UPDATE 12-11-2008 9:24PM Someone at Arbor Heights either has a big heart or a guilty conscience. I hold in my hands, secret emails on the closure of Cooper Elementary to save Arbor Heights, with the help of a certain Seattle School Board member. Fear not- more to come very soon. To tide you over, I’ve provided this yummy exerpt:
…I spent the day crunching numbers, reading reports, and attending the meeting with Steve Sundquist. So far we have hatched several plans…
Ahem. This is my “in defense of self” disclaimer. I’ve not had the best day and I’m feeling a little, hmmmm, shall we say ‘blunt’ with my word choice, so again, for the faint of heart, turn away now. Go to lolcats or something, make yourself feel better.
Also, a housekeeping issue. I’d like to send a “shot out” to the folks down at the School District, particularly the folks in the PR office who so graciously emailed me last night and ‘offered’ to put me on their press role. In actuality they saved me an email requesting to get on the role, but the fact that they emailed me unsolicited means that they read the blog, so….HI SPS, how ya doin’? Thanks for stopping by; I don’t plan on changing SHIT in how I address your crooked, mafia style dealings where closures/mergers/relocations/repurposings are concerned.
Now that we have that out of the way, let’s talk about Cooper Elementary. The kids who are there currently stand to be evicted to make room for the Pathfinder program. You know what this reminds me of?
You know we have a housing crisis right now, yes? Foreclosures, evictions, auctions, the whole nine.
Aside from home owners caught in the mess, there is the issue of renters; those who live in houses, pay their rent every month, and now are losing their homes because the owners are being forclosed on. Not the renter’s fault at all. They are taking care of their business, but still being put out on the streets so the banks can re-sell the houses to new inhabitors.
Well folks, the house is the Cooper building.
The bank and the mortage holder is the SPS district.
The renters are the current students- Cooper students.
The new residents are the Pathfinder students.
Am I saying that Pathfinder shouldn’t get a different building? Of course not. But should they co-sign on kicking out the current residents? Wait for it….Hell to the NO, they shouldn’t.
Why am I bringing up Cooper? I got an email today. Observe:
I am a teacher at Cooper Elementary in West Seattle. We serve a diverse group of k-5th graders: 80% receive free and reduced lunch, 80% are kids of color, 33% are bilingual, 24 of our students have Autism Spectrum Disorders (numbers are accurate as of published data from Spring 2008). We are one of the second round of schools to be added to the closure list as of last night’s board work session.
Many of us in the Cooper community have grave concerns about the equity and transparency of this process. We echo many of the sentiments published on your blog. It is our intent to solicit fair and accurate media coverage of our plight to save Cooper School.
For a little background: Arbor Heights (a primarily white, middle class school) was originally targeted for school closure. They waged a swift and intense media blitz with direct correspondence with school board director, Steve Sundquist. Steve subsequently suggested looking into the possibility of Cooper School (a primarily non-white, high poverty school) instead of Arbor Heights. Cooper School is now on the list for school closure.
One slight, but severely significant correction; Cooper is not slated to close, it’s being repurposed for Pathfinder. I know it may seem like semantics, but trust me, it’s much, much bigger than that.
The School Board only votes on buildings that are going to close down, that means no students in the building. But if a program is being dissolved, as is the proposal for Cooper, then the Super. can do that without Board approval- that means those families do not even have the benefit of appealing to their rep on the Board.
What does that mean in the plainest language? They are not required to hear your voice. They are not required to hear your concerns. They are not required to pay attention to the needs of YOUR children.
Aside from the RBHS/Cleveland decision getting scrapped, other schools that have made their way OFF the list did so because they had an active, organized and vocal parent/family community who stood up and said “not on the backs of our children”.
So why can’t Cooper do the same? Well, because the access issues are different. When you have 80% of your population at or below the federal poverty level, you’re going to see that. When nearly 35% of your school population speaks something other than English as their first language, you’re going to see that- there are thousands of ESL students in the district and many of their parents speak little to no English at all; additionally, because of cultural difference, this system of decision making is unfamiliar, and no one is there to bridge the gap for these families- certainly not the Seattle School District.
The district likes to talk up diversity and equity and all of those things, but only for the sake of making themselves feel better, not because they intend to actually be responsible to it.
