SEATTLE — In the three years since this city returned to neighborhood schools, a small but growing group of parents who live on a rugged hillside of both wealth and poverty has been trying to persuade skeptical neighbors to give the local Hawthorne Elementary School a chance.
They have hosted cocktail parties and play dates to share their children’s successes there, raised tens of thousands of dollars for the school, and have circulated a fact-sheet to counter worries about low test scores and vague concerns about safety, proclaiming “Hawthorne Elementary is on the rise,” and inviting parents in for a private tour.
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ah m but seattle is not run by a blithering nitwit bagman mayor backed to the hilt by a totally useless and gutless city council and a supposed group of people who call themselves the 10 point coalition whose only aim is to keep city gelt flowing into their coffers and have sold out their own neighborhoods for years just to keep on the good side of guess which gasbag mayor. ma
Seattle also brainwashes their children in counter-productive, irresponsible socialism just like Boston schools. Should make the transition even easier...
The current Boston Public School zone proposals, including John Connolly’s plan, are just a smokescreen. Student test score data, of the students transfering into the “neighborhood” schools, is what the BPS hasn't provided. BPS needs to aggregate student test and MCAS scores by neighborhood address, then again by the different zone plans BPS is proposing. When this data surfaces, we will immediately be able to predict where the quality neighborhood schools will be located. The children are the data; the “quality of the school” will travel with them.
John Connolly, the king of frozen food, got lucky when he figured out that the school department's plans did not include 'grandfathering' of students. Connolly took advantage of their typical lackadaisical-ness and inability to come up with a sensible plan. He also got lucky when he hears there were out-of-date frozen french fries at a few schools. An opportunist knows how to find weakness in a not-ready-for -prime time opponent. Put Connolly up against real opposition and he'll crumble. Just wait