The QAE PTSA and other parents from our school attended the June 19th community meeting on the Magnolia School Boundaries. There was a large crowd including parents from all the schools in Queen Anne and Magnolia. Here are our notes from the meeting:

Boundaries Survey - Great Response from the QAE Community!
SPS sent out a survey at the end of May to all families who attend schools in the Queen Anne and Magnolia areas. Queen Anne Elementary had 287 responses, the second most amongst all the schools. Thanks to our community for being so involved! QAE's overwhelming choice amongst the 13 options was Scenario C with 71% of our families selecting it as one of their top three options.

Top Boundary Options from the Survey
Ashley Davies, Director of Enrollment Planning at SPS, presented the scenarios that received the most votes in the boundaries survey. She said that nothing was final, but the original 13 options were likely narrowed down to these 5 or 6 options. She did mentioned that any of them could be tweaked as needed.

• Scenario C - one of the original six options. No change to QAE or John Hay boundaries. Portions of the current west and north Coe area are re-zoned for Magnolia and Lawton. (The QAE PTSA recommended this as one of the scenarios that does the best at adding capacity for growth while minimizing disruption across schools).
• Scenario D - one of the original six options. Similar to C, but with slight change in Blaine/Magnolia boundary dividing line. (The QAE PTSA recommended this as one of the scenarios that does the best at adding capacity for growth while minimizing disruption across schools).
• Scenario H - Switch to all schools becoming attendance area schools, no option school in Queen Anne/Magnolia cluster.
• Scenario J - Magnolia becomes the option school, all other schools are attendance area schools.
• Scenario M - Blaine becomes a K-8 option school, all other schools are attendance area schools.
• Scenario K - while this wasn't one of the top options, it appeared that they were also considering this.  In this scenario both Blaine and McClure are middle schools, all other schools are elementaries. QAE remains an option school and no K-8 at Blaine.

Impacted Students by Scenario
After the meeting, SPS published details on the number of students affected by each scenario (A-M). It ranges from a low of 306 (for J) to 816 (for M).

Magnolia School Construction Costs & Potential Delay
SPS received bids on the Magnolia School construction that were approximately $5 million over budgets. The district will likely re-look at the project and see where they can cut costs and get new bids in the fall. This likely means that the opening of Magnolia may be delayed from the beginning of the 2018-19 school year to the 2019-20 school year. This change to timeline might take away some of the sense of urgency in drawing new boundaries.  There was a concern from the audience that if new boundaries are drawn this Fall, they might have to change again prior to the school opening.

Fort Lawton Development Discussion
Some members of the audience brought up the planned development of new housing on Fort Lawton by the City of Seattle. This will add more children to the Queen Anne/Magnolia area. Audience members were advocating that the school district and the city consider using some portion of the Fort Lawton area for a new STEAM (science and environment, technology, engineering, arts, math) school.

The QAE PTSA will continue to do our best to advocate for our community and share the latest developments. See our Boundaries Info page for the latest as well as SPS's page about the meeting.

During the June 6th Building Renovation Meeting  we heard very consistent feedback from our neighbors and community QAE parents have NOT always been kind, safe or fair to our children, ourselves and our neighbors. We were reminded of some basic SAFETY and RESPECT procedures that you should remember when dropping off and picking up your children at school.  Please help us model good safety behaviors for our children and be good neighbors.

1) Crossing Boston St at the intersection of Bigelow.  There is a signed cross walk at Boston and 4th Ave N to use for our safety and our children.  Our neighbors have witnessed a number of situations where distracted or hurried drivers do not pay attention when driving through this area and it is further challenged by the slope of the street giving drivers some blind spots.  They reminded us that we should all be careful and safe when crossing streets.

2) Crossing the any street mid-block.  Please don't play frogger across the busy street.      

3) Parking - please respect our neighbors driveways, fire hydrants, crosswalks and stop signs.  The below is the Seattle Department of Transportations Parking Regulations in regards to How Close Can you Park?  Parking illegally, even for a couple of minutes, is unfair and unsafe to those that are sharing the roads.

QAE is throwing a Popsicle Party for new families who will be joining us for the 2017-18 school year! It's tomorrow afternoon (June 13th) from 4:30-5pm on the QAE playground. See the school, meet some other families and get any questions answered. If you know a family of an incoming Kindergartner (or other families who will be new to QAE), please encourage them to attend!

Afterwards, new families can stick around and check our school-wide Project Based Learning celebration from 5-6:30pm!

Parents of Incoming Kindergartners: Don't forget to sign up for Kindergarten Jump Start, which will take place the week of August 21st - 25th!

Who: QAE Community, families, students, staff, faculty and friends

What: A little work, a lot of play! Help spread wood chips and hay at school. It's a labor of love and gratitude. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Post work, You and your families are invited to come hang, eat, drink and be merry. BYOB and dish to share. We'll provide the BBQ Grill, S'mores, Coolers, Music and open our home for a gathering space (although small, it will be cozy).

