Tyee Community Forum – October 30

Date: October 30, 2023

Forum Participants: 100

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 were aligned on a handful of themes that included:

• Academic and teacher quality
  • 7-period day
  • Course offerings
    • Music
    • Language
    • Electives
  • Student to teacher ratios
  • Extra curriculars like athletics and after school clubs
• Skepticism of the demographer data and process
  • How can you project out that far?
  • Data professionals question validity.
  • Big tech will continue to draw people to Bellevue. And require more workers to be in person.
  • See more people moving to Bellevue.
  • Why not wait?
• Community
  • Student’s sense of belonging
  • Friendships
  • Safety
• Closeness of school to home. Concerns about making kids commute and the unreliability of transportation.

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

Participants in this forum want the district to consider other options first. They are concerned about transportation including bus availability, commute times and bike routes. This is closely associated with another concern, which is location. The current location is preferable and works for the families who expressed an opinion about it.

Families also prioritize the quality of the education, class sizes and student/teacher relationships.

Responses to Question 3: What questions do you have?

This forum elicited many questions, some of which fall into the following categories:

(The full list of questions is in the community forum combined notes below.)

• School finance
  • The need to understand where the deficit came from.
  • Interest in understanding how the state allocates per pupil funds.
    • If we receive 90% of our funds from the government, why are we closing schools?
    • Is state funding distributed equitably?
  • How does Bellevue compare with other districts?
  • How will closing a school save money?
• Data and the demographers
  • Where did the data come from?
  • How do we know it is valid?
  • Can we look at additional data?
  • If the data is opposite of our intuition, how do we trust it?
  • How reliable has the data been in the past?
• Exploring other alternatives
  • How can we maintain quality?
  • What are the alternatives to consolidation?
• What about Big Picture – it is small. Why are we not considering cutting choice schools?
• Can we liquidate assets?
• What other options are there to cut expenses?
• The decision-making process
• What is the process?
• Has the decision been made?
• How will parents be heard?

Return to all Community Feedback

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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?

