The community is invited to join the Rainier Beach High School PTSA next Wed., Nov. 10, for a community meeting at the Paul Roberson Performing Arts Center at Rainier Beach High School (8815 Seward Park Ave. S.) from 6:30 to 8 pm:
This meeting is open to all Rainier Beach area residents, as the PTSA would like to know what programs interest the community the most and would encourage residents to send their children to Rainier Beach High School.
There are five programs currently being considered for implementation at Rainier Beach High, including the IB International Baccalaureate, Law Magnet, IT (that includes a vocational track), Sports Medicine, and an Arts Program.
For more information, please contact Carlina Brown at linab2000@yahoo.com or Rita Green at getbusy40@clear.net.
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{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
Judging from the past actions of that PTSA, I wouldn’t put a lot of stock in their ability to affect positive change in that school. IB would be a fucking joke at RB.
What would make me send my kids to RBHS? Start with the K-5, then middle school and then high school on: Uniforms, consider single sex education, offer IB certification and get Geoffrey Canada about how to turn city youth in the right direction. Also get the British cook Jamie Oliver to work with the SPS on providing healthy meal and snack options. Take away the vending machines – sick of the litter near Rainier!
Move all the programs that were implemented at Garfield after the riots in the 60s down to RB and see if there is the same long term effect in making it a school that folks seek out.
IB is a globalist scam and will raise your taxes once the Federal “free” money runs out.
Learn the facts at:
http://www.truthaboutib.com
@4 That website is a whole bucket of crazy.
I did after school volunteer work for 4 years with students there and visited twice during the day- the volunteer activities were done off site. The school is chaotic. The kids are disruptive and undisciplined. I saw courageous teachers, but only a small minority of kids were engaged in class work.
A few years ago at the meeting at RBHS when the district was talking about closing the school, many speakers stood up to announce how important the school is to the community and it needed more money and more support from the school district. Not one stood up to say the students should work hard or the parents should push their kids to succeed or the community should volunteer to help tutor. On man, a local pastor, promise “we would uprise” (I think he meant “rise up”). Another woman suggested the district sell its headquarters on Lander St.
One of the considerations the district used when deciding NOT to close RBHS and merge it with other schools was gang rivalries. That is a telling statement about the “community”. Can you imagine if racist whites stopped black students from going to school?
Students were not expected to go to class. One boy I know missed 30 classes in one semester (that’s 6 weeks) and “earned” a passing grade. Most of the other kids had absurdly high levels of absenteeism.
The issue of safety is important, too. I knew of one boy who was hospitalized because of a brutal beating from rivals after school. There was a case in the news a few year of a special ed student who was sexually assaulted in the bathroom by several boys. The principal never reported it to the police- the story made the news after the girl’s family reported the assault.
The issue is not funding. The last time I looked at funding levels for the school, RBHS was getting more per capita that north end high schools Roosevelt and Ballard.
@6
You make valid points. Can it be argued that it is a leadership issue? It seems that the administration has let the lunatics take over the asylum (as the saying goes). End social promotion, crack down on absenteeism (in the district where I work 8 absences = loss of class credit), and have a discipline system where students suffer real consequences for their actions. Stop the nonsense. If a teacher can’t handle classroom management, fire them. If the administrators don’t support the staff, send them their walking papers.
If you give a teenager an inch, they take a mile. This is especially true for kids that have no role models at home. The powers that be at RBHS just lack the political will to crack down. Why the hell are the expectations at RBHS so different from other school in the district? Where is the outrage? Or do we expect this because it’s “just” a bunch of black kids?
The mind boggles.
Concur with @6 and @7. Parents have a responsibility for the kids they brought into this world as does the neighborhood. “It takes a village to raise a child.” I drive past RBHS every day, to me it looks like a daycare warehouse to park kids for the day and not a center for learning.
What I would like is to see is for the school to outreach to the neighborhood. If they are having a sports game at RBHS encourage folks to attend even if we do not have kids of school age. The article talks of the Paul Roberson Performing Arts Center, I have never heard about any preforming arts occurring there.
If the kids attending RBHS saw that the community cared enough about them to come to the school, that can only have positive outcomes for all.
The above assumes that their are activities actually occurring at the ‘school’, if they are not then that is another problem.
