An outstanding opportunity

By Jeff Clark

Dear West Seattle community members,

As you probably are aware, thanks to the Seattle voters, a new Denny/Sealth campus plan has been funded, complete with a new building for Denny Middle School and a significant upgrade for Chief Sealth High School. I believe that this opportunity will give our students what they deserve - the best possible educational facility.

Over the course of the last month, the School Board has been asking for feedback regarding this project. Specifically, three options have been developed:

Option 1 - The co-located campus within the parameters of the original $125 million budget. (With this option a separate Denny would be built on the Sealth campus grounds.)

Option 2 - The same co-located campus design with an increase of $10 million more to cover escalating construction costs. This option includes a new Denny and significant upgrades to Sealth.

Option 3 - Denny would be rebuilt in its current location and Sealth would receive only minimal upgrades only: seismic upgrade, new heating system, etc.

A presentation with information regarding all three options is online at http://www.seattleschools.org/area/facilities/BEXIII/DennySealthPresentation020608.pdf

After spending a year on the design team for this project, I strongly support Option 2. I believe that a co-located campus will enhance the educational experience of our students, as a result of...

Academic and Programmatic Alignment: Preparation for success in the International Baccalaureate program at Sealth, alignment in math, literacy, and science are all top priorities. Staff at both Denny and Sealth are committed to ensuring the success of every student - we will work very closely to make this happen.

Peer Tutoring and Mentoring: We know that learning research supports the idea that the best way to really internalize learning is to teach someone else. The possibility of cross-age tutoring and mentoring is of substantial benefit to both age groups. Just imagine having a 12th grader come across to the middle school to serve as a teaching assistant for a seventh grade math class - tutoring and mentoring kids with their math development.

New Rigorous Academic Offerings: As a part of the new plan, Project Lead the Way, a pre-engineering course will be made available to both Denny and Sealth students. This program meets the most updated best practices for career and technical education. Another possibility is expanding world language offerings, which will help prepare all of our students for our global economy. The added rigorous course offerings given to our students - thanks to a co-located campus - will better prepare them as learners and also as college applicants.

Dropout Prevention: Students dropping out of high school is a major concern, especially when we look deeply at the data. Doing whatever we can to solve this is our obligation. All of us working together, in a united way, to help ease the transition from eighth- to ninth-grade will help to reverse this trend. A co-located campus will help with this effort.

Sixth- Through Twelfth-Grade Music Pathway: Our music departments are already combined, offering a wide-variety of musical opportunities to our students. We already have the best program in the city-the new facility design will enable us to make it even better.

As always, safety is my top priority. We have very specific ideas that will maximize safety as a part of the design and supervision of the future schools. A separate middle school building is being built that will face Kenyon St., instead of Thistle St. The new Denny will be designed to meet the educational and emotional developmental needs of middle school students. This in no way will be like a college campus where kids freely mingle. For example, lunches will be separate, along with all other non-class time. I believe that a combined campus can be designed in a way that makes both safety and rigorous learning opportunities achievable.

Other key facts regarding this project:

1) While the new Denny is being built, we will stay in our current facility - avoiding the need to move to an interim site.

2) The targeted completion date for the project is the fall of 2011. Therefore, students entering Denny as sixth-graders next year will not be moving to the new building during middle school.

In summary, I believe that Option 2 will give our students a facility that will be unmatched across our city. The academic opportunities that will be possible will further enhance our ability to provide each student with a rigorous and personalized learning experience, as we prepare them all for college and lifelong learning-they deserve nothing less.

I invite you to share your opinion with the School Board prior to the final decision being made on Feb. 27 - regardless of the option that you favor - by emailing a message to our School Board Directors at schoolboard@seattleschools.org

Jeff Clark is principal of Denny Middle School and may be reached at jclark@seattleschools.org