Edmonds School District officials are pushing ahead with plans to have Scriber Lake High School move in with the Edmonds Homeschool Resource Center for two years, despite the concern of parents and community members.
At a packed board meeting Nov. 14, Ellen Kahan, assistant superintendent, announced that the decision was made and not negotiable.
What followed was more than two hours of public comment asking district officials to reconsider.
Mixing kindergartners with teenagers is a bad idea in general, some opponents said.
Others said they chose the home-school center to shield their children from unwanted influences or violence they’d experienced at a regular public school.
“We want to choose how topics like drugs and sex are taught and modeled,” said Mary Dunlap, a parent of three children at the center. “We can turn off the TV and radio, (but) imposing the (Scriber) setting on our campus is like pulling the plug on our choice.”
Sharing the campus with Scriber would expose students to teenagers, some of whom use drugs and are disruptive or violent, parents said.
“At Scriber, there were over 80 police calls last year, including arrests for assault,” said home-school parent Paula Perez.
Parents asked officials to give the center a permanent home, rather than housing it at a transition site. Sharing the building with an elementary school also would be OK, some said.
Some spoke in support of the Scriber move, including Edmonds-Woodway teacher David Quinn. He said the district’s sale and shuffling of property to fund capital projects like a new Lynnwood High School was a good use of his taxpayer dollars.
Scriber student Katherine Kepler said she felt hurt by parent comments.
“No matter what you’ve read in the police reports, it’s a few bad apples,” she said. “You haven’t spoken to students and teachers, you’ve spoken to people with a bias. We’re not trying to shove reality down your throats.”
At meeting’s end, Superintendent Nick Brossoit acknowledged the quality of the home-school program and the desire of parents to keep children safe.
However, the Woodway site is in better shape than many permanent schools in the district, he said. The district’s ability to renovate those schools stems in part from its sale of some properties and shuffling of others, including the Scriber site. That plan was approved in concept by voters in February.
“I strongly disagree with (the) suggestion that these kids aren’t worth being around or (aren’t) safe,” Brossoit said. “That is just not accurate.”
Students who bring weapons to school are expelled permanently, he said.
District officials are moving ahead with their plans, as they’ve already explored other options, Kahan said after the meeting.
“I don’t know that it’s logical to pull an elementary out of their building and relocate them,” she said.
Officials have been meeting with parents about their concerns. For example, parents said they didn’t want to share any part of the building with Scriber and that looks to be possible, she said.
District officials and parents will meet Nov. 29, while a meeting of administrators, staff and parents is set for the second week in December.
Paul Veillon, a home-school parent who filed a lawsuit this month to stop the move, said opponents are not judgmental of Scriber students and have been misunderstood.
“These are bright, sensitive, and creative kids, and the programs take kids who need help the most and turn them into success stories,” Veillon said in an e-mail. “But some of the students, even those who eventually succeed, make some bad decisions, and it’s those decisions we care about.”
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