Quick update Oct 3: October 1 Superintendent Jones sent an update indicating they are giving more thought to everything and the Well-Resourced Schools page now indicates only 5 schools will be consolidated. We don’t yet know whether Cascadia will still start to transition to a neighborhood school in 2025-2026, but we still know that current HCC kids enrolled at Cascadia are able to continue enrollment there.
What’s going on? SPS Released Proposals for School Closures
- Last week, SPS released two options for school closures in the 2025-6 school year. This was released on SPS’s ‘Well Resourced Schools’ hub, where you can find detailed descriptions of the plan and interactive boundary maps for SPS schools under each proposal.
- https://www.seattleschools.org/resources/well-resourced-schools/proposed-option/
- Option A includes closing 21 schools and reverting al K-8 schools and ‘option’ schools to becoming attendance area, neighborhood schools.
- Option B closes 17 schools and retains one K-8 school in each area.
- For either plan to proceed the school board MUST vote to approve it. This vote is scheduled for December. At the Sept 18th board meeting, the general sentiment expressed by the board was extremely negative towards these plans.
How was the future of Cascadia presented in those proposals?
- In both Option A and Option B, Cascadia is described as becoming a neighbourhood school serving kids from the surrounding area, as opposed to exclusively kids who are part of the Highly Capable Cohort (the current model at Cascadia).
- In the FAQs section of the site, the future of current Highly Capable students is addressed as follows:
How will my student continue to receive HC services?
SPS is offering highly capable and advanced learning services in all elementary schools so students can be served at their attendance area school.
Students currently in the HC cohort at Cascadia, Decatur and Thurgood Marshall will have the option to remain in a cohort model, even if their school closes.
//www.seattleschools.org/resources/well-resourced-schools/faq/
What does this mean?
- Principal Mackey, as well as individual parents who have contacted SPS, have now received written confirmation from SPS that current Cascadia HCC students will be able to remain at Cascadia in a HC cohort if either closure plan is adopted by the board.
- In a response received to a “LetsTalk” request from a parent:
“Students will have the option to be served in the cohort model as outlined in plans for the Advanced Learning New Service Model.
Cascadia: Our preliminary plan is to keep the Highly Capable (HC) cohort at Cascadia as HC transitions to an attendance area school model.
Decatur: If Decatur closes, families will have the option to return to their neighborhood school and receive HC services there or to join the cohort at Cascadia.
Thurgood Marshall: If Thurgood Marshall closes, the HC cohort would move to another school in the region, proposed at Rising Star. Families can choose to return to their neighborhood school and receive HC services there or move to the new location with the cohort.
Won’t there be too many kids if Cascadia Houses Both HCC and Neighborhood Kids?
- While our school is well populated this year, it is still well under its capacity of 660 students. Next year there would be approximately 400 Cascadia HCC kids, we estimate that there would be another 60 HCC kids from Decatur based on surveys the Decatur PTA has done to gauge how many families would opt to come to Cascadia.
- If either plan is adopted we would be getting neighborhood students from Viewlands, Bagley and Greenwood. There is the possibility of current grade 4 kids staying at their current schools for grade 5 and students with siblings in grade 5 also continuing their assignment. This kind of option was discussed at the September board meeting.
- There are a lot of moving parts and unknowns including that we think it is very possible that even IF a closure plan is adopted IT IS NOT put in place next year but the year after. Indeed, at the September board meeting, board members indicated that they did not have enough runway to get a vote done by December. We think the totality of all of this is that Cascadia is a LARGE school with a LOT of capacity, even excluding portables, and that if in the future we have to house remaining HCC students and neighborhood students, it could work capacity wise.
What happens if Neither Closure Plan is Adopted?
- IF the board DOES NOT approve a closure plan and Cascadia IS NOT given a catchment area next year we would expect Cascadia to remain a HCC school ONLY.
- We assume we would have grades 3-5 only, and we would be approximately 400 students even without any new HC kids opting in. But we THINK that if a closure plan is NOT adopted, SPS will continue to allow kids to opt in, and in that case our population could be even larger than 400. But even just 400 is a very healthy size.
- This current language on the website indicates kids can still opt into Cascadia next year in the absence a closure plan being adopted by the school board:
https://www.seattleschools.org/departments/advanced-learning/services-and-programs/
So what’s next for these proposals?
- On Sept. 18th, SPS introduced these proposals to the School Board and the School Board expressed a ton of concern and scepticism about the plans.
- As stated above, for either closure plan to proceed the School Board would have to vote to approve this course of action. This vote is currently scheduled for December.
- Community meeting dates coming up to offer your feedback: https://www.seattleschools.org/news/sept-and-oct-community-meetings/
- Get involved: email advocacy@cascadiapta.org
