Public education advocate Melissa Westbrook breaks down the issues facing Seattle Public Schools as four of seven seats on the school board are up for grabs this election and a new superintendent is about to be installed.
Last week, the Seattle School Board rejected a year-long pilot program to install a police officer inside Garfield High School in a 5-2 vote. School board directors cited a chaotic process, community distrust, and a need to finetune the plan.
The Union Bay Natual Area is 74 acres of public open space with miles of trails, but the University of Washington has rebuffed advocates pushing to remove a fence and add a trail to improve access. Here’s why they should reconsider.
Last week, the Seattle School Board was scheduled to vote on a pilot program that would return police to Garfield High School, but delayed the vote to October 8. Critics have argued better ways exist to promote safety, and that a return of police could contribute to the school-to-prison pipeline and
A majority of the Seattle School Board joined the push for additional neighborhood growth centers last week, pointing to a link between additional housing density and stable student enrollment.
King County is capping school impact fees on multifamily projects, hoping to lessen the burden on homebuilders. The move sparked a debate on how to help overcapacity school districts while avoid undue burdens on builders.
Only three of 15 high schools analyzed in King County have carpooling incentives: Issaquah, Redmond, and Interlake high schools. Expanding carpooling incentives would allow schools to encourage greener commutes while getting more utility out of limited parking spaces.
Last week school board director Liza Rankin wrote a memo to her colleagues suggesting a major new round of austerity for the Seattle Public Schools that could revive a plan to close numerous schools. Robert Cruickshank argues that’s the wrong approach.
A group of high school student activists make the case we don’t need more cops in schools. We need more care, as the Seattle Student Union fought for and had been promised. The research is clear on what works.
A newly signed Washington State law aims to “improve safety for young drivers” by expanding access to driver’s education and raising the minimum age at which new drivers can get a license without completing a formal driver’s education course.
Mayor Bruce Harrell’s $1.3 billion education levy is set to go to the ballot in November, but it could be weighed down by a controversial proposal to put police officers back in Seattle schools. Meanwhile, Harrell’s draft school safety plan has stalled out, which is drawing criticism from school boa
School board directors Sarah Clark and Joe Mizrahi break down how flawed enrollment practices are harming students, and may ultimately lead to school closures across the city.
Rep. Julia Reed’s House Bill 1839 would bring in over $200 million a year for higher education in by closing a tax loophole benefiting Amazon and Microsoft. The money is sorely needed to curb tuition and raise enrollment.
The idea of closing schools is currently off the table as Seattle Public Schools considers how to close a significant budget deficit. This year’s legislative session and school board elections will be pivotal in determining whether that conversation will resurface.
With the baton passing from Jay Inslee to Bob Ferguson, Washington’s governor has placed more emphasis on fiscal austerity to solve the state’s looming budget deficit. But some lawmakers are intent on raising new revenue to avoid deep cuts to social programs.
Get Seattle’s biggest businesses to ante up $5 million now to prevent school closures, then get the Washington State Legislature to pass a wealth tax on the super-rich, enabling Washington’s public schools to thrive.
A plan to expand the number of school zone speed cameras has been in the works for nearly two years. But Councilmember Rob Saka is raising questions about the idea and funds allocated to make it happen.
While the Seattle City Council has recently stifled opportunity for public participation and dissent, Seattle Public Schools is even further along, having already adopted many of the same undemocratic practices now seen at City Hall.
City and school officials promise a tangible change in safety and student supports when the new school year begins. But they’re delivering fewer mental health investments than student groups requested.
A string of school shootings has officials scrambling for answers. Mayor Bruce Harrell and County Executive Dow Constantine are pledging a surge in resources including mental health supports. But will it be enough?
Last week, the Seattle school board voted to proceed with a plan that could close 20 or more public schools across the city. The plan would worsen the district’s budget woes, student learning outcomes, enrollment decline, racial inequities, and undermine efforts to add missing middle housing and cre
Even after plans for a new Alki Elementary were redesigned to add parking, the project is caught in another appeal alleging there still isn’t enough proposed parking. The delays triggered by the appeals have cost the school district at least $3 million so far.
Last week Seattle Public Schools (SPS) unveiled plans to embrace sweeping austerity, making major cuts to school programs and closing an unspecified number of schools in the 2025-26 school year. In response to a new wave of community organizing against austerity plans, the district abandoned plans to close schools in
An appeal brought by neighbors threatens to delay construction and heap costs on cash-strapped Seattle Public Schools. Construction on a new Alki Elementary School in West Seattle has stalled. The former school, demolished this summer and now a vacant lot, sits quiet, with the process to issue a permit to
Faced with an ongoing refusal by the state legislature to properly fund public education, Seattle Public Schools have responded by proposing an unprecedented plan to make major and lasting cuts. The result will be fewer schools, larger class sizes, and less programs. In turn, this will lead to Seattle students
A plan to dramatically expand Seattle’s school zone speed enforcement program hit a snag this week. The Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) told a city council committee that new cameras likely wouldn’t be able to be in place until well after the start of the 2024-2025 school year.
