WASHINGTON STATE

Washington State House Democrats

HOUSE DEMOCRATS

House measure to address lower class sizes will alleviate severe overcrowding

Bipartisan school-construction legislation introduced in the state House of Representatives today will go a long way toward relieving severe overcrowding in Seattle schools, and meet our obligations to provide lower class sizes, according to state Rep. Gerry Pollet, who is a co-sponsor for House Bill 2797.

The legislation authorizes the sale of $700 million in bonds to pay both for building new, full-day kindergarten classrooms and for reducing class sizes in kindergarten through third grade. Seattle Public Schools officials estimate that the district needs to build 346 new classrooms to meet a constitutional duty both to lower class sizes in kindergarten through third grade and to provide full-day kindergarten for every student.

Pollet said the new money for school-construction bonds “will help us meet our children’s constitutional rights to have an appropriate space to learn with lower class sizes.

“We have special-education and reading-needs children being taught in hallways and on stages in lunchrooms, during lunch,” Pollet stated. “Schools where parents labored to build computer and science labs have had those labs torn out to make space to lighten the load on overcrowded classrooms. Further, we’re simply out of any more space for portables or expansion at many of our existing school sites.

“So many of our Seattle schools are horribly overcrowded,” Pollet said. “This severe overcrowding nightmare in Seattle has been growing worse for many years because of biases against urban districts in the state’s construction formula. Our district in years past has received almost zero dollars in state support for school-construction.

“This bipartisan measure will reverse longstanding funding bias, and provide financial assistance as a way to renovate and reopen buildings in our school district and in similarly distressed districts. The legislation will begin to provide financial assistance to renovate and reopen buildings.”

The Seattle lawmaker pointed out that the Seattle district is growing by the equivalent of three large elementary schools every year.

“Thousands upon thousands of students are already crammed into overcrowded classrooms,” he said. “Many of our kids are in portables that don’t even have bathrooms. Frankly, this overcrowding is denying children their fundamental, constitutional right to learn.”

Enrollment in Seattle schools was projected in 2008 to grow to 47,000 students by the year 2017. Today, however, enrollment is already at 51,000. In June 2011, enrollment for K-5 students was 24,105 — and that number was projected to reach 29,258 by the 2015-2016 school year. In fact, actual enrollment-growth is outpacing these moderate projections.

Recently, Pollet worked with former state Rep. Phyllis Gutiérrez Kenney and state Sen. Jamie Pedersen, D-Seattle (43rd Legislative District) to convince the Legislature, for the first time in many years, to respond to the crisis with special “distressed-schools” grant funds. The money has allowed Seattle to reopen Thurgood Marshall Elementary near Green Lake, to renovate Arbor Heights Elementary in the southwest corner of West Seattle, and to reopen Cedar Park Elementary in northeast Seattle. The overcrowding crisis is further illustrated by the projection that Cedar Park, with only 11 classrooms, will have 496 students in its enrollment area.

Bryant and Wedgwood elementary schools in northeast Seattle are already far over capacity with 570 and 479 students, respectively. Although these two schools are now maxed out for portables and usable space, they’ll soon have 740 and 778 students, respectively, in their local assignment areas. Also, nearby schools are themselves far over their capacity.

Pollet and other legislators also have been working with Seattle Public Schools officials to identify strategies for making the state’s formula for school-construction assistance fairer for urban districts. Under HB 2797, the district would be able to renovate and reopen nearby schools to lower class sizes at already over-crowded schools.