• The education BSD offers. That’s why we came here. The resources and teachers are dedicated to the children. Great teachers. The reputation of BSD overall. Also look for sports and extracurricular activities. Sports, band. Kids are exposed to a variety of programs, not just academic. Everything that makes our school the best in Washington.
• Teachers are the pillar of our school. If we close our school and let go of our teachers, that would be very sad.
• I put my kids at Open Window and then came back. They don’t offer enough clubs and extracurricular activities. At Interlake, she became a social butterfly.
• Projecting out 12 years is unrealistic. I do this for a living and looked at reports.
• Don’t close a school – we can be your soldiers to increase enrollment.
• Value holistic development. My son is so proud to be a Tyee student.
• Think about the whole development. Friendships they build. School is a community.
• We should question the data, but questioning is not the solution. We need to work on the solution.
• Not a believer of homeschooling. I’m a Doctor of Science. But I cannot do what the school does. Kids need to be together to learn from each other. If kids are with others who are doing well, they go up. If they’re with kids who just play, they probably do down.
• Middle school aspect that is important – juggling 7 periods, managing a calendar, life skills. Information is all there now on YouTube or anywhere.
• 6th grader at Tyee: From my family perspective, the community – the students, the teachers, staff members, programs. If you compare BSD with Issaquah – we have 7 periods, and Issaquah has 6, and Renton only has 5. If you look at the whole community and how can the district enrich our students. Equitability around students – special services, world languages.
• 6th grader at Tyee: Several factors – the learning – not just the knowledge, but also the skills they learn – can facilitate future learning – more important than the actual knowledge. Community – people are not just learning by themselves, otherwise we would just do online learning and go to the library. Students/teachers/parents form the wholistic view of how we are educating our next generation. Programs and activities in the school – in general – growing up is not just about learning stuff – it is about exploring other possibilities and learning about life.
• All the charts – 2 of them – they are mathematical models. There are no parent surveys taken, and this is not based on it. I can do a survey to make data look like anything. It is not a survey of what people think. If you said 10,000 people participated, then I would look at it. Only 5 data scientists – that doesn’t provide any info. Also, the timeline – we are just starting to decline, like 5% — there is no way to show that this trend will continue. There is no proof. The models are models, not facts. A survey and people’s mindset is more valuable. We need more time to come to a decision. For example, interest rates may go down and then people could afford to live here – you need 3-4 years to come to a decision. Non-resident students – these folks are enough to keep us up and running. I have kids who are not taking AP classes this year because the classes are full. So, if you are talking about closing the schools, and having 30-35 students per class to keep it running, we are already having problems. People are interested in coming from other school districts – because the education in other districts is not as good. I see a trend at Microsoft of people moving back – and other companies are moving here, expanding their headquarters here. People are moving to the Eastside – the trend slowed/stopped due to the pandemic, but it is coming back now. The past 3 years are skewed/outliers. WE need to go back and look at the time previous to COVID – and compare what was happening then to now. People in tech care about education a lot.
• 6th grader at Tyee: The community is key – how close knit the students are, bonding with each other. It is important for us to keep the stability of the school to form that community. You need continuity. One of the biggest concerns – if we implement a change/consolidate – that would break this community up – a discontinuity – that close relationship that students have already developed – we want that to carry on. How much care the student can get from a teacher – that is the student to teacher ratio that determines this. We don’t want it to increase further – the current level is good. These teachers are familiar with the type of programming here and they can really leverage their past experiences to offer a great program, especially with a healthy student to teacher ratio. If you increase it – too many students to a teacher, that would be a big concern. The quality of the program – many parents here share a similar experience – we move here from the greater Seattle area – choosing Bellevue due to the education quality here. If we keep maintaining this high quality of education, there will be an influx of students from outside. However, if we don’t maintain the quality, we will continue to lose students and that will not be helpful to the remaining schools – we’d have to keep closing them. Our students start in elementary together, then to middle and high school together – we don’t want to break this up.
• 7th grader at Tyee, 2nd grader at Somerset: Quality of education – it is really important. AL is not offered full-time in other schools; we are already constrained by what is being offered. Last year my daughter was at Eastgate – I want to share – the distance to the school is an issue. We have to provide education to all the kids who live in the area – if you are asking kids to travel 5-8 miles daily to get that right to education, that needs to be a consideration. They cannot get a bus to Somerset since they are outside the boundary – we do drop-off and pick-up every day. The school has to be accessible to the children. We are not doing a good service to students if they have to travel so far. All the kids from Eastgate – they were going to Spiritridge, and they would have to go to portables – what is the point in closing a school to move the kids to a school that already is at capacity? This area is mostly people who work in tech industry – a lot of companies said you could do remote work for 3 years – now Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Google – they are requiring 3 days per week of in-person work. So, families who moved away are moving back – I see that at work already. Redmond/Bellevue – that’s where tech families prefer to stay. We need to factor that in – those who left are coming back. If you are going to lose funding, we have to cut expenses, but I think wait and watch is warranted because the trend for tech jobs is that most people are moving back.