Let me also say that many will disregard whatever I write about the issue because I tend to toss out a bit of name calling as I’m about to now; Steve Sundquist is an insensitive jackass who could give a I-don’t-care-who-shot-John (or is it Jamal? or Jose?)-as-long-as-they-didn’t-shoot-me about kids of color, so it’s no big shocker that he tossed out Cooper like Wallace tossed out the Natives. Yes, I said it, and with NO hesitation.
I can just hear him now; “that is an unfortunate and inaccurate assessment of my work as a school board member- I am concerned for all children.”
L
I
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Being concerned and acting accordingly are two different things. Do the actions of Steve Sundquist (and other board members) match their rhetoric? That’s the first and only clue you need to see what is really going on with closures.
Lest we forget, Cooper has been on the chopping block before, but was spared at the last minute. My suggestion to the Cooper community is that you talk to one of your most effective advocates, who happens to be right there in the building; your former PTA president. Find out from her (what she did last time) what she thinks needs to be done to save Cooper, and then fall in line.
Second suggestion is that you meet with Pathfinder folks and get them on board. Find a home for Pathfinder that does not include displacing any students from any buildings.
Third suggestion is that you respectfully harass the Superintendent and Board Director DeBell- hold on, don’t get whiplash, I really did say Micheal DeBell. You need a strong, thoughtful (and yes, white) advocate on the Board- Michael DeBell is your man, whether he reps your school or not; I’m vouching for him…for now. I don’t think Maria really cares about your kids, but she does care about her name and her professional reputation- remember, she did not come to Seattle to fail, so if she starts to feel like she’s on a road to failure, she’ll switch her direction quickly (as she did with Lowell and Arbor Heights), so you’ll want to respectfully harass her- daily.
Fourth; go down to every school board meeting en mass and put the Super and the Board members on blast– if you don’t know what “on blast” means, ask your former PTA president.
Finally, my heart goes out to the students and families that are suffering under the weight of the District’s financial troubles. Barack Obama has told us that America needs a redistribution of wealth across the country; Seattle Schools needs the same- a redistribution of academic wealth, spread proportionately across the district. The time for that is now.
Hmmmm…I- -I have to say it:
P.S. The one thing that the district can and should do where Cooper is concerned, is get a new Principal, preferably one that takes her meds as prescribeddoes not spend her days expousing her “isms”, verbally abusing families, students, and staff (including the custodian). When you have a few viable candidates to replace Ms. Rutherford (I’m talking to SPS now) be sure to include the Cooper community in picking their new leader…and this time, listen to what they have to say.
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Sable Verity is a reporter and commentator based in Seattle who covers social and political issues for KBCS Radio and a number of online and print news outlets. All of this is her fault. 
wow, about time someone said it. I am one of the custodians that has been abused by Ms. Rutherford. It is my humble thought that she was sent there to end the Cooper community. I have been left to a nomadic existence in the district because I chouse not to file a complaint. My many years means all but nothing to the district as do the children at Cooper. When you mention the PTA president, know that Ms.Rutherford stomped the hell out of her and left her for dead.
thank you for being you. Because only you can do what you have done with this article.
My heart was doing flip flops as I read this article. Your words bite, but in the best way possible.
No one cares what we are going through at Cooper; no one down town I mean.
Our principal hates coming to work every day and she takes it out on all of us on a regular basis. Filing complaints against her is a joke- the district does everything it can to just make stuff go away.
We desperately need new leadership, We need someone who actually respects the staff, the pta, the parents and the kids. I don’t know how you knew what was going on with our custodian, but you are right, the principal treats him like he is a dog that should obey and take orders without question, no matter what the consiquences might be for him.
I have been teaching for a very long time and in that time I’ve never, ever seen an administrator who simply didn’t care one ioda.
She is irrational. She is spiteful and vendictive, verbally abusive to EVERYONE, and yes, it seems as though she is at our school to help the district rip it apart. I dn’t think the board or the district care about us or the kids we serve, but I am so glad that you have decided to write about how we are being treated by our principal and how we are being treated by our own school district.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
BRAVO!
They are not required to hear us?! Well that’s just great. We knew that they were ignoring us, but now knowing that Goodlow Johnson has found out a way to close schools without technically closing them, and that she doesn’t have to have the board’s vote to do so is just sick.
I guess she studied how the last guy messed it up and charted her path from there.
You have a lot of guts by the way- just putting it all out there and refusing to dress it up. We need more of that.
Ouch. I mean dang. Pow, bang, boom!
