November 2 Online Community Forum

Date: November 2, 2023

Forum Participants: 64

Summary

A note to the reader: This summary is intended to provide an overview of the consistent themes that came from the small group conversations at the forum. It is not exhaustive, but rather gives highlights of the feedback and responses. See below for the full set of combined notes from the meeting.

Responses to Question 1: What aspects of the middle school experience are most important to you/your student?

The participants in this forum surfaced the following themes:

• High quality education – this is why people move to Bellevue.
• Course offerings and extra-curricular activities
  • Advanced learning – keeping intact at Odle.
  • Electives.
  • Variety.
  • Clubs.
• Student connections.
  • Friendships.
  • Social, emotional wellbeing.

Responses to Question 2: If we were to consolidate one middle school, what priorities or factors do you think we should consider?

The priorities that this group centered on were:

• Maintaining manageable class size.
• Keeping peer cohorts together.
• Transportation.
  • Bus routes.
  • Commute times.
  • Drop off schedule.

Responses to Question 3: What questions do you have?

There were many questions from participants. A full list of the questions can be found in the combined notes below. Several of the questions fell into the following categories:

• What will happen to Advanced Learning?
  • How will we maintain quality?
  • Will it become part of the neighborhood schools and how would that affect teachers?
  • What is the plan and timeline?
• How will students be affected?
  • Will they stay with their peers?
  • Will they be able to access the electives they want?
  • What will class size be like?

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Combined Notes

A note to the reader: These are the combined raw notes from the small group discussions at this forum. These notes have not been edited except to remove names and correct spelling or grammar. They have been consolidated to share the combined responses to each question.

Question 1: What aspects of the middle school experience are most important to you/your student?

• Build solid academic foundation for success in high school through quality teachers who are passionate about their subject and providing a challenging environment to learn.
• Safe place for students to feel mentally and physically safe.
• Being able to differentiate the services that students need (ex: AL program)
• Additional programming such as band, video production, and Spanish immersion to align to their interests.
• Resources to support all students, such as advanced math classes and athletic interests.
• Electives helps students be excited to be at school.
• Mental health supports including counselors to provide students someone to speak to.
• Stability to provide emotional and mental supports.
• Friendship and support at the school
• For middle school, would like daughter to continue to be challenged academically.  Safe and supportive environment, with friends and teachers
• For middle school, it would be nice to have different clubs and different extracurricular activities.
• Would like to see AL program advance as it is right now.  Don’t want to see it sent back to schools.  Not the same experience as it is in the same cohort where students can discuss ideas with each other.
• Most important thing is friendship.
• Music is critical, happy with the clubs.
• Good learning experience, middle school is such critical academically and socially so important to be prepped well.
• Stay with their peers, keep AL together, transitions are hard, and some students don’t feel as welcome to the AL students at their new elementary school. AL students staying together. Super important for them to stay together and ready for IB at Interlake.
• Proper lunch times are important, time of day of lunch, too many lunches (3 is too many), need more time at lunch to eat, worry this will get worse with consolidation.
• After school programs important. Odle soccer and other clubs is important and that they are open to all students.
• Want to have elective courses and variety. Unique courses: ceramics, engineering.
• Worry about having portables at the buildings. Class sizes are too big. Main purpose of schools is education. It’s hard for students to make new friends and so please keep them together.
• One 6th grade and one 3rd grade student, the friendships, the ability to spend time together, the learning, the rigor.
• Looking for quality of the programs, variety, ratio of educator to kids, AL program has been a challenge when moved, closer to the home, and keeping the program.
• CC students, 1st generation immigrant, come because BSD has best schools in the country, get into the AL program, are smart, CC is one of the best schools, test schools, environment, safety, best learning experience in terms of programs, in the neighborhood, rarely hear anything bad, kids are hanging out with other kids in the same neighborhood, share similar interests, ex. Math club, can do it together, good quality classmates, buy a house and look at greatschool.com, test score of the school, don’t take it too important, but shows some of the basics of the school, Odle is another great school, BHS and Interlake is another great school.  Test scores and college admission rates, those are the things I care about, regardless of the level of the school, if there is going to be consolidation, want to make sure it continues to have the same quality, don’t know the consolidation and what the impact would be to the school, and what is the impact to the AL program, by default they would go to Odle, but don’t know where it would go to, if it happens that the AL program has to move to a different school, will care about the similar qualities of that school, will they have the same test scores, similar interests, some other not so great schools in other district, want the same good qualities all around, may have good.

Question 2: If we were to consolidate one middle school, what priorities or factors are important that you think we should consider?

• How will this affect class sizes?  For elementary consolidation from 24 students to up to 30 students
• Maintain teachers with students of the schools consolidated.
• Location- consider how this will affect student travel to school (bus routes).
• Programming offerings:  if they are not available at different schools, how will we meet all students interests and needs?
• Can we provide options for friend groups together to make sure that there is emotional and social support?
• Read consolidation of elementary had over 30 kids per classroom.  Worried kids would be left behind.
• Think it’s important to make sure teachers and students get the support they need.
• Student/teacher ratio.  Make sure teachers have enough help to support all students in the classroom.
• Once there is change, it will affect the emotional wellbeing of kids.  Will be important to have not only teacher resources, but also counselors.  Make sure we have enough counselor support.
• With the addition of more students at one school, will there be a staggered drop off?  It will be important to have easy access to drop off and pick-up.  Right now, it’s really hard to get into Odle (drop off).  Consider block scheduling, staggered schedule.
• Peers move with peers, friends stay together.
• Would want the breadth and depth of elective choices to remain the same.
• Property values.

Question 3: What questions do you have?

• Seems like there are two conversations, one about middle school consolidation and one about the advanced learning program.  Why are we talking about advanced learning? (another parent responded to this question and said they AL students and families weren’t prepared last year when we consolidated elementary schools)
• Want to hear how the AL program is being affected.  What is plan and timeline for all the changes?
• Will they switch to A, B, C track (different groups go different times of the year – e.g. one group goes 3 months on, 1 month off; another group goes a different 3 months with 1 month off)?  Please don’t do that!
• Where will the students go?  Will they stay in same school?  Will they move their peer groups?
• In BHS, heard people have issue getting the elective classes they want, wonder if middle school will have same concerns.  Concerns about availability of some electives
• Would district consider opening more lottery spots for International School?  Would help alleviate potential overcrowding if we do consolidate.
• Concerned about combining middle school students with high school students.  Thinking about if AL would get sent to high school. Don’t want to mix 8th grade AL students with high schoolers.
• What will class sizes be like?
• What will happen to the AL quality if we separate them?
• Last two slides that were shared, for the projection data, what saw for the current enrollment and projected enrollment for 6-8 grade, the current enrollment are all higher than the projected enrollment, what makes think the projected is accurate?  How can you use this to make the decision? Are to consolidate the schools, what is the impact to the teachers and the schools consolidate for next year, not talking about 2030, talking about 2024. With more being allocated to one school, is there enough facilities and educators to support them?
• Accepting non-resident students, and consolidate, would they continue to accept the non-resident students, and the data is biased. If this part of the students is increasing in enrollment.
• What is the plan if there is an increase or the demographics change, to make sure that the right level of education is there?
• How quickly can we shift?
• If AL programs are considered to be in neighborhood programs, how does the teacher of the AL section do that work, and how does that impact the program?

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