QAE PTSA's Position on the SPS Boundaries Survey

​Below is a copy of the email being sent by the PTSA to our families on May 31st, 2017. See our Boundaries Info page for more details.

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Dear QAE families,

As you know, Seattle Public Schools sent out a survey last week to all families in the Queen Anne/Magnolia area regarding scenarios for boundary changes that will happen as part of the opening of Magnolia Elementary in 2018-19.

This survey included 5 new scenarios that had not previously been shared with shared with the community. After studying the different scenarios, the QAE PTSA recommends the following:
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• All our families and staff should take the survey. It's one of the best ways we can advocate for our community and our school. Let's make sure they hear our voice! Please make sure you complete the survey by 5pm on Friday!
• We believe that maintaining QAE as an Option School is the best outcome, not just for our school community but for all students in the larger McClure area.
• While there are no easy boundary changes, Scenarios C, D and E do the best at adding capacity for growth while minimizing disruption across schools. We suggest that our parents select C, D and E on the survey.
• In general, Scenarios A-F would be reasonable. We do not consider G - M to be options worth pursuing since they involve significant family disruption across ALL QA/Magnolia schools, mainly increase overall transportation costs to SPS, and eliminate the successful Option School offering in place for the McClure area. Most importantly, scenarios G-M scenarios do not resolve the underlying capacity issues as well as scenarios A-F.

The survey also asks about the three most important considerations about school boundary changes for your family. We encourage you to pick what's most meaningful to your family, but here are four that we believe are important and are in sync with our support of Scenarios A-F:
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• Equitable access to option schools
• Equitable access to services and programs
• Fiscal impact (cost and savings)
• Other (a write-in): SPS honoring published policy is that once admitted to an option school, a student is entitled to attend that school until the highest grade

You can read more about the issues on our Boundaries Discussion site, which we will continue to update. We have also asked SPS to provide details on the the number of students impacted by each scenario and whether grandfathering would be part of the scenarios. We will post responses when we get them.

If you didn't receive the email from SPS, here's the direct link to the survey.

The QAE PTSA recognizes the complexity of changing school boundaries and fixing capacity issues. Fixing overcrowding requires hard choices, and will necessarily disrupt some families in our neighborhood. We will continue to do our best to work with SPS and the larger QA/Magnolia community on a solution. If you have any further questions, don't hesitate to contact us at [email protected] or via the PTSA Facebook page.

In service,

​Queen Anne Elementary PTSA
[email protected]