Mayor Harrell may have come around on the Youth Violence Prevention Initiative he helped defund during his time on Seattle City Council. In 2020, guns became the leading cause of death for US children and teens for the first time in history, and Seattle’s high school students are begging
This summer, Seattleites could be playing pickleball and giant chess in downtown streets rather than dodging oncoming traffic and hustling past boarded up storefronts. Mayor Bruce Harrell sees it as a possibility, unveiling a new initiative aimed at revitalizing downtown yesterday from a Pioneer Square gallery space filled with media
It is spring of 8th Grade in the Dubicki household, so we have been investigating options on where to attend high schools. Seattle Public Schools offers schools in a home attendance area as well as option schools, allowing families to choose whether a school outside the neighborhood is a better
A public school is an essential part of any community. Here in Seattle, public schools are in crisis. Last month, Seattle Public Schools (SPS) announced their intention to close schools and consolidate students into schools with larger student populations. This comes on the heels of recent reports that SPS may
I first encountered the Washington State Department of Natural Resources (DNR) Twitter account when it popped up on my feed, already uncommon for a government agency profile. Even more uncommon: it featured punchy language and unhinged graphics characteristic of Gen Z and Millennial humor. I had barely thought about the
In this episode, professional educator and managing editor Natalie Argerious tolerates my raving parent commentary about the 2021-2022 public school year. The kids have a lot of catching up to do. The teachers are trying their best and providing them with social and emotional education that we never got. But
Seattle Public Schools is rushing toward a three tiered schedule of school start times. The district should reassess. (Photo: Seattle Department of Transportation)
For a long time, Washington’s digital divide worried many groups of people who saw its harmful and inequitable effects: librarians, teachers, tribal governments, and community-based organizations that help workers struggling to feed their families, to name several. And then the COVID-19 pandemic happened. All of a sudden people were
Ballots for the 2022 Seattle Public Schools (SPS) Capital Levy are due tomorrow, Tuesday, February 8th. To be accepted, they must postmarked or deposited in a dropbox by that date. Tacoma Public Schools also has a public school levy with ballots due on the 8th as well, and according to
The letter District Leaders should send to follow earlier garbage. Dear Seattle Schools families, As Covid numbers have spiked among kids and staff in Seattle Public Schools, we here at the District have repeatedly sent out confusing and oblivious emails. They were so poorly put together, you needed to wade
Three years ago, Seattle voters approved the Families, Education, Preschool, and Promise Levy, which included funding for two years of free community college to seniors graduating from Seattle Public Schools. Since then the Seattle Promise program has been brought to scale. This year it will serve an estimated 1,100
Seattle is now offering all public middle school students in Seattle free transit passes through the ORCA Opportunity program. This builds upon a program that already provides free transit to public high school students, lower-income public middle school students, and Seattle Promise Scholars as well as Seattle Housing Authority (SHA)
Supporters of solar power for Seattle Public Schools can sign a petition or register to speak at Wednesday’s School Board meeting. During the windstorm that swept through the Puget Sound region last week, more than a hundred thousand people were estimated to have lost power. For some the outage
Neighborhood advocates, however, want the Belltown site to be more than a vacant lot during the interim period. Mayor Jenny Durkan and Seattle Public School (SPS) Interim Superintendent Brent Jones have signed a letter of intent (LOI) opening up the opportunity for SPS to build an elementary school and park
As of Thursday, Seattle Public Schools (SPS) had six days of school and six days of late school buses. It’s a local impact of a national school bus driver shortage. Around town, the shortage is getting less short but it’s still pretty noxious. On the first day of
Yesterday, the Seattle City Council passed three bills extending protections for tenants facing the threat of eviction. They also voted unanimously to send a letter to Mayor Jenny Durkan and Governor Jay Inslee asking them to extend their respective eviction moratoriums, which both expire June 30th, through the end of
Former Seattle City Council President Bruce Harrell held a mayoral campaign event Friday in front of a homeless camp on a playfield at Broadview-Thomson K-8 School in Bitter Lake. Harrell avoid the word “sweep” or “camp removal” but still argued the homeless people shouldn’t be camped there. “Last week
Of all the unexpected systems that the pandemic has laid bare, the crisis has shown childcare to be uniquely scattered and broken. By closing down the backbone of childcare for most people — the public school systems — families were left scrambling to make do. The news report euphemism was “balancing” childcare
To be upfront, I am pissed at Seattle Public Schools. As a parent of school-age kids, I have been subjected to SPS’s anti-union propaganda regularly over the last few weeks. Between direct emails touting their reopening lines in the sand and robocalls badmouthing the teachers, SPS is going too
The Washington State Legislature is in ongoing legal trouble for failing to properly fund schools. The City of Seattle has many solemn commitments to improving walkability and equity. Why, then, does City code require the school district to spend thousands of dollars every year asking for permission not to turn
Last week, Representative Drew Hansen (D-Bainbridge Island) filed House Bill 1336. This bill should be celebrated widely and has the potential to upend the internet monopolies in Washington State. We have endured twenty years of large telecom and cable companies getting larger, through mergers and acquisitions. In Seattle, where the
In September, the City of Seattle released the Internet for All Seattle Report. This report follows the City’s July 27th resolution to establish the city council’s goal to implement a “vision of enabling all Seattle residents to access and adopt broadband internet service that is reliable and affordable.
