Alternative School Assignment Issues and TOPS

Alternative School Assignment Issues and TOPS

Superintendent Olchefske has made a proposal that would “give a geographic preference to students living closest to sought-after programs such as Salmon Bay (formerly Coho/NOMS), TOPS and Alternative Elementary No. 2.[1]” A group of parents from the Eastlake, Roanoke and North Capitol Hill neighborhoods are also advocating changes in the student assignment plan for TOPS to give priority to prospective students who live closer to the school. Given the current state of school assignments in the Eastlake, Roanoke and North Capitol Hill, neighborhoods, such a proposal would have a very significant effect on the makeup of the TOPS community, focusing it much more strongly in the immediate neighborhood, rather than continuing the broad city-wide distribution that has characterized it for many years.

The TOPS community feels strongly that its perspective is an important one in the discussion of these issues. This document has been created by a sub-committee of the TOPS Site Council, after taking input from staff and parents in the TOPS community, in an effort to provide that perspective. While we recognize and empathize with the dilemma of the parents in these neighborhoods, we believe that TOPS provides a valuable alternative to the Seattle School District, and parents city-wide, that would be lost in future years if assignments to the school were prioritized based on proximity.

TOPS’ Value to Seattle Schools as a City-Wide Alternative

Attack-the Gap

TOPS Mission Statement

“We are committed to educating our students by using an anti-bias, multicultural approach in a safe and stimulating environment. We help all students to learn, to understand and honor diversity, to respect and care for themselves and others, to be responsible, and to achieve a high level of academic excellence. By eliminating the achievement gap, all students will meet or exceed standards, including those students historically underserved by the public school system.”

Over the past several years, TOPS has devoted a large amount of time and energy towards achieving one of the Seattle School District’s top priorities: attacking the achievement gap between students of various ethnic and socioeconomic groups. This is reflected not only in our mission statement, but also in the development and implementation of concrete programs with that focus. We are attempting to make our school a model of success in this effort, and we firmly believe that our success will attract and provide a valuable resource to a diverse population from across the City. But TOPS needs access to a diverse population in order to continue this work; and in order for this work to be valuable to the Seattle Schools as a whole, a diverse population needs access to TOPS. Giving priority to the less diverse neighborhoods immediately surrounding the school would cut us off from the populations that we are attempting to attract and to serve.

Continuing TOPS’ Successes

More generally, TOPS has become a very successful school by most measures. While there are obvious benefits to a school to having students and families that live nearby, the evolution of TOPS’ success has been based in part on having a continuous community of families from across the City drawn to the school by, and committed to, its missions. Substituting that self-selection for neighborhood-based selection criteria will deprive a strong school of one of the important sources of its strength, and deprive the District of one of its few opportunities to sustain a racially diverse K-8 school.

The Value of Choices

While the Seattle Schools District’s main focus is on neighborhood schools, alternative schools that draw from across the City provide important choices and variety for students in Seattle Schools, choices that are valuable to the District as a whole. Many of these choices are very popular – the “market” wants them. They provide several varied options for families who do not prefer their reference or cluster schools. These options are of particular value to the underserved populations whose local schools are often less successful, and who often live furthest from the popular alternative schools. Schools that draw their enrollment from many neighborhoods also provide options for creating diverse racially and economically diverse schools; a challenge given the current housing patterns in our city.

In general, allocating preference to alternative programs based on distance is unfair. Currently, all families have preference within their reference areas and clusters, and have roughly equal access to the alternative programs. Creating priority for those programs that currently have a city-wide draw based on proximity would reallocate those choices to the families who happen to live near the buildings containing those programs, and away from the families who do not. This reallocation of options deprives the Seattle Schools of one of its strengths – the variety of alternatives available to all as a supplement and alternative to the neighborhood-based school network.

Look Cluster-Wide for a Solution

We recognize that there is a shortage of desirable seats for families in the Eastlake, Roanoke and North Capitol Hill neighborhoods. But we believe that this is an issue that should be addressed cluster-wide, rather than focusing exclusively on TOPS. A number of factors contribute to this shortage other than TOPS’ presence in the area. Several neighborhood schools in the cluster have been very successful in reducing class size, which necessarily reduces the number of seats available at those schools. Another school in the cluster, Lowell, houses the APP program occupies a Capitol Hill school building making it unavailable for neighborhood enrollment. Still other schools in the cluster have available seats, but are not attractive because of difficulties in the schools’ programs. All of these factors should be considered in addressing the current assignment issues; it is not just a TOPS issue.

The search for solutions should begin with efforts to make more attractive seats available in the area, rather than simply to transfer attractive seats from the city-wide population to the local neighborhoods. What would become of efforts to improve the least popular schools in the cluster? Moreover, what would this mean for families throughout the city who would see their choices further limited by the proposed changes?

Respectfully submitted,

TOPS at Seward Site Council

David Sarju, President