Stories

The Seattle school board, faced with explosive enrollment growth in the North and Northeast clusters and a brutal season of austerity, decided to pull the plug on AS#1 in order to free its building (Decatur) up to house a new K-5. Under the plan, AS#1 students would join Thornton Creek (the school formerly known as AEII) in creating a new K-8 at the Jane Addams site that currently houses Summit K-12, which is getting shipped to the other end of the city -- Rainier Beach.

Got all that?

This appears to be the end of "alternative schooling" in the North End, depending on the final complexion of the Thornton Creek/AS#1 merger. Interestingly, the Thornton Creek students will have much further to go than the AS#1 students with the move, making you wonder if the AS#1 parents will ultimately win control over how the new Jane Addams school functions.

The North and Northwest clusters will have no changes, it appears. Some space will open up at Northgate and Olympic Hills, which are majority underrepresented population schools...

It's getting increasingly certain that Seattle Schools, confronted with a large shortfall and a rapidly souring economy, is facing with another round of school closures.

The latest discussion seems to be focused on either closing or merging Summit K-12 and AS #1 in order to clear space for more students in the Northeast cluster. There's active resistance to closing Summit K-12 (as you'd expect from a school with a supercharged PTA), and one could probably expect the same resistance from AS #1 parents.

Meanwhile, the overcrowding problems continue. Rumor has it when Seattle Schools closed a number of north end schools in 2006 their demographic projections didn't factor in a baby boomlet that happened around the same time, resulting in the overcrowding we're seeing in the north Seattle school clusters.

The city, in its quest to make Seattle a little more bike friendly, restriped North College Way (the road in front of NSCC) and Meridian (what it's called north of 100th) this month.

Southbound they've eliminated one travel lane and replaced it with a bike lane and a dedicated bike lane.

Northbound they've also eliminated a travel lane but only replaced it with a bike lane south of 103rd, though parallel parking remains from 103rd to Northgate.

It's a nice start, but the lack of bike lanes on 92nd or any further north on Meridian suggests this is just low-hanging fruit for the city. It'd be nice to extend the bike lanes west on 92nd to Wallingford and down Wallingford to Green Lake -- and then further up Meridian into Haller Lake.