Seattle Schools have no plans to moderate a move to "incorporate" the Pathfinder K-8 program with the current students at Cooper Elementary School by next fall.

Some Pathfinder parents were talking about "big changes" in the proposal announced by Schools Superintendent Raj Manhas last week.

"There are no changes now planned," school district spokesman Peter Daniels told the Herald late Friday afternoon. The district is expecting "site teams" from Pathfinder and Cooper to talk through the consolidation of the two school programs into the much newer Cooper building. No students from either program are being "kicked out" and the Cooper building is large enough to accommodate "most of the students." Students at Cooper Elementary School could either join Pathfinder's program or transfer to another school in the area.

"The two programs should be able to coexist in the Cooper building," Daniels said.

The announcement last week also said the district planned to close Roxhill Elementary School by the 2007-2008 school year.

If approved by the Seattle School Board, parents of this year's Roxhill School students would likely have to choose between Arbor Heights Elementary, three-quarters of a mile southwest of Roxhill or Gatewood Elementary one and three-quarter miles northwest.

The closure recommendations were made according to principles established by the Seattle School Board. The principles are to "sustain and create academic effectiveness;" aim for "equity," and "minimize disruption to students, families and staff."

Roxhill Elementary School, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary, wound up on the possible closure list due to its poor building condition, small site, and comparatively low scores in reading and math, according to the superintendent's report.

The report also recommended moving Pathfinder K-8 because it's been housed in the former Genesee Hill Elementary School, which the report stated "is among the worst in the district, both in terms of educational adequacy and building condition."

Calls to the Parent Teacher Student Associations at each school brought different reactions.

"We're not happy, obviously," said Pamela Robert, president of the Roxhill Parent Teacher Student Association.

Roxhill got a "bad rap" for its academic scores, she said. She pointed out that 68.8 percent of Roxhill students passed the reading portion of the Washington Assessment of Student Learning. Meanwhile Arbor Heights Elementary, one of the schools to which Roxhill kids could transfer, scored only minimally better in reading at 69.2 percent.

Robert also said 80 percent of the Roxhill faculty have earned masters' degrees or higher.

She said she was attracted to Roxhill School's racial and cultural mix, which is the most diverse in Seattle. Its approximately 335 students are black, Asian, Latino and white. They come from Somalia, Ethiopia, Mexico, the Philippines and several Southeast Asian countries so there's a thriving bilingual program there.

Seventy-eight percent of Roxhill students are nonwhite compared to 40 percent at Arbor Heights School, Robert said.

"We'll have to go to majority-white schools," she said.

Despite the school district's published criteria for choosing which schools to close, Robert said closure decisions boil down to schools with the poorest students economically. Eighty percent of Roxhill students are people of color who come from households with income low enough for them to qualify for reduced price lunch. Poor people often don't participate in the democratic process of lobbying decision makers and organizing campaigns to try to get their way.

The reaction was quite different at Pathfinder School.

"It's a wonderful fit," said Amy Daly-Donovan, co-president of Pathfinder's Parent Teacher Student Association of moving the school to Pigeon Point. Cooper School is on a large site near the West Duwamish greenbelt, which presents new possibilities for Pathfinder's outdoor education and environmental awareness programs, she said.

The educational approach at Pathfinder is what's called "expeditionary learning" through which many academic disciplines come into play as students explore a theme subject.

"We're still held to the WASL (Washington Assessment of Student Learning) scores," Daly-Donovan said. "It's not that we take education lightly, just differently."

Cooper students would be welcome to enroll in Pathfinder School, Daly-Donovan said.

Cooper Elementary School has capacity for 461 students. Last year, there were only about 250. (This year's counts for all schools won't be available until October.)

Pathfinder had 387 students last year. Even so, the superintendent's report states that Pathfinder could absorb all of the Cooper students who choose to stay

Seattle Public Schools plans to assign two principals to Cooper next year to help with the transition but some Cooper parents think their school will be supplanted by Pathfinder, and in the Cooper building.

"They're shutting down the program at Cooper without saying so," said Lois Gaylord, last year's treasurer of the Cooper Parent Teacher Student Association. "They are effectively closing Cooper."

She thinks the Pathfinder program is fine. She even visited the school as she pondered where to send her son but decided he'd do better in the more structured atmosphere at Cooper School.

She also is concerned about Cooper students whose parents decide to send them to another school in the northern West Seattle "cluster" of schools. Last year, Alki and Schmitz Park elementary schools were overcapacity and there were only a handful of openings at Lafayette.

Meanwhile a decision was made in phase one of the school-closure effort to combine Fairmount Park Elementary with High Point Elementary at the newer High Point School.

"Where are they going to put 250 kids (Cooper's enrollment) in the north cluster?" Gaylord said.

She also pointed out the demographic differences between Cooper and Pathfinder. Cooper students are 39 percent black, 26 percent Asian, 14 percent Latino and 12 percent white.

Pathfinder, on the other hand, is about 58 percent white, 14 percent black, 12 percent Latino and 8 percent Asian, Gaylord said.

About a fourth of Cooper students take "transitional bilingual" classes in which they learn in their native language while easing into speaking more English.

"These are two programs serving two completely different demographics," Gaylord said.

Gaylord also is worried about the future of Cooper's autism program with classrooms just for autistic students, who need stability, she said.

While one-third of students at Pathfinder qualify for reduced price lunch, 74 percent of Cooper students do, she said.

"If they want an alternative program, it shouldn't be at the expense of low-income kids," Gaylord said.

Seattle Public Schools intends to prepare a districtwide plan for what to do with its closed school buildings. Among the options will be leasing or even possibly selling some facilities, said school district spokesman Daniels.

"The focus will be on generating more revenue," he said.

Currently the school district allows privately run before- and after-school programs to operate rent-free in the schools. The rent-free policy will be re-examined, Daniels said.

The school district is studying ways to make money with its facilities to reduce its budgetary troubles.

"People have told us we're not using our real estate very well," Daniels said.

The school district has always been reluctant to sell school buildings because the populations, economics, ethnicity and culture of neighborhoods change over time. Although it might make sense to sell a surplus building today, school district officials hesitate because experience has taught them demographics are pliable.

Besides, selling a school building helps the bottom line only temporarily.

"It's a one-time shot (if a school building is sold)," Daniels said.

The superintendent's report estimates approximately $869,000 in operating expenses and about $964,000 in capital costs could be saved with the proposed closures in West Seattle. There could be additional savings from reduced maintenance costs and canceled seismic work.

Tim St. Clair can be reached at tstclair@robinsonnews.com or 932.0300. Editor Jack Mayne contributed to this report.