“Being progressive means actually making progress, and we have done it,” Mayor Jenny Durkan boasted in her annual State of the City speech on Tuesday. Halfway through her first term, Mayor Durkan rattled off accomplishments, but laid out a cautious agenda for the year ahead. Durkan announced a plan to
At the beginning of the 2020 legislative session, Senator Joe Nguyen made a clarion call for going big. “A short session is not an excuse to do nothing, and definitely not an excuse for incrementalism,” he wrote in The Stranger, urging his colleagues to tax the rich and fund public
Vox explains how this online school rating system may be underrating the actual quality of many schools.
In this video, Dave Amos of City Beautiful looks into the thorny politics and issues of school choice, racial and social inequality, segregation, social pressure and amorphous quality ratings, and attendance boundaries.
Missing infrastructure and a high crossing guard vacancy rate hamper Seattle students’ ability to walk or bike to school Active transportation, which includes any kind of transportation based on physical activity, is universally acknowledged as beneficial for children and adolescents. Engaging children in active transportation has both immediate and longterm
Last week, Seattle got a look at the proposed update to the Seattle Public Library’s capital and operations levy, replacing the one expiring this year. While the new levy proposal expands access, it should go even further. The proposal is mostly a necessary continuation of vital programs offered by
It is apparent early on in conversation with District 7 City Council candidate Michael George that he loves cities, but the dedicated urbanite and co-founder of Parents for a Better Downtown Seattle (PBDS), also professes to be fond of wild spaces too. “I’m an ‘up not out’ environmentalist,” George
On Monday, the Seattle City Council adopted several pieces of legislation related to land use, housing, education, and the environment. While the education levy proposition is undoubtedly the marquee headline from the meeting, the city council approved more funding–though temporary–for homeless emergency services and housing that could benefit
On Monday, the Seattle City Council met for a relatively light legislative session on policy substance. However, councilmembers approved a new Central District landmark in the form of a culturally-significant church and gave reauthorization for a longstanding homeless shelter lease in SoDo. Councilmembers will take up some hefty discussion in
All public high school students in Seattle will receive free transit passes under a plan to encourage transit ridership both in the immediate and long-term. Mayor Jenny Durkan announced the expanded program during her State of the City speech Tuesday at Rainier Beach High School. “At a time that our
At the southwest corner of Othello and Martin Luther King Jr Way, a stone’s throw away from the Othello light rail station is a large weed strewn lot that has sat idle for many years. But as this summer faded to fall, bulldozers prepared the ground for portable classrooms
Late last month, the Washington State Legislature took rushed steps in passing two bills that deal with the Growth Management Act (GMA). One of the bills more widely allows construction of schools in rural areas–a decidedly bad idea–while another significantly modifies the approach to developing land capacity analysis
The University of Washington (UW) is deep into its Seattle campus master planning update for 2018. Earlier this month, the university released the draft plan and Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS). The master plan is intended to cover a 10-year planning horizon, but also takes a look at future needs
Rebecca Barnes, FAIA is the University of Washington University Architect and Assistant Vice Provost for Campus & Capital Planning. Rebecca was previously the Chief Planner for the City of Boston and Director of Urban Design & Architecture for the “Big Dig” in Boston. Rebecca was involved in developing and implementing
State Senator Reuven Carlyle has been in a reflective mood lately. Unfortunately those reflections demonstrate a misunderstanding of the funding issues involved and cavalier attitude toward much needed transit upgrades for his district. Robert Cruickshank penned an excellent rebuttal for The Urbanist. Carlyle posted further reflections that—though conciliatory—didn’
As a parent who lives in the 36th District, and therefore a constituent of State Senator Reuven Carlyle, I share his concern that Washington State be able to fully fund our public schools as well as address the climate crisis by building rail to connect our community to so many
Some of us at The Urbanist have discussed highlighting the role of education and improving Seattle public schools as a central plank of Seattle urbanism looking into the future. We aim to bring more articles on that topic. Let’s start with the low-hanging fruit of a long-delayed, much-anticipated prospect
The recent gas explosion ripped a hole in Greenwood’s heart just as it was entering a new era of economic vibrancy. Greenwood’s many vacant storefronts had been filling up, reflecting a renewed appreciation for a business district built around the last in-city stop of the Interurban Streetcar. The
Significant growth in Seattle over the past few years has prompted a great deal of attention, and now there is a dedicated place in the city, the Center for Architecture and Design, which invites people to discuss ideas and engage with how all facets of design affect our lives. The
Architect Takaharu Tezuka showcases his design for a kindergarten where kids are encouraged to be kids. His approach and thinking expands the possibilities of designing spaces that are interactive, fun and educational.
Editor’s Note: This is Part 1 in a three-part series on measuring the success of Seattle’s urban village strategy. For the the 22 independent indicators, see Part 2 and Part 3. In this article, Scott distills down some key background details from the report. Correction: The SSNAP report