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<p>[Local</a> News | School policy splits family’s twin kindergarteners | Seattle Times Newspaper](<a href=“http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2008051809_twins15m.html]Local”>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2008051809_twins15m.html)</p>
<p>A neighbor has two boys- one with slight learning challenges, the younger with increasing physical disabilities but smart as a whip. She enrolled the older one in a school that wasn’t our neighborhood school three blocks away, but in a school about 1.5 miles away, because it had by far a better program for the younger boy ( and a good program for older). She was assuming, that by having her older son already enrolled there, her younger son would get sibling preference.</p>
<p>Oh- But. The district gets to decide where kids with disabilities will go. It doesn’t matter what parents think, and the district ignores that a child who needs an aide, could have CP, they could be autistic, or they could be in a wheelchair. As far as the district is concerned, they need the same program & if that program is placed at a school, that the neighborhood has abandoned and so it is more than half empty, well then by placing the SPED program there, they don’t have to close the school + they get IDEA money.</p>
<p>:p</p>
<p>She finally did get her kids assigned to the same school-( the younger had been assigned to a school 5 miles away) but why hasn’t this ever been fixed? It has been this way for decades.</p>
<p>No wonder so many parents bow out of the system altogether.</p>
<p>Seattle = “There Are No Children Here.”</p>
<p>If I was the Seattle schools superintendent and saw that article in the local paper I would make certain the situation was fixed by the end of the day.</p>
<p>Talk about incompetency - we know there’s a problem, but it will take over two years to fix it! In a for profit organization (ie corporate) that individual would have a very short career.</p>
<p>Ah yes, but educators have tenure, so it is almost impossible to get them removed.</p>
<p>What could happen if it were triplets, or more? The families could have their kids in 3 or more schools.</p>
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<p>This to me was the most infuriating “it makes me want to riot” part. Even though I’m nowhere near that state.</p>
<p>Seattle Public Schools are a once-fine institution that is now, at least allegorically, is in tatters. Sort of like the rest of the city; public leaders are hell bent on replicating the worst of San Francisco and Los Angeles.</p>
<p>^^Precisely! I laugh that our city leaders scratch their heads puzzled that their urban condo-building efforts do not seem to corral the suburban sprawl and the resulting commute/traffic issues. I wonder how many families with school-aged children live in Belltown :rolleyes:</p>
<p>And isn’t it nice that our superintendant gets paid more than the governor, mayor, and essentially any other public employee besides a university president or Husky football coach!</p>
<p>This is nothing new. When I was a kid three of us siblings living in the same house were in elementary school at the same, and we were assigned by the district to attend three different elementary schools that were more than 5 miles apart. All three schools taught all 6 grades, and none of us were disabled or had other special needs. I never did figure out why.</p>
<p>She hasn’t been on the job for a year yet. Therefore she has no progress to quantifiably demonstrate, and yet, she gets a significant raise!!! Why did she accept the job in the first place?</p>
<p>I was reading the “Best Places to Live” article in Money magazine and noticed that in uber-Republican Irvine, California, more than 95% of kids go to public school, while in Bellevue, Washington, only 75% do. Bellevue is across the lake from Seattle, and reportedly has a good public system, yet one in four kids goes to private school. Washington has a ways to go.</p>