• Student to teacher ratio affects the quality of learning – and the access that students have in school.
• If you look at the other schools, the utilization rate is different at Tyee our student to teacher ratio is like 25-30 students per teacher. Other schools have a much lower utilization rate than Tyee. I don’t understand the demographer’s trends for Tyee – there could be a lot of in district transfers – I am one of them – My kids went to Enatai, Tyee is closer than Chinook – so I have to drive my kid every day here, but it takes me 5 minutes instead of 15. If we consolidate, you would have to have a 40 student to teacher ratio here at Tyee to take on the other students. The students at Tyee have actually gone down from 2016, Tyee had about 1200 students, now there are 913.
• 8th grader at Tyee, 5th grader at Somerset: Before we moved from CA, we researched which school we wanted our kids to be in – Mr. Burke’s STEM programs, world languages. I would hate to see all of this go away if we didn’t consolidate. We need to save funding; if we aren’t utilizing other buildings as well. In talking with parents who moved their kids here from Issaquah or Seattle, they come to Tyee due to its good reputation.
• During the past few years, I’ve seen an influx of people into the area, since 2022. More people have been coming in.
• Students have been significantly impacted by the ongoing pandemic, with the Bellevue School District experiencing prolonged closures and some parents turning to private schools for their elementary children. The unexpected rumors of potential middle school closures have left parents concerned about their older kids and the stability of their education. The community emphasizes the importance of maintaining teacher-student relationships and social-emotional well-being alongside academic concerns, especially given the challenges posed by the pandemic.
• They express the need for transparency, resources, and preserving essential programs and electives. There is a call for collecting comparative data on elementary and neighborhood school district consolidations and gathering stories from students and the community.
• Additionally, the importance of in-person learning is highlighted, despite the challenges posed by new teachers and portable classrooms. Administrators are urged to be more transparent regarding budget allocation and resource management. The community stresses the irreplaceable impact of in-person and mental learning and the consequences of not prioritizing it.
• Concerns are raised about the potential shift towards private schools and the need for parents to have choices. The value of teacher-student and peer relationships is emphasized, as well as the social-emotional well-being of students, particularly in the transition to high school.
• The conversation also touches on funding, the importance of not compromising the quality of programs, and the need for better management of resources. The district’s handling of uncertainty is considered disturbing, and there’s a call for more information before making decisions about school closures.
• The community in Bellevue expresses the need to collect feedback from teachers, students, and families for evaluation and decision-making, particularly regarding the impact on elementary students in a transitional phase. They also highlight concerns about bus cancellations and their effects on students and parents.
• Parents are concerned with the closure of schools.
• Why are we closing schools?
• Academics, safe and healthy environment
• Music is important.
• Goal is for daughter to become an independent learner, walk to school on her own. Want her to be exposed to diversity of opinions.
• Tyee is good for son. Provides grade-level math for him. More opportunities to talk to kids. Can join more groups after school. Tutorials and after school clubs. Really enjoys clubs.
• Moved to the area for the school district. Didn’t mind housing costs because it was an investment. Academics are very big. We like all the academics and activities the kids get for the future. How will consolidation affect academics? Our housing taxes are going up. Numbers don’t fit.
• Athletics and Activities
• Middle school contains 3 elementary schools.
• Tyee shouldn’t be considered because it is on the edge of Bellevue. Look at the location; how will family commute.
• After school care, activities (need to plan it out, especially as working parents)
• How far will students have to commute?
• Like the community here. Purchased house b/c of community.
• Peer groups
• Main reasons: BSD is ranked top nationwide. We are proud of this. Experience we care most about is what we’re proud of (i.e., our ranking nationwide). Academic resources. Afterschool class. Shuttle bus. We love the people here. We care about what we have right now.
• Parent of a 6th grade student at Tyee, volunteering at the school, co-chairing an event that occurs in April.
  • Middle school is a tipping point in a child’s experience as the travel from elementary school to high school, need more attention, access to counselors, opportunities to learn to deal with not just school but dealing with life during school.
  • Pillars that make this transition happen (or not) at middle school are their fellow students, teachers, counselors.
  • A lot of adaptation changes as they go from one teacher at elementary to multiple at middle school, anxiety around transportation making it more challenging.
• City Council Candidate, lives right next to Bellevue, biggest feedback from going door to door during the campaign has been related to education.
• Difference between girls and boys as they grow
• Where can the City Council help?
• Parent of student in elementary and at Highland
  • Technology
  • Is the learning environment getting better or worse?
  • Sees negative impacts of elementary closure on her fourth grader, class size has moved from 22 to 29
  • Teachers are saying that they have never seen so many students. Is declining enrollment driving the decision or is it something else?
  • Transportation concerns
  • Does the school district really care about your kids and what parents have to say or is this decision already done
  • Reads information from newspaper article about additional housing units/jobs coming to Bellevue
  • Resident versus Non-Resident student enrollment
• Two boys at Somerset Elementary, including a 5th grader who is rising to Tyee, part of the Somerset PTA
  • Concerns related to impact of Eastgate closure on Somerset
  • Concerns related to classrooms for after school activities and events
  • Sufficient space for backpacks and other things at Tyee
