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Orca Advocacy for Improved Education Funding
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Sunday, Dec 9 2007
Report from Rhonda Aronwald, Chair of Orca K-8’s Legislative Committee
On Dec. 5, Koichi and I attended the Seattle School Board meeting to express our school community’s frustration and dismay with the current fiscal crisis at Orca K-8. The main points we shared:
• The families of the Orca K-8 community are facing a fiscal crisis caused by the state’s failure to fund full day kindergarten, even though full day kindergarten is widely regarded as the best practice for successfully engaging early learners.
• Over the last three years Orca has experienced a small decline in the number of our students eligible for free or reduced lunch. As a result of this minor decline, Orca has lost $40,000 in state funding to pay for full day kindergarten.
• Orca will now be forced to charge kindergarten families $200 a month, or else pay the $40,000 out of funds raised by the PTSA. $40,000 is nearly half of the PTSA’s current budget (our budget for next year is unknown and potentially smaller with the loss of our yearly garden sale).
• If the PTSA funds full day kindergarten—as we pledged to do in a recent special session of the PTSA—other programs that are critical to our community will potentially be shortchanged, including the library, supplemental tutoring, the music program, and environmental education/children’s garden.
• We believe a $2000 annual tuition bill could be a barrier to some families who would like to enroll their children at Orca K-8 school.
• Our school should not face this crisis at any time, but especially now when we have been working so hard to build a new, successful K-8 educational environment for our kids. We urge the board to demand that our Washington State government fund full-day kindergarten and all programs that create strong educational settings for our and all students in the Seattle School District.
We felt our points were well-received at the meeting and board member Sherry Carr sent a follow-up email right away to say thank us for sharing our point of view. At the meeting, other parents and teachers shared concerns with the Everyday Math program and the proposed merger of Chief Sealth high school and Denny middle school, among other topics. One very articulate young man—a former honor student and graduate of Garfield high school—spoke about his frustration that the problems and barriers he faced as a student of color in Seattle Public Schools are still in place. All the speakers made an impression.
The more we can get out there and make a noise in the community about the inadequate funding of our and all Seattle Public schools, the better.
The Washington State PTSA Focus Day, Feb. 13, 2008 in Olympia will also provide a venue for parents to share concerns about inadequate funding of our schools
We are working to organize a forum for Orca parents to hear from and speak with Senator Adam Kline and our legislators, Reps. Sharon Tomiko Santos and Eric Pettigrew. We will keep you posted on a date and time for this forum.
Letters and emails are also effective. Please consider using one of the following sample texts or write your own. Contact information is also provided. The Action Center of the Washington PTA is also a great resource for letter writing and contacts and gives background information on a variety of issues for our public schools: http://capwiz.com/wastatepta/home.
Thanks everyone for helping to get the word out about our funding crisis and calling for support of our basic educational programs so we can use our PTSA money to continue to develop the kinds of supplemental programs that make our school unique and strong.
Sincerely,
Rhonda Aronwald and Legislative Committee members Caitlin Davis, Steve Marquart, David True and Susan Rasch.
Letters to cut and paste:
Dear Governor Gregoire,
We, the parents of children at Orca Alternative K-8, a Seattle Public School would like to voice our outrage and dismay that Washington State only funds half-day kindergarten. We consider this to be a basic educational service. Not funding it is a slap in the face to working families and our community. Without adequate funding from the state, parents and schools are left to raise this money ourselves. Either we have to ask incoming kindergarten families for a monthly “donation” to cover their teacher – creating a barrier to economically disadvantaged families, and an unwelcoming distinction between those who can and cannot afford to pay – or we have to take it out of our PTSA budget – money we raised to provide things that are now considered "extras": classroom support, music program, school garden, snack, etc.
Both of these options are unacceptable and infuriating to us, particularly when Washington’s constitution clearly makes it “the paramount duty of the state to make ample provision for the education of all children.”
We appreciate that you have begun to fund full-day kindergarten in the poorest schools in the state, but our school (with 31% of our students qualifying for free/reduced lunch) didn’t make the cut. We strongly urge you to follow the constitution – and your conscience – and fully fund all day kindergarten for all schools in Washington State as soon as possible.
