go to school in our neighborhood. The APP program is going well as is, and it’s cost-effective — why are they messing with it? We surely need to find ways to strengthen Marshall and our other neighborhoods schools. Bringing 500+ APP students in won’t help anyone.
Thanks for keeping the community updated on T.T. Minor!
Plans now include:
moving Nova alternative High School from near Garfield to Meany. Nova students take classes at Garfield and vice-versa: won’t be so easy from Meany.
moving APP from (falling down) Lowell to Thurgood Marshall and another site.
How about moving APP to the Meany School building (300 21st Ave E.) and leaving Nova where it is?
Andrew Taylor
[email protected]
(School board director) Harium Martin-Morris’s blog:
http://harium.blogspot.com/
Just look at the numbers for Thurgood Marshall and Hawthorne. Both schools would be packed with no room for either program to grow. This type of situation was painful for all when APP was co-located at Madrona. Yes, both Thurgood Marshall and Hawthorne are under enrolled, but this is not a good solution and will only bog all down with turf wars. I understand the reluctance of the District to close either of the two schools as population growth is guaranteed in the light rail and development boom, but relocating APP to keep the schools afloat according the closure framework should be opposed This may not be the prime time for school closures or a much deeper discussion is needed.
Growing APP at Lowell is more realistic than at the other two sites. I do know it is full, but the other two sites will not only be full, but also full of bad feelings. The co-location with disabled group there has been successful. It is too bad, if there are legal problems. Meany would also possible serve as good site for different scenarios. All central area sites are actually excellent candidates for all district draws. Would the bilingual program fit into Mann or Lowell? Again building condition does not have to be the obstacle as the older building may have suffered some from deferred maintenance but the construction grade tends to be higher.
Please also use demographic information to make your cases.
RE:Confirmed: Two Neighborhood Schools May Close
A variety of data is available on this site below. I have had little time to print it or really look at it all, but one interesting note is that the TT Minor reference area has experienced some of the highest recent growth in numbers of school age children. Please use this and request any other data from the district. Sherry Carr helped me find this but I’m sure that Mary Bass would also respond, along with others.
http://www.seattleschools.org/area/facilities-plan/demo/long
Permalink | Comments (2) | Posted 17 hours ago | more Community
I recently read somewhere (can’t remember, I think it was in the PI) that the number of children in the Central District has been growing faster than most other seattle neighborhoods. If this is true (anecdotal evidence suggests to me that it is true) then closing down schools such as TT Minor seems incredibly short sighted: I imagine we’ll be having a conversation about overcrowded schools in ten years, and planners will be looking for a plot of land to build a new school.
All in all, I just don’t get it. I hear press releases about schools needing to be closed, and I’ve never understood why.
The District has a perennial funding shortage, and they’re always being told that the answer to that is to close buildings. So I think they feel compelled to do so.
Yet as the evidence above suggests, in some small number of years they are going to be saying, wow, what do we do with all these kids in the CD? Where should they go to school? We don’t have budget for busing them, and Metro’s still terminally overcrowded…now what?
hello,
we’re one of the families/blocks w/tons of small kids and we’re sick that TTMinor is closing…we wanted to go to TT and get all of our neighborhood kids to come with us…we believe in our neighborhood school and wanted to get involved and make the experience GREAT!
we’ll come to the meeting but our seattle public school friends tell us its hopeless and that its gonna happen.