  • Amazon growth/return to work – people who sold their houses during COVID, will that be accounted for
  • What are the budget constraints that were being resolved and concerns about the data
  • Staff may leave to go someplace else that have smaller class sizes or private school – what keeps teachers in school districts
• Parent of 7th grader in Tyee, younger boys in Elementary, moved into the BSD from Redmond to go to school here
  • Staff commitment to strong schools
  • Community commitment to strong schools
• Parent of a 4th grader Somerset who would come into Tyee under current plan, telecom industry but second degree in math in forecasting
  • Concerns about over focus on birth grade in the demographer’s data
  • Concerns about how things have been chaotic this year at Somerset
  • Concern about students in portables
  • Concerns about transportation
• Electives, variety is important for the middle school experience. Engineering. Concerns over class being full now so what would happen if we consolidate? Would it be harder to get in.
• Electives that students really enjoy and like. Music, engineering, art will the closing cause a shortage of these types of classes?
• How do you deal with the shortage of drivers and arrange routing if a school is closed?
• Clubs and activities are important. Provide something to do after school. (7th grade student)
• Elective classes, activities and programs available for all students who want to participate. They had a lottery for activities as there were too many students who wanted to participate.
• Safety is important. If the school is really big and classes are big there may be safety issues.
• Biking to school is important.
• Rearranging classes and lunch period after part of the school year made the students sad. Consistency is important for middle school students.
• Class size is important.
• The trend doesn’t seem to need any closure (6%). It appears misleading. Like the conclusion is already made.
• The increase of non-resident students impacts Tyee.
• More middle school focus and less high school focus. Courseloads, scheduling, academic rigor, how we talk to students is much more mature. Have it be more exploratory for middle school kids instead of talking about what you want from college.
• Strong transition from elementary to middle school.
• Supporting good brain habits.
• Advanced Learning Programs- students enjoy the learning experience and it’s important to keep students together so there is enough support and teachers.
• Rigorous academic learning and opportunities for students to participate in clubs and extend their learning.
• Student activities focused on student cultures.
• Choice for parents about the school community best for their family
• Friend groups that have been formed within the community, walking to school together and building friendships.
• 7 class period and tutorial time.
• Not an overcrowded school or portable classrooms.
• Quality of education; our Asian communities feel safe here since they are a majority of the students. Looking for a safe environment.
• Getting ready for high school; a steppingstone; sense of belonging and friendships.
• School is a social emotional for the kids; building friendships. Be close to each other so they can build those friendships.
• Class size is big; and we already using portable.
• Learning and social is very important. Eastgate has already been closed and what it the actually impact.
• There was significant impact with the closure of a school. When the dissolution has really had an impact on their mental health. The district did not consider the fallout.
• This is a family school and has had multiple generations of the family attend this school. Eastgate students have already been impacted and this will cause even further impact.
• Need to maintain the programs and the opportunities for students. When the only reason is maintaining programs,
• If they lose the autonomy of being in a neighborhood school.
• Stability, location, friendship, belonging, quality education.
• Middle is critical for students, safe space, enough challenge but not too much pressure, inspiring environment, students learning from each other, enough motivation to learn from teacher/classmate.
• Developing how to develop study skills/executive functioning, meet Ss where they are. Much more important than content, b/c without that content doesn’t matter. My son has flourished from summer camps, etc. T’s need to be supportive and encouraging. After school clubs build community.
• Middle school is better than elementary school. People are nice. Good school-Tyee.
• Went from private elementary school, then moved to middle school. Now he’s used to the school. Teacher is very nice. MLL supports, friendships.
• Steady environment, teaching quality, expansion of Mandarin dual language program.
• A cohort of students where he can make good friendships (in AL) in middle school. Been grateful for a large AL cohort in one place. He can be among kids he can relate to. Son likes the rigor of the AL classes. In a group of motivated students. It’s been a safe group of kids for my son. Want AL to stay contained.
• Son is happy at Tyee from JM to AL. He found his group of friends in AL. He has like-minded friends. This makes this happen. Wondering about foreign language options. PTSA is very supportive and has lots of activities for students. Teachers are very involved, this builds character.
• Very Important: Positive Peer influence, where friends attend.
• Teachers
• Orchestra teacher lost his job.
• Good quality of teachers.
• Programs in place stay at the school.
• Stable environment.
• The courses that are offered are sufficient to handle the school population.
• More structure and student accountability in class, especially when students have free time.
• Emotionally safe environment.
• Importance of positive peer influence.
• Positive and adaptive environment in the transition between elementary to middle school.
• Smaller Class size at middle school for more individualized attention which will motivate students.
• BIG School size can limit opportunity for after school clubs and national competition.
• Stability due to the fact middle school is only 3 years.
• Experienced teachers and class size matter.
• First of all, parents understand that the enrollment is generally decreasing in the long term and the consolidation issue sounds more applicable for current younger elementary cohort, not for the current middle school families. The number of enrollments does not seem to be big of a difference in next few years to consolidate. It sounds too soon to make the change applied near future. Parents want to know what the school district’s plan is and why not keep the middle schools as is?

