A letter to the community from Lauren Woodman of the McDonald School Design Team:

As many of you know, Seattle Public Schools (SPS) has recently implemented a new school boundary map that affects many of us in the broad Green Lake (and Wallingford, University Park, Ravenna and beyond) neighborhood. The focus of the plan is to develop and strengthen neighborhood schools. In the long run that’s a good goal, but not surprisingly, the new approach and resulting transition plans have raised questions and concerns from parents with affected children.

One big change is the opening of the McDonald School. The neighborhood for McDonald stretches both sides of I-5 and is sandwiched between Green Lake Elementary, JSIS, Bryant, Laurelhurst, and BF Day reference areas. More information about the assignment plan is at http://www.seattleschools.org/area/boundarymapa/images/Hamilton_Adopted.jpg.

A grassroots community has developed among many parents with children likely to attend McDonald. This group has focused on sharing information about the opening process, identifying community preferences and priorities, and helping guide the design team to ensure that all of the potential McDonald families have an opportunity to be involved if they wish to be. I know as a design team member I’ve found this process to be incredibly helpful in my thinking about what our community wants and needs to build a great school.

There have been many involved, but not everyone that might be a McDonald family. At our last community meeting, we had a long and robust discussion about how more proactively reach families that might want to be involved but aren’t sure how to do so, or who might have children at another elementary school who were hoping to stay but want to evaluate or shape recommendations made for McDonald (many Green Lake Elementary, JSIS and Bryant families might fall into this category).

I encourage you to get involved if you have a child that *might* attend McDonald, want to learn about the McDonald opening process, or have experiences from other elementary schools that you’d like to share. We want the discussions to be as inclusive and broad-ranging as possible so that the widest scope of perspectives is surfaced, discussed and incorporated.

There are several ways to stay informed and get involved:
- Join the McDonald School mailing list through Yahoo! group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/McDonaldSchoolSeattle/
- Visit the McDonald school blog at http://mcdonaldschoolinfo.blogspot.com/
- Reach out to any of the design team members (contact info posted below)
- the latest community meeting notes are on the Yahoo! site at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/McDonaldSchoolSeattle/files/Community%20Meeting%20Notes/

Finally, I would ask that you share this outreach with anyone you know that might be affected by the opening of McDonald school and encourage them to be involved. We welcome all comers. Conversely, if there are opportunities for those involved to date to come to you to hear input and solicit feedback, please reach out.

At the end of the day, we are accountable for the school that serves our neighborhood, and all of our schools will be better for our kids and for the community if we are engaged and involved. I hope that if you have thoughts on the opening of McDonald you will share them in whatever way you feel comfortable.

Thank you,
Lauren Woodman

Design Team Members for McDonald
• Carolyn Cunningham cunningham.carolyn@gmail.com
• Sarah Koch sarahekoch@gmail.com
• Lauren McGuire mcguirelauren@gmail.com
• Nytasha Sowers nytashasowers@yahoo.com
• Alex Thorbeck athorbeck@yahoo.com
• Lauren Woodman lauren_woodman@hotmail.com

Ed. note: link to “Green Lake reacts to the proposed new Seattle Public School boundary maps” and bold emphasis added.