A Message From the PTSA

QAE Parents and Community members,
 
You were recently sent an email about an upcoming Seattle Public Schools meeting to discuss the Student Assignment Transition Plan.  The meeting TONIGHT, Monday, November 15th, at Garfield HS from 6:30-8:00pm.   This meeting is a chance to make our collective voice heard about issues that impact QAE for next year and beyond.   The school board will be voting on January 19th on these issues and it is imperative our voices are heard now.  
 
http://www.seattleschools.org/area/news/1011/20101026_NSAP_Regional_Meetings.pdf


I will attend the meeting and would like to have a great showing from the Queen Anne Elementary parent community.   If you are planning to attend, please let me know as I would like to sit together at the meeting to ensure the QAE collective voice is heard.  If you haven't attended an SPS community meeting before, here's how they are run:  A brief overview is given and then attendees are separated into breakout groups and asked for a report-back to the larger group on issues/comments.  If we can get the QAE folks all together, then we can report back on issues specific to QAE.
 
Here are the talking points I propose for the QAE community:


Close the enrollment for QAE/Option schools the same time as neighborhood schools so we can plan for staffing etc
Cap class size enrollment at funded numbers (i.e.  ~23 for K ) and establish waitlists beyond that
The physical classroom sizes at the QAE building on Boston/4th are small, another reason to keep K-2 sizes smaller
Geographic zone - for 2011 and beyond, there will be a geographic zone tiebreaker for families choosing QAE if we have more enrollees than space.   As currently proposed, it is quite small.  We may want to advocate for this to be larger to include more of the QA/Magnolia neighborhood.   See this link for the QAE zone on page 8.   http://www.seattleschools.org/area/newassign/geo_zones.pdf.   Siblings are still the first tiebreaker if we are overenrolled but geographic zone is second so this is an important topic. 
 
Again, please email me at karriesanderson@hotmail.com if you plan to attend.   There will be a carpool leaving the Lincoln Building parking lot at 5:45pm to ensure we get to Garfield HS with enough time to find parking and seats together.  Even if you don't plan to carpool, let me know if you plan to attend so we can save the appropriate number of seats.
 
If you cannot attend, feel free to email me your comments/input and we will incorporate those into our comments.  
 
Regards,
Karrie Sanderson
QAE PTSA President
karriesanderson@hotmail.com 
 

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