Where: QAE Garden and The Hildebrandt Home located at 510 W Galer St, Seattle 98119.

When: Saturday, June 24 10am- 12pm at the QAE Garden ... Potluck to follow immediately with no planned end point.

​Why: As our Seattle summer turns into drought-like weather, typically, July into September, the wood chips and hay will keep the soil moist and prevent it from turning into plots of dust. It will be a good way to indicate appropriate walking paths and put nutrients back into the soil as it decomposes over the coming seasons. We need your help spreading them!  Out of gratitude for the garden, our school community, the work our students have done and everyone that has helped in the garden, we want to gather in recognition of it all. Evan if you haven't had a change to help in the garden but are happy for it's existence and our community please come and celebrate! 

Help us plan by RSVPing to [email protected]. And see our Garden page for more details.
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​"We called ourselves the Explorers and we knew we wanted our kids to learn differently." - Mr. Jeffery

In exchange for receiving a very significant discount when we purchased new cases for our school's iPads, the company that makes the cases produced a video about how our students use our iPads to learn and explore.

It really captures part of what makes QAE so special!

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Sharing information with our families in case you want to share your opinion:

On Wednesday the Seattle School Board voted in favor of the shift to two start times, but it's contingent on the City Council voting to provide the necessary transportation funding. This vote is on Monday. 

There has been some contention about this vote in Council meetings. If you believe we should switch to two bell times from the current three times, you should write to your Council members by tomorrow. See their emails below.

The Council is voting whether to pay for a one-time funding request of $2.3 million so that SPS can reorganize buses to support the simplification of bell times.

Current three tier system:
Most elementary schools will run from 7:45 to 2:15;
Middle and high schools from 8:35 to 3:25;
K-8s and some elementary schools from 9:25 to 3:55.

Proposed two tier system:
Almost all elementary school will run from 8 to 2:30;
Middle, high schools and most K-8 schools will run from 9 to 3:50.

Email addresses of Seattle City Council members:
[email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

Everyone is invited to the QAE Culture Night on June 16th at 6pm. Join us in celebrating diversity at QAE with food, entertainment, friendship and community!

We have Kouyate Arts who will be providing an interactive West African Drums demonstration and Silvio dos Reis whose group will be performing Brazilian Capoeira! Bring a dish to share.

For questions, write to Victoira Spearman Nunes at [email protected] or Kay Dumlao at [email protected].

For more information, see the QAE Families of Color page.

If your child has been receiving Weekend Food Bags, they can continue to receive them over the summer. You just need to fill out the form below and return it to QAE office.

Our thanks to the Queen Anne Helpline for running the program and helping families who need it! If you have questions, contact the QA Helpline at 206-282-1540 or [email protected].
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Field Day is coming on June 22nd at Little Howe Park. This is an end-of-the-year tradition at QAE and an absolute blast for both the kids and our adult volunteers. We need lots of volunteers to make Field Day a success! Please use got to the form below to volunteer.

We'll need some help on the days before and after if you're not available on the 22nd!

Volunteer for Field Day...

Questions? Please contact Heather Lakefish at [email protected].

QAE parents: learn about the upcoming renovation at Department of Neighborhoods zoning meeting on Tuesday, June 6th at 6:30pm at the QAE Cafeteria.

At this meeting, the Departures Committee, QAE parents and QAE neighbors can see the plans presented by QAE’s architects and learn about requested "departures" so the Departures Committee can make decisions. In order to facilitate the QAE renovation project, SPS has requested some standard "departures" from the zoning for the area. These include expanding the footprint of the building, parking and bus areas. ​We would love parents to come to this public meeting to see the plans and advocate for QAE!   

See the official City of Seattle notice about the meeting and the PTSA's QAE Renovation page for more details about the project. Here's the text from the City:

 Public meeting scheduled to discuss zoning modifications for renovation of the Queen Anne Elementary School

A public meeting is scheduled to discuss Seattle School District plans to renovate and construct an addition to Queen Anne Elementary School located at 411 Boston Street. The meeting will be held at Queen Anne School on Tuesday, June 6 at 6:30 p.m.

The Seattle School District is requesting modifications (known as departures) to the City’s zoning regulations for the following:
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• Increased lot coverage.
• Continued “off-site only” parking.
• On-street bus loading and unloading.

This meeting will include a presentation by Seattle Public Schools on the requested modifications before the Queen Anne School Development Standards Departure Advisory Committee, a group composed of neighbors and School District and City representatives. After the presentation, the public is invited to make comments. Following public comment, the Committee will deliberate and consider the District’s requests. Additional meetings may be held, if needed.

We'll see you and your dancing shoes at the QAE All School Dance Party!

It's starts at 6pm at Hay Elementary. Neema's Comfort food truck will be there and we'll have balloon twisting and face painting. Dance party toys will be available for purchase, be sure to bring cash!