;o(
Anna
IT IS OUR DUTY AS CIVILIZED PEOPLE TO TEACH OUR CHILDREN THE TRUTH AS IT IS, AND NOT AS IT APPEARS TO BE.TRUTH IS THE SWORD OF THE UNIVERSE THAT KEEP THE UNIVERSE ALIVE. JUST AS TRUTHFUL KNOWLEDGE PRESERVES ITS BEHOLDER, BY GIVING OFF DIVINE RAYS OF RIGHT-JUST-NESS AND UN-LIMITED GUIDANCE. IF WE DO NOT CARE ABOUT THE CHILDREN DYING IN THE STREET; WHY SHOULD WE CARE ABOUT WHAT SCHOOLS ARE CLOSED, AND WHAT CHILDREN ARE DISPLACED. WE MUST HAVE LOVE FOR ALL CHILDREN BEFORE WE CAN REALLY UNDERSTAND THE ROUTE TO BETTER PLACE. I UNDERSTAND THAT ENVIRONMENT DICTATES ACTION, THIS IS WHY WE NEED THE UMOJAFEST P.E.A.C.E. CENTER, WHICH WILL BE A POSITIVE ENVIRONMENT FOR ALL CHILDREN, AND I SEEK THE HELP OF ALL PEOPLE WHO UNDERSTAND THAT IF WE FORSAKE THE CHILDREN, WE FOR THE FUTURE, AND THE WORLD. LET BE KNOWN AND UNDERSTOOD THAT MY CHILDREN ARE IN NEW YORK, BUT I WILL BE AT THE SCHOOL BOARD MEETING FOR THE CHILDREN OF SEATTLE. WE MUST KEEP TT MINOR OPEN AND ALL CIVILIZED PEOPLE NEED TO SHOW THEIR SUPPORT. THE CLOSING OF TT MINOR WOULD BE A MAJOR IN-JUSTICE . WITH LOVE, CONCERN, AND RESPECT…….SAVIOUR KNOWLEDGE
Anna, Please don’t give up hope. The district needs to know there are parents like you in the neighborhood that will come to TT Minor. A face to the data we want to present can only help.
Come to the public meetings:
Monday, Dec. 15, 2008
at T.T. Minor – 1700 E. Union St.
Thursday, December 4th, 6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m., John Stanford Center for Educational Excellence, Auditorium, 2445 – 3rd Avenue South, Seattle, Washington
Saturday, December 6th, 9:30 – 11:30 AM, Filipino Community Center, Main Ballroom, 5740 Martin Luther King Way, Seattle, Washington
that Seattle Academy, being boxed in property wise, has an eye on thr TT Minor property. Has anyone else heard that?
right on, Robin. People, we need to show community support for TT Minor – please come to the meetings in support of our neighbourhood school.
I actually attended T.T. Minor in 1985-86 for the 5th grade, so this is bad news to me I wish I could help. I do remember That i had decided to transfer there from Mont Lake elementary ,one cool thing about T.T. Minor was that they had computers for science class, used to play this game called number crunchers as my classroom activity.
Restoring this wonderful site should become the actual focus, what is needed is P.S.F (positive source funding), donations for right-offs or old fashioned fund raising… bake sale raffles car washes etc. Also needed is strong supporters who will gain relationships with those who will make the right decision in favor of restoring this beautiful land mark.
T.T. Minor can be a positive solution to educating young individuals to detour from be coming subjected to negative environments, when they receive positive knowledge at a School like T.T. Minor. I am here to open the eyes of your heats to the fact that closing a youthful training facility like T.T. Minor would be an absolute destructive progress for the future of Central District Youth and it’s community. This is a chance for any one who will participate in such a necessary historical event; Restoring the T.T. Minor elementary School.
dear t.t minor,
i do disagree about the closing, because i was a student there 4 5 years! it was a great school to attend and i loved it! my friends that r in the 4th grade there are really upset because they wanted to graduate. i wish i had of stayed for 5th grade and yes i do understand how it feels. PLEASE KEEP T.T.MINOR OPEN PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!
PLEASE DON’T CLOSE T.T. MINOR. I WAS A STUDENT THERE FOR 4 YEARS AND IT WAS A WONDERFUL EXPERIENCE FOR ME. ALL THE STUDENTS WERE NICE. I BEEN THERE SINCE KINDERGARTEN-3RD GRADE. I WISH I STAYED THERE 5TH GRADE. BUT PLEASE DON’T CLOSE IT PLEASE !
The problem is following the civil rights all of black folks were no longer forced to live in the hoody hood hood. Now we could live wherever we wanted most of us like all the white people left for the suburbs abandoning our neighborhood and only leaving the rtrash behind. People predomitaly white with no children relized how close the CD was to downtown and the wonderful housing stock. That’s when the gentrifaction happened. Today most of the people that left the ghettoe are stuck in areas lik Kent and Renton where you have to drive everywhere and our schools in the CD are being closed since there are barly any kids in attendance.If only we would have hung on to our homes.
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