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

• Money should not be the main factor in deciding if we should consolidate.
• Maybe we should think of another approach to this problem.
• It’s going to have a detrimental impact on students.
• Never present only one set of solutions. The district should lay out multiple options.
• If we are going to close a school, we want the good teachers to stay. Teachers are most important.
• You don’t see what happens after the school closes.
• I work for a non-profit and am comfortable with scaling back.
• How can we do it equitably?
• Commute ratio, F/R, race – identify what is the impact to the parents in that school? How to support the parents.
• When you close a school, a lot of kids will need to rely on the bus for transportation.
• I work with immigrants, and many do not have time to participate. What can we do to reach them? The most important effort we make is to address equity.
• Think about the impact on our children. They are the victims. Especially impacts at this age – teenager. It’s life changing.
• We never had a school bus in Canada. It’s so great to have a bus here. When routes were canceled, we organized to get our kids to school.
• If a school needs to be closed, people are still willing to drive their kid to school.
• If kids have a good school to go to, they will be ok with the inconvenience.
• I trust people in charge to mitigate negative effects on kids.It’s there – the money is shrinking.
• In my work, we put patients at the center. If BSD focuses on students and values their education, then you need to explore other alternatives such as cutting programs. I don’t know which programs to cut – that’s your job. Do not decrease the quality of education for students. Ensure the values of the district are aligned with the values of the community.
• One participant shared graphics – if we consolidate, definitely not Tyee. Looking at 4 factors – feeder patterns, student heat map, student projection: Feeder pattern – NHS would not have a feeder school if you close Tyee. Special programs – there are Olympic and AL students at Tyee – only Odle has AL, no other location has Olympic. Where would you send programs from other schools? Heat map – there is a ‘sun’ around Tyee – there is a high-density population of students near Tyee – and if we closed Tyee, you would have to bus students far. Location of middle schools – Tyee is the only one in the South end of Bellevue School District. Tillicum is the only one in the East. The other 3 are like 1.5 miles away from each other. Student enrollment – Tyee and Odle have the highest number of students. In Tyee we have 60% of students are heritage language students – we have Chinese 1A 1B and 2 – that doesn’t even serve the needs of our heritage students who are actually performing in a higher level than what is available at Tyee. We should be offering Chinese 3 and 4 at Tyee to serve these students. Suggestion — Jing Mei graduates increasingly attend Tyee – this is the first in-district cohort who had the choice to go to Tyee – This means they are letting go of the world language program. We should move the dual Chinese program to Tillicum. This would allow heritage language students to take Chinese classes at Tyee too. 40% of students in kindergarten in Jing Mei come from 98006 – most of the rest live in 98004 – these students would be closer to home going to Tyee than Tillicum.
• If there is a funding problem, we need to solve it. School consolidation is not the only way to solve it. If the quality drops, more families will leave, and then you have a cycle of people leaving and more consolidation. If we work on offering better programs, we can get more funding and attract more students.
• We are jumping to a solution too early. We teach our kids how to formulate a problem and come up with a solution. We wouldn’t want them to solve a problem without considering other solutions. It is like asking someone to choose between their children. I don’t think there is enough transparency in the data.
• From the shared data: Where have students transferred – the first column doesn’t add up correctly (for the year 2020-2021) – that is just one example of an error in the data. I can’t trust all of the numbers if I find errors in what was presented. I don’t see that we are putting enough thought and care into the process, since it is going to affect thousands of families.
• If you go back 7 years, 15 years – you see International School and Big Picture School pulling enrollment from the 5 existing middle schools. This shows that the enrollment of middle schools will of course look like it is going down, because you are pulling students out from your own population. Big Picture school’s academic rates are going down. You can see that we created a problem by creating International and Big Picture schools. You should consider closing Big Picture school and sending these students back to their home schools to increase the enrollment at the 5 neighborhood schools. You should not consider closing high performing schools – families will move in for these schools.
• A friend from Issaquah enrolled her student in Tyee because in Issaquah they can only start Spanish in 8th grade – the programs we offer here draw people to the school.
• We are looking at 2 problems – declining birthrate – when tech people come back, you can see this increase. Cost of living – we need to reach out to the city of Bellevue to see if they are going to build more affordable housing and if they do this, then we will have more people coming into the district.
• Big tech companies are invested in building campuses in Bellevue (downtown, Spring) – and tech workers care less about affordable housing than the commute to work – they will live close to where they work.
• Housing prices are tied closely to the performance of tech companies – people are paid more; housing prices go up. Tech is just one part of the economic eco-system.
• Elementary school is not as important – Middle school is more important – you have to keep this level of education high since this is what people want.
• Quality of Programs: Parents are interested in maintaining the quality of educational programs, including electives, and are looking for assurance that the district will continue to offer a high standard of education.
• Teacher-Student Relationships: The close relationships between teachers and students are valued, and there is a concern about any changes that may affect these connections.
• Transition to Sixth Grade: Parents are concerned about the significant changes that students will face when transitioning to the sixth grade and are interested in knowing what preparations are being made to ease this transition.
• Data for Support: There is a need for data to support changes, particularly for the elementary level, to justify decisions made by the school district.
• Private School Enrollment: Some parents have opted for private schools due to their preferences for teacher-student ratios and the relationships that can be fostered in such environments.
• School Locations: Consideration is given to the locations of schools, with a focus on minimizing travel distances for families. The removal of Tyee from its location is a topic of discussion.
• Bellevue’s Growth and Property Values: The growth and development of Bellevue as a city, including property values and levies to support educational programs, are areas of interest.
