Jill Stoddart said...A number of Rockwell parents have made an urgent plea to LWSD to prevent any new neighborhoods from being added to the Rockwell population. Currently, there is a new development for 180 residences on 116th St. Additionally, there is a request for a new neighborhood off of Redmond-Woodinville Road (across from Kensington neighborhood and Washington Cathedral) for 33 new residences.
Our ask is that these neighborhoods under development be moved outside of the Rockwell school boundaries before the developers put any of these houses on the market. Additionally, the preschool should be moved out of Rockwell and allow for our elementary students to use this classroom.
Rockwell is now Rosa Parks II. If we wait for the Levy vote to make decisions on how to deal with the existing overcrowding emergency at Rockwell, then we will have lost our opportunity to move these new developments outside of the Rockwell boundaries without pain to new families.
Good action comment! I forwarded it onto Dr. Pierce and the School Board.
ReplyDeleteHaving your children attended an overcrowded school is never reassuring that your children are getting a quality education they deserve since there are simply too many students at the school for the facilities to accommodate; sadly they pass through the school as anonymous faces.
ReplyDeleteBUT Rockwell is far from Rosa Parks II.
The current enrollment at Rosa Parks for next month is 720 and is projected to stay at 700 and significantly overcrowded for at least ANOTHER three school years - a significant increase from Rockwell's 650. Rosa Parks has been 670, 769 and 795 students for the LAST THREE years respectfully! (Remember the facilities at Rosa Parks was built for 483 students!) Rosa Parks' first, second, third and fourth graders will only know an overcrowded elementary experience.
Rosa Parks parents insisted for YEARS that LWSD use the half empty building at Wilder, which was such an obvious and easy solution to relieve the overcrowded conditions at Rosa Parks! Since there are no Wilders nearby Rockwell, your challenge will be harder. Perhaps your campaign needs to move to the Redmond City government. An emergency halt on building permits in Rockwell may be your only answer at this point. Temporarily halting growth until a new school in north Redmond can be built would help Rockwell.
Remember all these elementary students will move to the middle schools and high schools. Is Dr. Pierce planning well enough?
Dr. Pierce and the school board have said numerous times they don't want to overbuild. Yes, having empty schools 30 years from now would be expensive. But, does LWSD plan to educate this current generation of children in overcrowded schools so they won't have empty schools later? Is that fair and the right thing for our children?
I agree that LWSD has done a terrible job of capacity planning. Portables should only be used for transitory overpopulation: they're uncomfortable and over more than a few years they're less efficient budget-wise. The fact that the High School has already had to bring in portables in the very first year after the new wing was built confirms what a terrible job the district has done (although to be fair, anyone who's ever fought against an infrastructure bond measure should look themselves in the mirror, since the district is chronically short of cash to build or expand schools).
ReplyDeleteHowever, it's hard to feel too much empathy for your letter. When Einstein was built, LWSD tried to redraw the boundaries equitably so some students at Rockwell & Mann would be moved to Einstein. The parents at those schools fought tooth and nail (even forcing their grade-school kids to picket the meetings) to ensure that no kids from Rockwell or Mann would be moved to Einstein (well, except for the low-income housing and apartments along Avondale; those families you were more than willing to divest).
The suggestions in your letter (halt development and/or refuse to allow any "new" neighborhoods to attend Rockwell) take the same NIMBY self-centered tone.
How about some proposals that actually address the problem:
- Accelerate the rebuilding plan for Rockwell and add capacity rather than just renovating (the Rockwell property is among the largest in the district and has much room for building growth).
- Accelerate planning and construction of the new school at 172nd & 122nd to handle the majority of the 116th/172nd corridor neighborhoods.
- Redraw boundaries as necessary to redistribute existing students between Rockwell, Mann, Einstein, and Redmond El
- Centralize or redistribute the preschool as necessary to whichever of those schools has the most available capacity (kindof the same thing we did with the grade/middle/high school grade realignment, but at the low end).
- Launch a new bond measure to cover the cost. Provide honest budget/growth/capacity assessments to explain exactly what the bond will fund, to justify the need, and to convince people that this is the last bond measure for at least 5 years. Convince people that the district has learned from the past.
- If necessary, divert funds from existing planned renovations that don't add capacity and which could wait a year to cover the costs of new/expanded schools. Make the entire district share in the pain of schools that are overpopulated if you really want a bond measure to pass.