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Thursday, April 12, 2012

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Co-Housing / Co-Locating

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Co-Housing / Co-Locating:


Co-Housing / Co-Locating

Seattle Public Schools is following an ass-backwards process in which they are starting with construction plans and will then follow with decisions about where to put programs. There are programs that need a home, such as north-end elementary APP, The NOVA Project, new language immersion programs and more. A rational process would start with the question "What students and programs do we need to house?" and then determine what they need to build and where they need to build it, the District has chosen to start by designing and locating buildings, opening buildings, expanding buildings, and closing buildings and then, later, they will try to assign programs to those buildings.
As they do this, they will be looking for a number of programs to either co-house or co-locate. Some quick nomenclature. Co-located programs are two completely separate programs which are both in one building. The way that NOVA and the S.B.O.C. now share the Meany building is an example of co-location. Each school is a completely separate entity, each with their own principals, staff, and rooms. They share some space, such as the library, but they have separate identities. Other examples include Denny/Sealth, and McDonald and SNAPP