Thank you for making an effort to address the unmentionable truth that most parents view RBHS as a complete pit, however…OVER MY DEAD BODY will my children go to Rainier Beach High School.
I don’t really understand why, instead of addressing some of the very basic and fundamental needs at the school, the first move is to consider implementing special programs like IB International Baccalaureate, Law Magnet, IT , Sports Medicine, or Arts Programs.
How about first doing backround checks on staff so they might be just a little less likely to exploit the students by selling them drugs to them, being sexually inappropriate, or just generally unfit role models. I realize that there are many outstanding staff at RBHS, but unfortunately the few well-publicized instances of RBHS staff foibles have created the public perception that the staff there is one step away from the penetentiary.
How about addressing the fact that the RBHS kids use Beer Sheva park as their personal substance abuse headquarters? Could I, just once, take my kid to the park and NOT have to walk through a crowd of sullen teenagers shrouded in cloud of pot smoke?
My perception, as a parent, of RBHS as a whole has been extremely poor-probably partly because the information I recieve is whatever is filtered down to the community via the media or my awkward trips to Beer Sheva park with my children. What’s that you say? Get more involved? Go to community meetings? Support RBHS programs? Sure-I’ll start doing that as soon as I’m not working 60 hours a week to support my family-hopefully enough to send the kids to a private high school when the time comes.
Good luck with your efforts, and thank you for taking a positive approach. I’ll be right there with you as soon as I get off work (never.)
I applaud the Rainier Beach PTSA for being pro-active and taking a stand for RBHS. Critics aside, it’s a work in progress.
Good article in the Sunday Seattle Times re: West Seattle Elementary School. A school with new staff experienced in working with challenging students and funding mechanisms to raise test scores. There’s hope for every struggling school.
Re: High absenteeism, state law requires students to be in school, when there’s a high number of unexcused absences the student and guardian is referred to King County Juvenile Court’s Truancy Calendar.
I for one am thrilled to see the RBHS PTSA take this on. And I also have to agree with the poster who mentioned trying to reproduce what was done at Garfield. The CD is similar in demographics to our area in so far as socioeconomic diversity is concerned. RBHS needs to be able to support struggling students and those working above standard—and everything in between. Garfield seems to manage this. There’s no reason RBHS can’t too.
Actually, Solvay-Garfield has a long history of not serving the African American students there as well as the more advanced students who are overwhelmingly white. Look at the new school reports that came out today-only 17% of AA students passed the math portion of the state test. That’s not a new, suddenly low number either.
Garfield does have students from different socioeconomic and racial backrounds but that doesn’t mean tits doing right by all of them. Mark well, what’s going on at RBPC already isn’t far off from what’s happening in the lower socioeconomic and minority populations at Garfield. The high scores overall at Garfield using the APP high achievers’ scores just mask the problems.
And it’s also no secret the the student body is decidedly split along racial lines. There’s SOME mixing, but it’s plenty obvious there’s a split. It happens before the kids arrive at Garfield though. The counselors at WA Middle School we spoke to just last year made it very clear that the kids in different programs keep to themselves.
And believe me, this is nothing new. I know people who attended Garfield, 20 and 30 years ago who tell the same story. So-what exactly do we want to replicate?
agibean—so what do you suggest? I’m serious.
RBHS has two problems: How to serve the struggling students and how to attract the people in the neighborhood who have shunned the school? And remember, this group includes African-American students as well; I know a lot of them. I’ve always said it’s a very tough job to serve a broad expanse of students with varying abilities and backgrounds equally well usually one group suffers.
Are you attending the meeting tomorrow? If so, I’m eager to hear any ideas you might have. I want the school to succeed.
What part of the phrase “not interested” does Seattle Schools not understand? Does the RB staff (bless their souls!) really believe that luring students is just a PR problem….just a slight issue of public perception that can corrected with slight changes?
Best thing is to close RB down for a couple of years, fan out the current population around the city….then when the dust settles, reopen it as an IB or some kind of Mensa magnet school…
The real tragedy is that, with Lake Washington and all the astounding athletic/cultural located within a few hundred feet of the school, it prob. COULD be about the best HS in the entire state!
Right on Stan. I have often driven by RBHS to think “my goodness, what an amazing location to be by the lake” but it is the peoples actions that contribute or detract to a school or neighborhood.