You rock!
I appreciate your perspective on the inequities inherent in the process thus far.
I am so frustrated by the continual comparison of schools (Arbor Heights v. Cooper, for example) strictly on one data point. For example, looking at first choice status or WASL scores without also looking at demographics. Check out Rose Egge’s article in the West Seattle Herald for an example of this: http://www.westseattleherald.com/articles/2008/12/11/news/local_news/news05.txt. Also, there is a picture of pretty t-shirts en masse at some type of Arbor Heights meeting? Where is Cooper’s picture? Where is the discussion of Cooper defending their program? Where is the rationale for why Steve Sundquist immediately recommended Cooper? Is it really because he thinks closing Cooper School would be the best move for ALL West Seattle SPS students? I highly doubt it. He is representing a white, middle-class community that got their message out. Where were his questions on Wednesday night when Dr. Goodloe-Johnson announced the change to her recommendations to close the Cooper School Program instead of Arbor Heights? Where was the discussion of the impact it would have on brown-skinned, poor (as in poverty, not, oh those poor little children who are getting their school taken from them) Cooper kids who for the record, are achieving higher than students at both Roxhill and West Seattle, schools with similar demographics and they aren’t too far behind Arbor Heights, whose free and reduced lunch staus is less than half of Cooper’s (80% vs. 35%)? And we all know that lower achievement is highly correlated with poverty status.
Remember, Sundquist is the School Board Director for all of West Seattle’s students and families–not just Arbor Heights’ and not just Pathfinder’s. I was at Wednesday’s school board session and all that I heard out of Sundquist was some perfunctory question about how this move would affect the buddy program at Cooper (a program pairing students with and without disabilities. An awesome program nonetheless–but that is all that he had to say?!?) I wish I would have had a timer during Wednesday’s work session to measure the amount of time spent on Cooper (my guess, less than 1 minute of actual conversation once Goodloe-Johnson was done with her two slides, both of which had misinformation) versus the amount of time spent on Lowell, for example (my guess at least 7-10 minutes). Hmm. Let’s see. Why might that be?
Also, I have yet to see any analysis of how the proposed change to displace Cooper students instead of Arbor Heights students would do anything to further two of the criteria that Goodloe-Johnson herself put out in her 11/25 “Capacity Management” preliminary recommendation: furthering acacademic achievement of all SPS students and retaining the fiscal health of the district. Improving academic achievement will not occur as a result of closing Cooper School’s program. Poor students (80% of Cooper students as of Spring 2008) going to another school with significant numbers of fellow poor students will only serve to retain or lower the academic achievement of all students (see tipping point research, Department of Education). Plus, as was said before, Cooper’s scores are stronger than either of the two West Seattle elementaries with similar demographics–Roxhill and West Seattle). And then to the second criteria, mainting or bettering the fiscal health of the district: Goodloe-Johnson herself, wrote in her 12/09 power point document from Wednesday’s school board work session, that displacing Cooper students would incur additional transportation costs. How does that better the fiscal health of the district?
I want some answers. Cooper students and families deserve answers. They want to know why they are now the target of this closure process? Maria Goodloe-Johnson, can you please explain this to us?
It is really a shame when, as teachers and staff members of schools slated for closures, with no one to champion our cause at the district level, the only recourse we have to express our concerns and frustrations is in an annonymous forum on a community blog.
You have a very harsh way of communicating your point, and I can imagine that if you were talking about someone elses school, my comments would include a hard critique of your tone, but, knowing that you’re talking about our school, I feel like hey, at least someone is putting it all out there, because the district sure isn’t.
Steve Sundquist is a jerk for how he has treated our school community, and I hope he is reading these comments.
Our Principle is a mess. It would take DAYS to lay out alllll the evidence she has provided us in her time here. As for the district actually listening to us about who our principal is, they didn’t do it this time, that’s for sure.
Everyone should feel ashamed of themselves, everyone in the entire city of Seattle should be appauled at what Seattle Public Schools is doing to its children of color. We need help.
My jaw fell off my face when I got to the part about Wallance and the Natives. Damn sister. You’re cutting the dude zero slack.
Thank you.
I too have been on the receiving end of the many tirades Kathy Rutherford regularly wrips herself into. I’m so tired of working with someone who doesn’t like kids. I mean, we’re teachers. We’re educators, we support teaching and we support our school. Why have they given us someone who does everything in her power to make sure we fail.