• Data Accuracy and Predictability: There are concerns about the accuracy of data provided by the school district and skepticism regarding its ability to predict future events, such as the impact of a pandemic.
• Consolidation: The discussion also includes considerations of school district consolidation and whether it might offer more stability or better educational outcomes.
• These concerns reflect the broader community’s commitment to maintaining a high-quality educational experience for students in Bellevue and a desire for transparent decision-making based on reliable data.
• Location matters. Don’t want a big driving commute.
• How much will it impact activities? Don’t want it to affect activities.
• Access to courses like Applied Engineering
• Keep friends together.
• Community, location, safety, peer friendship
• Quality and access to resources
• Teacher/student ratios
• Will teachers move from one school to another (with the students)
• Keep teachers with students. Keep the ratio the same.
• Climate change. Minimize driving. Want children to walk, not have to drive everywhere.
• The question is abstract.
• Don’t close any schools.
• Location, location, location. School is close to where we live.
• Don’t want to answer because I do not want to consolidate any middle school.
• Can transportation facilitate all of the routes needed if the students need to travel to another school?
• Ensuring all students can get into the electives that they want.
• Use caution when determining the size of a school to ensure the classes are not too large.
• Avoid portables to make sure students can be inside the building for safety.
• Do not add portables. Fix the things that need to be fixed in the portables
• The chance to try new things – engineering, ceramics, etc.
• Consider spending on political agendas such as equity department which are not student facing.
• How the parent community provides support for their students and activities and how the families’ cultures are supported by the school community?
• Is this the best decision to improve the financial situation? Are there better options that would be more effective?
• How can we avoid overcrowded schools like we have at Tyee and Somerset Elementary?
• Consider current enrollment size of the schools, current location of school and traffic patterns, school report card/quality of education.
• Consider the impact on the teacher to student ratio.
• Consider the reputation of schools which may affect parent choices to leave the district.
• Don’t let money be the driving factor, rather make the focus on community costs: consider the location for parents to have to travel to bring their parents to school.
• Consider the school community and staff supports for students.
• Consolidation will be very disruptive to all students involved, consider the smaller schools to impact let people.
• Distance for families to travel to new school building.
• Communicate the options for students and families at new school.
• Consider closing the lowest enrollment school.
• Proximity of schools and distance from current school and neighborhood
• Location!
• Keep the advanced learning program together so there is enough scale to support the students and maintain the effect of teacher’s experience and expertise.
• Students need the supports of the advanced learning program, and it motivates students
• Traffic at Tyee is already bad. Lakemont
• Tyee is the only school south of I-90
• Protect the feeder pattern as it is.
• Are there other options instead of cutting down on the budget?
• Are there ways to adjust by moving budgets back to the school?
• Need to invest in more counselors, believe that the impact on students is going to be greater.
• Tyee already has 900 students and can’t understand why it is on the table.
• If enrollment grows then getting the school back up and running; all the good teachers.
• Class size needs to be kept at a reasonable size.
• Be transparent about the process.
• Honesty matters in this process.
• How do all of the middle school share hosting programs for students with special needs (i.e. Pacific or Cascade).
• Keep the AL program intact.
• Keep the AL Program intact.
• Keep friends together or move students together if needed.
• Keep AL Program Intact, keep groups of students intact.
• Don’t reduce resources, keep reasonable class size, reduce or minimize use of portables.
• Keep schools within a reasonable size.
• Staffing—ensuring that teachers are not negatively impacted. Don’t want to see jobs get cut. If possible, consolidate without cutting teachers.
• Keep workload low.
• Keep class sizes low.
• Keep student/teacher ratio low.
• Look at the program location at Tyee (AL, Dual Program, SPED).
• Reduce use of portables, keep class sizes small and a low student/teacher ratio.
• Keep small class sizes, add teachers early if needed, staffing adjustments earlier.
• Transportation issues, long bus rides.
• Have a plan in case the forecast is not correct. Have a plan B if the enrollment data.
• Make sure there are resources to care for students SEL.
• Self-contained AL draws families to the district and would otherwise be in private school.
• Decentralizing AL would cut enrollment.
• Critical of communications department.
• Don’t want political activities in school.
• Retain experienced and high-quality teachers.
• Preserving community.
• Limit bus transportation time.
• Teachers move with kids.
• Keep special programs at their current school.
• Diversify teaching style (Different style of teachers) to accommodate different learning style of students. For example, some student would want more caring, accepting, and encouraging teacher, and other students would prefer a straight-forward, strict but well-structured teachers. Having the diverse character of teachers is important so that every student would have positive learning experience and healthy challenges
• More direct directions and guidance from teachers academically. For learning, sometimes it is important to give students a direction and set a good expectation, rather than giving students too many choices and being too liberal (example: ‘do however you want to write and that is all good’ is too accepting and won’t help students to grow strong)
• Schedule is too tight throughout the day. Passing time is only 5 minutes and not enough time to get items from the locker room and transit to next class. Many times, using bathroom means getting a tardy because of limited time. To follow the ‘no running rule’, sometimes it is impossible to get to the next class – for example: if the classroom is far out in the portable, those are very challenging to get there on time. Students miss the last few minutes of learning because they are distracted with getting ready to rush out for the next class. At least a little more time, 1-2 minutes to get ready for class is needed.
• Passing time can be a safety hazard. Hallway is narrow to accommodate whole school cohorts’ move. Students bump into each other a lot.
• What will be the size of the students when consolidated?
• Will Tyee be able to accommodate more students?
• Tyee Middle School is already so packed. The presentation data shows the school utility rate is about 66% (on average) it doesn’t seem like it in Tyee. It is being used quite fully.
• This would be a minor issue, but what would be the expectation for transportation? We are short-staffed with bus drivers already. Will we be able to have transportation for students?
• Having less funding means less course electives. It can be an issue for some parents, but not concerning. Whatever we can have with the budget is what we get.

