The Seattle School District presented to the public a preliminary draft of its new Student Assignment Plan that is scheduled for implementation this fall, but some local parents are petitioning against it out of concern the new system could force students out of their neighborhoods.

Dr. Tracy Libros, manager of enrollment and planning for Seattle Public Schools, said the district decided to split up the schools into three types; attendance area, service and option schools.

She presented the draft plan on May 6 at a community engagement meeting held at Ingraham High School.

“Each attendance area school has a geographic boundary and students are assigned to those schools based on their address, this is kind of the starting point,” Libros said.

Elementary attendance area schools would act as a filter for nearby middle schools in the area, so students who are in the elementary area will go to middle school together, Libros said.

As for students in K-8 attendance area schools, they too will be a part of the same middle school attendance area.

“We have attendance area schools most of which are K-5 and some K-8,” Libros said. “The logic was that students in most schools have been assigned there as their attendance area schools for elementary. They haven’t necessarily indicated a preference for K-8 schools, so when they reach 5th grade those students will be assigned to the middle school in that middle school attendance area but if they wanted to stay in K-8 they could.”

Secondly, service schools are schools that provide programs like the secondary bilingual orientation center, home school resource center, special education consortium, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Institute School and intervention service.

Most service schools for middle and high school will be provided in attendance area schools but they will not be able to provide every single type of service that students will need, Libros said.

“We’re shifting our service to put programs here and there often where we have space, which may not be where the kids live but we send the kids out to those programs,” Libros said. “So that means children who are receiving those kinds of services will have more predictability and continuity rather than be moved around, this is what we do quite a bit now.”

Lastly, option schools, more commonly known as alternative schools, are not based on attendance area but rather based on application and individual needs.

As for transportation to each type of school, school bus services will be provided to elementary and middle school attendance area and option school students; along with metro bus passes for high school and middle school attendance area and option school students who have chosen an attendance area or option school outside of their service area.

Service school transportation will depend on the type and location of services, student’s address and student’s grade level.

Still, some parents are worried about how the boundaries will be split up in the process and still hope the school district will consider their ideas. These ideas include the promotion of student health by encouraging walking and bike riding to school; safety (i.e. walking instead of multiple un-safe Metro transfers); and supporting a healthy and close knit community.

Three Ballard parents, Eric Blumhagen, Mary Beth Lambert and Anne Forrester, have started a petition to support the idea of keeping kids within their community schools.

“It started with us understanding that they might be doing the boundary lines in a new way in this area because there was a problem about the amount of kids that could fit in a high school,” Forrester said. “Ballard looked like it could be over enrolled and Ingraham right now is under enrolled, so the idea is that they would transfer Ballard kids north so they would fill up that school and have more room for kids who don’t have a high school to come to Ballard.”

Understanding that this was just an idea that had been tossed around the district, Forrester said that it was clearly something that the district had been thinking about.

“From a community standpoint it’s damaging,” Forrester said. “Our kids would have to be going north so they wouldn’t be a part of the community. Even in an environmental standpoint it’s crazy because it doesn’t fit the model we’re trying to fulfill."

Forrester, Blumhagen and Lambert now have more than 700 signatures in support of the petition.

“Some of the strongest reactions I’ve heard are from community members who don’t have kids,” Lambert said. “It just doesn’t make sense in a community perspective and for the cohesiveness of the community.”

Lambert said the district has been interested in hearing multiple voices and perspectives and in addition to the petition they’ve encouraged people to write letters and to testify at School Board meetings.

“We’re interested in working with the district and board members to reach an outcome that makes sense for larger Seattle and for Ballard families,” Lambert said.

Libros said the next steps for implementation is to finalize the plan so the board can vote on it in June.

“Once we have that we’re not done, then we have to develop an implementation plan to phase it in,” Libros said.

Their plan is to grandfather in current students if they want to stay at that school, said Libros.

Libros will be introducing the final draft of the Student Assignment Plan to the School Board on June 3.