Cooper’s internal structure has fallen apart under her leadership. Everything is done off the cuff and with little purpose or intention.
The principal ingored everyone, the teachers, the staff, the families and the kids!
She tried to destroy our former PTA president, and even went after her son, making his daily academic experience nohting short of hell. She has a set group of children in our building that she is constantly needling, constantly berating, constantly targeting. Surprise surprise, they’re ALL black.
She has broken so many distict policies I can no longer keep track. She is the worst employee manager I have ever had. Not only is she unclear with her expectations of us, but she talks to her staff members, including me, like we’re slaves, or droids- anything other than human beings that deserve to be treated with respect.
Cooper is not a perfect school, but it is a pretty damn good one. We would be better if we had a Board rep who actually news us and advocated for us, and we would certainly be doing better with a dynamic leader who wants to work with us.
Oh and I also think Steve Sundquist is a jackass. Thank you for pointing that out to everyone.
Hmm. I am really glad that you, Sable, are writing about the Arbor Heights/Cooper fiasco. Partly because you are willing to say what needs to be said without mincing words, and partly because the whole point is that our district (and school board) seems to be acting in total contrast to its ’strategic plan’ and supposed goal of closing the achievement gap.
I also think that the commenters on this site who decided to use this forum to air all of your grievances about your principal are making a big mistake. I understand that you have strong feelings about the competency of your principal, but that seems like a totally separate issue from the issue of SPS pulling a fast switcheroo without any rationale, and without the opportunity for public hearing on the matter of which program to close. THAT is the issue at hand. You can, of course, say whatever you want about your principal, but it seems like you are doing more harm than good. Instead of presenting Cooper as a thriving environment that IS meeting the needs of some of our neediest students, you’re presenting it as a toxic environment where the principal and staff are at odds and where there is no shared vision.
Taking time to sit here and blog, airing your grievances from within only is giving others the amunition they need to prove their point. I’m in total agreement with the comment from Just a Thought. Don’t give them more of a reason to shut us down. You spend paragraphs saying how great we are and then you say our leadership is awful- this WILL NOT HELP. If you have a problem deal with it outside of the forum of school closure. Save the school first!!! If you don’t nothing else will matter. You won’t be here to complain about it next year if you give them more of a reason to take down the Cooper sign and put a Pathfinder one in it’s place.
While I agree completly that the principal at Cooper is completly inadaquit for the job. That the manner in which she deals with children of color is morally reprehensable. I also agree that the way that she treats her staff is nothing short of a MASSA and his negro buck out pulling cotton. I do not agree that she create’s a mess within our building and among our staff. It is my perception that one of the reason’s that we need a new principal is that we spend so much time running interferance to try to contain the mess to just the staff and not the students as well. When we say that Cooper’s internal structure has fallen apart you are minimizing the overwhelming job that as staff we all face. And that is doing our jobs in the manner that is best for the kids without causing a “Kathy” moment. That takes skill. Maintaining the level of professionalism(that is not shown here but doesn’t have to be)to do our jobs and put up with her openly rude, unprofessional, superior attitude so as not to create disfunction for the kids is something we should all be proud of! As far as I know while I can’t think of anyone who would not have cause to “let her have it” no one has done so in the building on the clock and as I stated that takes serious commitment to the task at hand teaching, and taking care of our kids. Please do not represent me as a staff member as part of an internal structure that is in shambles. Because I work very hard to come to work and do my job and just keep moving forward always checking to be sure I am moving towards what is best for the kids and not my own feelings about the principal. The fact of the matter is we don’t get paid to like each other we get paid to work with each other and we do it well irregardless of BS. That being said I would like to give a WAY TO GO to the all the staff no one has said or done anything to her that could get themselves fired or create chaos for the kids. Job Well Done
Let me understand this. Will Cooper students get the option to stay in the building, and enroll in Pathfinder?
Verity, I guess I don’t understand why, on the one hand, we complain about the high density of FRL and disabled students in one school… and on the other hand, we complain about the opportunity to spread the wealth around and possibly improve opportunities?
Why not provide Cooper students with the opportunity to go to schools which are not overwhelmingly impoverished? What would be so bad about that? Do we really need all the poor kids segregated at one place? Hardly anyone… and I mean 19 families, even chose Cooper in the first place. Clearly they’re not beating the doors down to get into Cooper. And from the above posts, seems like the principal may be the reason. Why not fix it?
