We were at Grattan in 2006 when it was on the merger list. Back then it was a title one school. People would get assigned there and then get upset. You could only list 7 elementary programs ( and this meant even if the program was in the same school. So general ed and immersion at a school was 2 slots).
The diversity index lottery was if you added diversity to the community. Which was socioeconomic. We added diversity to Grattan because we were not disadvantaged. We listed it first and EPC said nobody did that and we wouldn't have a problem. We didn't.
What happened to change the demographic is a story of PTA ( I'm part of this) marketing and panic. I put up a website before a lot of schools had one. And we had a person who was a great graphic designer who created brochures and helped with the look of the site.
Back then there were a lot of small mom and pop enrollment fairs in upper middle class areas and we would take our show on the road. Because we wanted to increase enrollment.
The unintended consequence was the slow erosion of diversity. Then it became a self fulfilling prophecy.
I /We made a lot of mistakes in the panic to avoid closings/merger. I would do some things differently.
> will the district just modify attendance areas to account for the school closures or will it roll out the new elementary school assignment zones at the same time as all the closure announcements?
They will not roll out new zones. I believe a district presentation in the past month or so indicated that they will simply use the current system with a modified Attendance Area map (presumably to account for closed Attendance Area schools). The new zone system would have eliminated Attendance Areas and grouped multiple schools into zones. I suspect that the new zones have not been drawn at all, and certainly not in any shape to be rolled out. They had been working on them for years, and I imagine that once school closings started being rumored, they stopped work.
The attendance area policy never rolled out because it's a financial impossibility given the District's other objectives. Given residential segregation patterns in the city, you can't have diverse schools if you restrict kids to reasonable neighborhoods. The way around this is noncompact, awkwardly-shaped zones, which then require busing. The District doesn't have the wherewithal to pay for the significant increase in transit need, so the new assignment areas are DOA. They've been pushed half a decade in 1-2 year increments for a reason.
I really appreciate this analysis and breakdown. Could you move your vacation so we can get a quicker turn around time on the next analysis? (kidding, kind of).
I am certain this will end up being one of the more shared posts within the elementary school groups. Particularly among those you deemed higher likelihood to close. This is just going to be a mess all around.
We were at Grattan in 2006 when it was on the merger list. Back then it was a title one school. People would get assigned there and then get upset. You could only list 7 elementary programs ( and this meant even if the program was in the same school. So general ed and immersion at a school was 2 slots).
The diversity index lottery was if you added diversity to the community. Which was socioeconomic. We added diversity to Grattan because we were not disadvantaged. We listed it first and EPC said nobody did that and we wouldn't have a problem. We didn't.
What happened to change the demographic is a story of PTA ( I'm part of this) marketing and panic. I put up a website before a lot of schools had one. And we had a person who was a great graphic designer who created brochures and helped with the look of the site.
Back then there were a lot of small mom and pop enrollment fairs in upper middle class areas and we would take our show on the road. Because we wanted to increase enrollment.
The unintended consequence was the slow erosion of diversity. Then it became a self fulfilling prophecy.
I /We made a lot of mistakes in the panic to avoid closings/merger. I would do some things differently.
> will the district just modify attendance areas to account for the school closures or will it roll out the new elementary school assignment zones at the same time as all the closure announcements?
They will not roll out new zones. I believe a district presentation in the past month or so indicated that they will simply use the current system with a modified Attendance Area map (presumably to account for closed Attendance Area schools). The new zone system would have eliminated Attendance Areas and grouped multiple schools into zones. I suspect that the new zones have not been drawn at all, and certainly not in any shape to be rolled out. They had been working on them for years, and I imagine that once school closings started being rumored, they stopped work.
The attendance area policy never rolled out because it's a financial impossibility given the District's other objectives. Given residential segregation patterns in the city, you can't have diverse schools if you restrict kids to reasonable neighborhoods. The way around this is noncompact, awkwardly-shaped zones, which then require busing. The District doesn't have the wherewithal to pay for the significant increase in transit need, so the new assignment areas are DOA. They've been pushed half a decade in 1-2 year increments for a reason.
Excellent point . Check out voteformin.com and come to meet her and discuss
I really appreciate this analysis and breakdown. Could you move your vacation so we can get a quicker turn around time on the next analysis? (kidding, kind of).
I am certain this will end up being one of the more shared posts within the elementary school groups. Particularly among those you deemed higher likelihood to close. This is just going to be a mess all around.
What public records did Philippe Marchand request and get? Is there a link to that data?
Thank you for all your analysis on this subject!