Why Green Lake Elementary Should Remain Open 

Our teachers and staff got together and came up with these amazing talking points about what makes Green Lake Elementary irreplaceable. Feel free to use these when leaving comments on the District's Let's Talk forum, or if you find yourself in a position to speak up for our school!

>>Medically Fragile Program

>>Educational Justice

>>Programs

>>Facilities

>>Enrollment

>>History and Community

>>Staff

Team A (Medically Fragile Program):

• Green Lake has one of the few medically fragile programs in the city, and is an amazing program (I believe they modeled tele-school during the pandemic) and there doesn’t seem to be a clear plan in place for where the program will go and how it will be transitioned.  Not every school has a setup to accommodate that program.
• Closing our school would have rippling effects on our medically fragile community. Many students at Green Lake have very complex care needs and rely on a multidisciplinary team of specialty-trained educators and support staff. Closing down Green Lake will completely dismantle the lives of these students and their complex school care team. This could have deleterious impacts and catastrophic consequences and could potentially even lead to avoidable and premature student deaths.
• If Green Lake Elementary School closes, what happens to the Team A students— students who are medically fragile? Where will this tiny population of students furthest from educational justice find community within the larger school community?  How about their families?
• Our Team A classroom is our students’ curriculum. Has there been critical and intentional thought around classrooms for students who have multiple physical, cognitive and sensory disabilities and what they need to thrive during any school day? 
• Each of the Team A students have a wheelchair, a stander and often specialized seating equipment outside of their wheelchairs, along with other huge pieces of equipment like Hoyer lift—has there been thought of where this equipment will be stored? The classroom for students who are medically fragile is a large classroom and it is able to accommodate equipment.
• Team A needs space for equipment as well as spaces around the classroom for getting out of wheelchairs and onto mats for working or resting. The Team A classroom at GLS has this space.
• The Team A classroom (classroom for students who are medically fragile) for students at Green Lake School is big and has been modified for our students with a bathroom with a flushable toilet in a private area connected with a larger bathroom area with a sink for washing hands and sometimes clothing. There is enough room for 2 raise/lower changing tables along with room for wheelchairs (seems simple, but a lot of proposed spaces absolutely don’t work once you get a couple of wheelchairs in them due to lack of space).  There’s also a washer/dryer as we do a lot of laundry throughout the day —other staff also use the washer/dryer during the day for their students.
• Our Team A classroom has a designated kitchen with a refrigerator for storing our students’ specialized foods and medications. Life skills and sensory activities are also taught in the kitchen, which students can then generalize to their own kitchens. 
• The Team A classroom at Green Lake School also has a sensory wall with a bar for students to hold (if this is a skill they’re working toward) and work on looking and reaching for items.
• The Team A classroom also has a built- in vision/sensory room where students can work in a quiet and darker setting with staff being able to highlight specific areas to work on visually with a flashlight in a smaller space.
• Our Team A classroom is also connected to our medically fragile preschool classroom—this is essential for peer interactions and activities, collaboration with staff and related services like physical therapist, etc and for SAFETY.
• Green Lake Elementary has a playscape that ALL kids can have fun on—including kids who use wheelchairs. Do other schools have accessible playgrounds for students who use wheelchairs?  There’s 2 issues—access to the playground via ramps and access to playscape items like a merry-go-round (like Green Lake now has).
• Green Lake School has a sensory garden with raised beds so kids in wheelchairs can still access everything that is growing at wheelchair level. The sensory garden is a perfect place to work on using your senses.  It’s also a perfect place to work on self-regulation in a peaceful and green space.
• The Team A classroom has ceiling mounts (mounted to building frame) which allow us to set up an adapted bench swing in which our students experience vestibular and proprioceptive input.
• The Green Lake Elementary Team A classroom also has a door that’s accessible to the outside of the school, so parents can drop their students off directly to our room. This greatly helps our families as well as our students.  They can easily have sensory overload from too much noise, commotion or too many people in one space at once (like the hallway). This is also the door we use when medical dispatch is called during a 911 emergency (which happens much more frequently in our classroom than in general education classes).  The door to the outside allows medical teams to quickly enter our classroom in an efficient manner without interrupting the entire school.  It also gives our students greater privacy than being wheeled down the hall in an emergency. 
• Our Team A families also have dedicated parking space to drop off their child in front or our classroom. Do other schools have dedicated parking for families who use disabled parking—and in particular families who have children who use wheelchairs?  Our families are used to coming in the front of the building like every other family does.  Has anyone bothered to look at other buildings and consider how people/students in wheelchairs enter the building?  In other schools it can be around the side or even in the back of the school building.  Has anyone stopped to consider how this might make students and families feel??  How would it make YOU feel?

Helping students furthest from educational justice:

• Cedar Crossing (a near-by low-income family housing development) kids need stability. Many of the students from there are housing insecure, recent immigrants, and/or children of color. The school is within walking distance and has a close connection with the school liaison.
• We have many students with Multi-Language Learner status who have developed a strong community. The number of Spanish speaking students continues to grow rapidly
• We have all of the Sped programs the district is pushing for to establish “Well Resourced Schools” yet are missing the supports needed to make it successful. Most of our programs are overenrolled.
• We have a great School Nurse and back-ups for our Type 1 Diabetics and for our Spina Bifida student.
• We have several CPR, AED, PDA and First Aid trained employees.
• We have ESL, PT and OT employees.
• We have wonderful Focus, Resource and Extended Resource programs.
• We have taken on students that have been turned down or suspended by other schools.

Programs:

• If K-8 options schools and language immersion programs are continued, there needs to be a traditional school in the neighborhood for kids who do not wish to attend those programs.
• We are one of the only schools which has a swimming program due to our proximity to Evans Pool at Green Lake.
• We have a dedicated drama department which puts on fantastic school plays every year.

Facilities:

• We have new construction that went into the stage, cafeteria and playground.  It seems like a waste to let that all go. 
• We have a new accessible playground thanks to the PTA, parents, and community.
• We have Doors that are accessible for wheelchairs to playground and to sensory garden (push a button, door opens)
• Elevator –other floors of a building need to be accessible to ALL
• Green Lake School has a sensory garden with raised beds so kids in wheelchairs can still access everything that is growing at wheelchair level. The sensory garden is a perfect place to work on using your senses.  It’s also a perfect place to work on self-regulation in a peaceful and green space.

Enrollment:

• They are talking about schools with low enrollment.  They predicted us to have 320.  We have 375. And we get new kids every single day.

History and Community:

• We have a well-established PTA with strong connections to the school.
• Green Lake Elementary was one of the earliest schools in Seattle Public Schools – it was opened over 130 years ago!

Staff:

• Staff love working here.