Question 3: What questions do you have?

• If we enroll a student from outside the district, do we get state funds?
• Which vendor did we use for the demographics. Contradictory to the news. We keep hearing that people are rushing into Seattle.
• What data are we using and what is the validity of the data?
• Want to understand the procedure for the decision this year?
• Many parents stood up last year to oppose it and the BSD made the decision. Feels like this is a show. Parents’ opinion didn’t matter before. How was the decision finalized last year? Superintendent said he made the decision to close elementary schools. BSD is cherry-picking the data. We have parents who are data scientists. This happened before and parents brought data.
• Would we consider looking at other sources of data?
• What did the school district do to avoid having to close a school? What other approaches have we considered?
• What kind of support is available to parents (equity)?
• What’s important to you (BSD)?
• Need to specifically lay out where the deficit is coming from.  We don’t see the information about the funding. Where is the shortage coming from? Did we overspend in some areas? Want to see the whole budget in an easy way to understand.
• Could you charge $500 per kid or is that legal?
• Are there other fiscal options?
• If we close a school, what happens if the enrollment goes back up?
• 90% of our funding is sent by the government, why do we need to close a school now?
• Are we supposed to take that data at face value? Is there any other data we should be taking into consideration to make this decision?
• How do we maintain the quality of education and close community?
• I read a report in Seattle Times – in 2022, we saw a great improvement of operations moving in – King County is losing population in 2020/2021 – but in 2022, the population is going up in King County. Is that being taken into account in the projections?
• When you see a sharp decrease in Tyee – does that data account for out of district students who transferred into Tyee? How do you justify that Tyee’s enrollment will decline to the size of Tillicum by 2030?
• How was the data collected? How do we make sure it is accurate? How can we trust the data?
• If the data goes against our intuition, how are we supposed to trust it?
• Would a meeting with the demographer be helpful for the community to understand? Both demographers? Both Western and Davis? We can ask our questions and get answers to better understand how the data was collected.
• Looking at the utilization and average school size – the accuracy of the prediction – you’ve said that the accuracy for this year was within 2% — how has the accuracy been in previous years?
• What does the data look like if you include data from Big Picture and International Schools?
• What is the capacity of local tech companies who require 3 days of in-person work – how many more people could we expect to move back into the area to fill these in-person jobs?
• How do we better advertise what Bellevue can offer students who can move in from outside our district?
• Cost and Utilization: What is the financial aspect of keeping schools open? What is the current utilization rate, and what is the projected population for 2030? How is utilization measured, and what is considered 100% utilization?
• Data Reliability and Trends: Questions are raised about the reliability of data, the trend it reflects, and its historical accuracy. What are the demographic forecasts, and how long have these trends been observed?
• Comparison with Other Districts: How does Bellevue compare with other school districts in terms of funding allocation and educational outcomes? What is the urgency to make these decisions?
• Equitable Funding: Are the state’s budget allocations equitable across all school districts, or do some schools receive more funding? Is there a commitment to offering equitable opportunities for all students?
• Reasons for Closure: Parents are questioning why their specific schools are being closed, especially when the community has expensive housing. They want to understand the reasons behind these decisions and whether alternatives have been explored.
• Gathering Data: There is an interest in gathering data on students who have exited to homeschooling or moved to other states or districts. What is the purpose of collecting this data, and how is it expected to inform decision-making?
• Vision for Education: What is the vision for the future of education in Bellevue? How does the district plan to maintain or improve the quality of education, even as the city’s population grows and evolves?
• Impact on Communities: Closing schools has a significant impact on students, families, and the community. It’s essential to consider the emotional and community attachment aspects when making such decisions.
• Options and Consequences: What are the alternatives to school consolidation? What are the potential costs and benefits associated with each option, and what are the consequences of different decisions?
• State Education Rankings: Understanding where Washington state stands in terms of public education rankings and how to improve its position is a consideration.
• Why are we closing schools?
• What stage in the process? Has a decision been made yet? Is everything possible? If everything is possible, haven’t seen other possibilities. Found out in August there was a financial deficit. How much is the school district sharing with the community? Question about transparency.
• Cost of housing. Know Bellevue is trying to provide more housing. Think the cost of housing will come down in the future.
• Density of middle school is 66%. Tyee has a bunch of portables. Doesn’t make sense.
• What would happen to the building if they did close it? Would they keep it for something else?
• Decision was made on birth rate and house prices. We moved to Bellevue 10 years ago. We know house prices at that time were cheap. Don’t think that the birth rate is reasonable to decide to close middle school. Worried it’s too aggressive to close middle school based on current birth rates. (Clarifying statement: reason for enrollment decline is declining birth rate).
• Are we seeing other schools in the area consolidating due to high housing costs and declining birth rates?
• We just built a school a few years ago, now we’re talking about closing. There is a disconnect between what has been planned and what we’re doing now.
• Lots of apartments are being built. What about people moving into apartments? Won’t that bring more enrollment?
