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Remaining School Board Meetings about BSD Elementary School Consolidations
March 9 - Regular BSD School Board Meeting Last opportunity for public comment!
March 16 - Special BSD School Board Meeting about consolidations
Greetings Clyde Hill Cougars,
By now, all BSD families have received messages from the district with information about the impending elementary school closures and the consolidation of those students and staff into other schools. If you want to review the information and public comment sessions about the school closures, the recordings are available on the District website (the hearing recordings are linked on their web page and open on YouTube). The school board members did not respond to any comments or questions during these hearings; they were simply meetings for the affected communities to be heard. The district is still working with the community committee to review recommendations and public comments from these hearings.
If the Board votes to approve the recommendation on March 16, our school will likely receive around 150 students from Wilburton. We may receive additional students from other schools facing closure and the greater BSD area, since the district is allowing open enrollment through the end of March.
Some families in our school community have expressed concerns about students from other schools enrolling at Clyde Hill. I hope that we can all move forward with empathy and welcoming to all families new to Clyde Hill. This consolidation process is devastating to the students and staff whose schools are facing closure and disbursal amongst the other elementary schools. Clyde Hill Elementary is in a privileged position to not be facing closure and losing our community.
The school administrators do not have any news or information about how school staffing will be handled. Any information about staffing will be shared after the board and the district makes their determinations, at the earliest. Each school facing closure has a building full of dedicated staff that will no longer be with their beloved students. Again, Clyde Hill Elementary is in a privileged position to not be facing closure.
What We Know:
• Clyde Hill Elementary enrollment numbers will return to what they were before Wilburton Elementary was built. Our school has enough capacity to add classes for every grade.
• School staffing is determined based on seniority and contracts. How many teachers and for what grades we will receive is unknown until a much later date.
• Principal Garcia de Leon will offer a community get-together after we received the final determinations to discuss all of these changes to come.
I hope that we can move forward in support of every student, teacher, and staff member who is losing their neighborhood school. It is yet another, huge disruption in all their lives to which they have to adjust and accept many changes. You can read about Wilburton Elementary PTA’s efforts to save their school on their PTA Website. Also, if you’d like to send a comment to the district about the consolidations, use this link from the BSD website (below):
The community is invited to continue to provide their feedback, input and suggestions through the district’s Let’s Talk platform. Please use the “2022 Planning for the Future” button to share feedback on this topic.
If there are questions or comments you’d like to share with our PTA, please email me at [email protected]. Thank you.
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