SomebodyElse,
The majority of Cooper students would go to WS Elementary which would create a larger poverty situation than already exists at either school.
I”m not saying the system doesn’t need to be fixed and that sacrifices and changes don’t need to be made; I am simply saying that the current proposal and the current process are flawed.
And by the way, Cooper Supporter, saying that Cooper beats West Seattle (or Roxhill) WASLwise. is a huge joke. They’ve gotta do way better than that. Ever been to West Seattle Elementary School? It’s the worst elementary school in the district. WASL isn’t everything, but come on! 7% pass rate for 4th graders at West Seattle. The absolute lowest in the district. These students are being set up for a lifetime of failure, and it starts the first day they walk in. Beating West Seattle or Roxhill is no accomplishment at all.
Sable,
Why not advocate for automatic admission for Cooper students into Pathfinder? That would seem to kill many birds with one stone: reduce concentration of poverty, close a building, provide a decent middle school, reduce transitions because of the K-8, and remove a bad principal.
Very interesting idea. The challenging thing right now is families and PTSA’s seem to be saying to each other “you keep your child over there and I’ll keep my child over here”.
It’s segregation at its finest. I am hearing the phrase “they just aren’t like us” being tossed around a lot by parents and teachers discussing parents and teachers and students from other schools.
Also keep in mind that this is the second time Cooper and Pathfinder have “crossed paths”, so it’s just heaping negativity onto negativity, especially when you consider the first time it was raised it was shot down as an idea that would never work (Pathfinder to Cooper) and now it seems that a certain school board member has dug up the grave and dragged that corpse to the dance.
Too bad.
so i’m curious after reading all of the awful things going on at cooper under the watch of the bad principal, how again is this serving the cooper students and why again should they not have an opportunity at a better school?
It’s segregation at its finest. I am hearing the phrase “they just aren’t like us” being tossed around a lot by parents and teachers discussing parents and teachers and students from other schools.
Also keep in mind that this is the second time Cooper and Pathfinder have “crossed paths”, so it’s just heaping negativity onto negativity….
You know, it’s high time we get beyond that sqaubbling amongst adults. PTSA’s, parent groups, teachers, need to come together and provide a decent school in the building that is Cooper, for all the children who may be going there now, and in the future.
Thank you for writing about this mess.
SomebodyElse,
If Pathfinder takes over the Cooper building there will only be 69 spots for Cooper children to continue at Pathfinder. As stated before around 30% of our Cooper population is bilingual, and Pathfinder has no bilingual services. So, the children that can then attend Pathfinder cannot be bilingual. And there’s also the issue of our autism programs. There are 24 children in our autism programs, which use four classrooms at Cooper. (Three individual classrooms and an additional room for occupational therapy) Taking that into consideration Pathfinder will have to compromise their space, and those children will be included in the 69 that get accepted to Pathfinder. Maria Goodloe Johnson actually addressed this issue in her initial proposal to the school board when she recommended looking at Arbor Heights and not Cooper. On page 40 in that document she states a case as to why she does not recommend closing Cooper.
“Past closure processes recommended that Pathfinder
be placed at the Cooper building. However, given current enrollment and placement of programs that have reduced the functional capacity of the buildings, we recommend placing Pathfinder at
Arbor Heights.
In order to put Pathfinder K-8 into the Cooper building one of two things would have to happen. Either Pathfinder would need to become an elementary school, or West Seattle Elementary would need to accommodate an additional 140 students.
Pathfinder is the only K-8 in West Seattle. Becoming a K-5 would mean that families who wanted a K-8 would have to leave West Seattle. Because of a desire to have access to K-8 programs throughout the city, this action is not recommended. ”
-Preliminary Recommendation Report November 25, 2008, Maria L. Goodloe Johnson
Further into the document she states that West Seattle Elementary based on it’s functional capacity only has space for 75 of Cooper students. So where will our children go? I guess when reading the latest round of recommendations they want to spend more money to bus our children further and violate the student assignment plan. Good luck kids, sorry you have to wake up earlier and get home later. But, hey there’s only 65 of you and you guys might be bilingual so it’ll take a while before you notice.
Thanks for the dialogue.
Way to break it down Excellence for All!
It seems pretty obvious from reading your blog that “being black” is like your religion or something. So why should I give a shit about what you think?