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Dear Director Chow,
We, the parents of children at Orca Alternative K-8, a Seattle Public School would like to voice our outrage and dismay that we are forced to ask parents to pay for full day kindergarten. We consider this to be a basic educational service. We understand that the State only funds half-day kindergarten, and the City Levy provides one full-day kindergarten at each school, but this leaves half a teacher unfunded at our school. Although our school budget was able to absorb this cost in the past, we have recently stopped receiving Title 1 funds, which has made it that much harder. The new staffing model means we no longer have the flexibility to cover this gap with the funds the district provides.
We are suddenly faced with the choice of having the PTA fund this half teacher ($40K is nearly a third of our PTA budget for next year) or asking incoming families to pay a monthly donation to cover the cost. Both options are unacceptable to us.
As you know, we are in the middle of a huge transition. We have moved to a new building, and we are adding a middle school grade by grade. We are now in the unique position of being an alternative K-8 that draws from the entire south end, not just one neighborhood. Other schools in our neighborhood do not charge for kindergarten, and we fear if we do, it will make it harder for us to recruit families that reflect the economic and racial diversity of our neighborhood – a core value of our community. Raising the money as a community is going to be difficult work, potentially creating divisions between those who can and cannot afford to donate. And when we are done, we will simply have funded the basic teaching staff at our school, not the “extra” stuff (supplemental tutoring, music program, snacks, garden/environmental ed) that a PTA is supposed to provide. We are heartbroken that we may even have to cut some of these wonderful programs in order to fund full-day kindergarten next year.
We understand that the State is funding full-day kindergarten in the poorest 10% of schools this year, including 12 elementary schools in the Seattle District. Could some of the City Levy money that used to fund half a teacher at each of those schools be made available to support our school during its crucial transition to K-8? We parents are working hard to make Orca a fabulous K-8, a model of success for the whole district! But we can’t do it without adequate support from the district.
Please help us support our transition to K-8, our working parents, and the diversity of our school culture by helping us find another way to fund half a kindergarten teacher at Orca.
CONTACT INFO:
Governor Chris Gregoire
Office of the Governor
PO Box 40002
Olympia, WA 98504-0002
Web Site:
www.governor.wa.gov
E-mail:
Contact Via Web Form.
Give Governor Gregoire's Office a Call:
Governor's Office (360) 902-4111
For relay operators for the deaf or hearing impaired, please dial 7-1-1
Fax Governor Gregoire a Letter:
(360) 753-4110
School Board
Cheryl Chow
District VII -
Cheryl Chow cheryl.chow@seattleschools.org (206) 721-4199
School Board Office
2445 Third Avenue South
Mail Stop: 11-010
PO BOX 34165
Seattle, WA 98124-1165
jodingfield@seattleschools.org
Representative Sharon Tomiko Santos
E-mail: santos_sh@leg.wa.gov
436B Legislative Building
Olympia, WA 98504-0600
Phone: (360) 786-7944
Fax: (360) 786-7317
Senator Adam Daniel Kline
E-mail: kline.adam@leg.wa.gov
223 John A. Cherberg Building
Olympia, WA 98504-0437
Phone: (360) 786-7688
Fax: (360) 786-1999
Representative Eric Pettigrew
E-mail: pettigrew.eric@leg.wa.gov
122E Legislative Building
Olympia, WA 98504-0600
Phone: (360) 786-7838
Fax: (360) 786-7317
Text of the Petition we signed and gave to the Seattle School Board on Dec. 5:
Petition to the Seattle School Board from the Orca K-8 Community
A call to for the Board to support Washington’s constitution and make “ample provision for the education of all children”
November, 2007
“We, the parents of children at Orca Alternative K-8, a Seattle Public School, would like to voice our outrage and dismay that we are forced to find a way to pay for full-day kindergarten. We consider this to be a basic educational service. Although our school budget was able to absorb this cost in the past, this year we have added a middle school and can no longer afford to do so. We are now in the unique position of being an alternative K-8 that draws from the entire south end, not just one neighborhood. We strive to reflect the diversity of our area, but charging families for kindergarten (or forcing the PTSA to raise funds to cover the $40K price tag) will likely make that harder to do. These options are unacceptable to us, particularly when Washington’s constitution clearly makes it ‘the paramount duty of the state to make ample provision for the education of all children.’ We urge you to support a more swift implementation of full funding of full-day kindergarten.
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