Dear Cascadia Community:
As many of you know, after receiving significant negative feedback from parents, students, and staff, Seattle Public Schools (SPS) has paused its plan to close and consolidate schools for the 2025-2026 school year. What you may not know is that SPS has not paused its plan to sunset the Highly Capable Cohort program. That means that unless we can convince SPS to change course, Cascadia will lose another grade next year and our HCC programs will only be available to students in grades 3-5. We will still be an over 400 student school if this happens, but we believe this does not make sense given no boundary changes have occured and little advanced learning is accessible at local schools.
Public outcry helped change SPS’s mind about school closures and consolidations. Now we need to raise our collective voices in support of our school and our HCC programs! Want to help? Here’s how:
(1). Attend the upcoming SPS School Board Meeting and ask to be heard! You can attend in person or join via LiveStream. IF WE CAN GET A CRITICAL MASS OF PEOPLE TO THIS MEETING WE BELIEVE WE CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE. WE THINK STUDENT TESTIMONY WOULD BE VERY POWERFUL SO BRING YOUR STUDENT IF THEY WANT TO COME.
The next meeting will be on January 22, 2025 at 4:15 pm at the John Stanford Center for Educational Excellence (2445 3rd Avenue S, Seattle, WA) You must sign up in advance if you would like to speak. Please follow the instructions outlined here.
We believe that getting Cascadia parents and students to attend this meeting and speak in large numbers is our best chance of affecting a change.
(2). Contact all SPS board members and the superintendent by email asking SPS to to pause the sunsetting of the HCC program. We believe emails are not as effective as in-person attendance at next week’s board meeting, but if you cannot be at the board meeting, please send an email to the board and superintendent Dr. Jones:
(3). For your information, the Cascadia PTA sent a letter to the board and Dr. Jones in November and again last week. In this letter we asked for the pausing of the sunsetting of the HCC program at Cascadia. Feel free to copy this letter for your email to the board/Dr. Jones. View our letter here.
Email president@cascadiapta.org if you have any questions.