• If we don’t have enough students, why not a smaller school? Why not move teachers around?
• Want to know a concrete plan. Data is the most questionable part. What is the confidence level of the enrollment projections?
• (What’s missing from the data? What would make you trust the data?)
• Look at private school enrollment data.
• Housing development data
• Can we remove the pandemic data? What can be attributed to one-time factors? What would have happened if the pandemic had not happened?
• Want to look at more data about where the money goes? Where does the money come from and how is it allocated?
• Total students in the area. Total population of middle school students in the area as opposed to middle school students in BSD.
• What will you do if the enrollment picks up? Will you open another school?
• Do the elementary students who were impacted by consolidation last year still receive the same quality of education this year? Would be good to go back to those parents/families and ask what their experiences have been this year.
• Quality is a key driver. Perception of quality is a key driver when thinking about public vs. private school.
• Outside area enrollment. Heard BSD opened enrollment for non-residents. Can we open for more enrollment?
• Can the school district be more specific about how closing one school saves money?
• How will you deal with the AL program?
• What is the process?
• How does new housing impact the demographer’s projections?
• Do the higher prices of housing impact the choices people make for the type of housing they will live in?
• How will this affect student to teacher ratios?
• Why is there a difference between the two demographers’ forecasts?
• How are models being updated based on the pandemic trends from 2020 and current 2023 data?
• What is the capacity of our schools? How does the average size compare to their capacity?
• Why were schools built too big? Did they use the forecast?
• How can we improve our school community to attract more families?
• Why are we not considering closing choice schools?
• Will there be additional changes? How can we avoid repeating this process in the future?
• Will closing a middle school (saving $3 million) be enough to fix financial concerns?
• What other district positions can we eliminate to save more money rather than eliminate teachers and other staff working with students?
• When was the last middle school built/expanded from four middle schools to five middle schools?
• Why can’t we wait to see the impact on enrollment compared to the demographer forecast?
• Has the decision already been made? Feels like it has already.
• Can the district raise more money through a levy?
• Is anyone questioning the projection? No one is seeing it accurate.
• What happens to the school’s staff?
• What about Big Picture? It is really small, is it allowed to continue independently and consolidated within another school?
• Is this a way to find a home for International?
• Can we create a longer runway to consolidation over multiple years?
• Why does this feel like a forced marriage?
• Taxes are high and families are already highly committed and closing a school may make families move.
• Can we create ways to attract more outside the district?
• Why is this so rushed? This feels rushed? Why can’t we just wait a bit? What happens if we wait? How do we know this impact isn’t due to COVID? Is the demographer data accurate? Can we get more demographer data? Are we looking at a range rather than a one point?
• Is COVID impacting our data? Closing a school is a big decision. Is our data accurate? What impact will the economic downturn have on enrollment?
• What impact could non-impact students have on our projections? Is there a timeframe in place for when this might happen? Phased or pretty soon?
• How does the birth rate impact our enrollment? What is the true impact of the birth rate? Is it accurate? What impact will immigration have on our enrollment projections? Have we underestimated the impact of immigration? What impact will this have on the quality of teaching?
• Role of immigration and work relocation on enrollment projections? How do back to office impact projections?
• Will open enrollment be possible if a school is closed? For middle school and high school
• Why is closure the only solution program or closure? Why not sell real estate? Ringdall? Bus barn? Why can’t we liquidate assets to cover the budget shortfall? Why do choice schools get their own building? Why can’t they share with another building?
• The property taxes have gone up a lot. What impact do higher property taxes have on the school budget? Provide some feedback on this.
• What are other options to cut expenses? What options are available without reducing quality? Should we distribute laptops for elementary students as one example to reduce expenses? As an example: technology expenses.
• Do we need to have all of the computers? Can we find other ways?
• Concerning the forecast, why the gap between the two?
• Need to provide more info re: forecast and other factors in both demographer studies.
• How confident are we in the forecast going forward? Modeling what is it based upon? Thinks the data is skewed by pandemic years.
• What is the impact of private schools?
• What not close choice schools?
• How do we communicate re: diversity, without diversity department?
• Need to be able to share actual cost of Equity Department.
• I would like to know the impact on elementary consolidation on student (class size, SEL)
• Elementary experience was frustrating.
  • Afterwards Somerset is over capacity. Space is an issue.
  • Two 5th grade classrooms are now in portables which present safety issues (shootings).
• When Orchestra teacher is absent sometime unqualified teacher as subs; need more experienced teachers as substitutes;
• Stable educational environment; too many kids in the classes at Somerset.
• Is consolidation going to cause more staff to be let go? (which makes class size bigger)?
• Consolidation is harder in middle school than elementary school; partly because of development/ mental health issue kids.
• Consensus at this table: What other solutions are there to deal with financial deficit other than closing a school?
• Class sizes become bigger in consolidation.
• Big concern over current repeated bus cancelation …Is consolidation going to lengthen bus rides?
• District wide class utilization says 66%. What is it for each school?
• Would less -utilized school be the top candidate to be consolidated?
• What would be the determining factor in deciding which school to close?

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