Save Russell Ridge School - Maple Valley, WA

1 day left! Get out there and VOTE! Please consider Jessica Zielinski when voting for Tahoma School Board. We need someone with compassion and transparency in our district as well as someone who isn't afraid to hold people accountable for their actions.

Election season is on us. When you receive your ballot, please consider voting for Jessica Zielinski for School Board position 3. Tahoma deserves a change and she can be a big part of that!

Save Russell Ridge would like to promote change within the Tahoma School District! It's time to shake things up with some new blood and fresh new ideas! Jessica Zielinski is the person to do just that! Please consider voting for a new candidate this year, someone who has children currently in the school district and who understands the weight of her decisions and how they effect your children. We need someone who can be an advocate for ALL Tahoma children!

Folks in MV...please vote for Jessica Zielinski for school board. It's time for a change.

Save Russell Ridge would like to promote change within the Tahoma School District! It's time to shake things up with some new blood and fresh new ideas! Jessica Zielinski is the person to do just that! Please consider voting for a new candidate this year, someone who has children currently in the school district and who understands the weight of her decisions and how they effect your children. We need someone who can be an advocate for ALL Tahoma children!

Save Russell Ridge would like to promote change within the Tahoma School District! It's time to shake things up with some new blood and fresh new ideas! Jessica Zielinski is the person to do just that! Please consider voting for a new candidate this year, someone who has children currently in the school district and who understands the weight of her decisions and how they effect your children. We need someone who can be an advocate for ALL Tahoma children!

So why close Russell Ridge and start over in 2016?????

Tahoma school board votes to close Russell Ridge Center -... At the June 30 meeting the Tahoma School Board unanimously voted to close Russell Ridge Center

It's a sad day for Russell Ridge and especially the Tahoma School District. Unfortunately they didn't understand the gem they had with Russell Ridge. We are forever grateful for your support and effort to keep this school open for all kids who need this option. Tune in to King 5 news tonight at 10:00 for coverage on the closure.

An Open Letter to the Tahoma Board of Education:

Regarding the vote you will cast concerning the potential closure of Russell Ridge Center, the question you have before you is, "Which vote does the most good?"

Does a vote to close Russell Ridge do more good for the students of this district or does a vote to keep Russell Ridge open do more good?

So, let's look at each.

A close vote ... who do you help with a close vote? Since we now know that this school takes NOTHING from the other schools, not money, not space, not teachers, not additional time or effort from administration or staff, nothing, there's no help to any student in this district if you close this school. The budget provided by the state is more than enough to operate this school. There is no budget shortfall. The proof of an audit that supposedly took funding away was never provided. No such audit occurred and the funds provided by the state for the students of Russell Ridge are more than enough to keep this school operating in the black.

An open vote ... who do you help with an open vote? Most obviously, you help the current students for whom this school is home. Less obvious are the students out there who are struggling now whose parents don't even know this alternative exists. And maybe less obvious, but certainly just as real, you help the kids who would never go to this school by keeping this alternative available for the kids who WILL use it. There's an effort to reduce crowding using alternative experiences like Russell Ridge that the administration has not explored at all. Thus, you help both students and non-students of Russell Ridge, you help every student in the Tahoma district.

Now the other side of the coin, who does a close vote hurt? Most obviously, the kids of Russell Ridge. Less obvious, but on a larger scale, closing this school hurts the district. Closing this school takes away an important option and makes the district less robust and more rigid, giving those kids who need alternative options no choice in the Tahoma district. As well, the funds that are coming from the state due to the enrollment of these Russell Ridge students, those funds will not be finding their way into other Tahoma schools. Those funds are for these kids and it's highly unlikely that these kids are going to return to their neighborhood schools. After all, their neighborhood schools didn't work for them or they wouldn't have left to begin with. They're not going back, which means those funds are, most certainly not going to the Tahoma district.

And finally, who does an open vote hurt? ... NO ONE! Absolutely no harm is done by keeping this school open. No budgetary disaster looms, there's no risk of loosing state funding because of supposed low test scores, and no onerous process is placed on the staff or district to emerge from being a priority school, as we've learned, Russell Ridge is NOT a priority school.

The duty of this board is to do the best thing for the most students possible, to watch out for the underdog and to ensure that students get the best education for the tax dollars spent. I think of it in similar terms as the duty and oath of a doctor ... "Practice two things in your dealings: either help or do not harm". In this situation, a close vote will NOT help, but it will certainly harm, while an open vote does exactly the opposite, it both helps AND does no harm.

Please vote to keep this school open and, if you are a vote to keep the school open, but your board member peers are a vote to close this school, please fight for us, please be the voice of reason and please fight for these kids, these underdogs.

Thank you, Larry Baldwin

Anyone know more about this?

Jason Strong on Twitter “Tahoma's Mark Koch refuses to let disabled, autistic child attend next yr -Please retweet!”

Tonight is the last Tahoma School District board meeting before the vote on June 30th. Please come and show your support for Russell Ridge! Meeting starts at 6:30. Let's not go down without a fight!

"Schools need to recognize the assets that exist within the community" - Dr James Smith at today's Educational Opportunity Gap Oversight and Accountability Committee meeting. We got to present the misinformation given to the board by TSD regarding the closure of Russell Ridge. It's refreshing to find authority figures for the state who recognize the importance of parent involvment in their children's education and address those children who fall through the cracks. It was informative to be able to speak directly to Gil Mendoza the Deputy Superintendent of OSPI who gave us a lot of great information to hold the district accountable and beseech the board to make a moral decision based on the best information not misinformation.

Wondering why the Russell Ridge families are upset with the Tahoma School District? Read the most recent letter to the TSD school board to find out. This letter is titled Our Journey! Grab the popcorn, this is gonna be good!

Dear Members of the School Board,

Today I write to you to give you some background information on how the Russell Ridge parents began the fight for our school.

It all started the Monday after Rob Morrow's Friday, March 13th letter stating "the decision has been made to close Russell Ridge Center." We all met in a McDonalds to let the kids play while we had a round table discussion on how to show the district the benefits of RR. We wanted to focus on personal stories from the families who have and currently attend RR. We wanted you to hear the kids speak out about what RR means to them and how it has helped them with their learning. We wanted the community newspapers to do an article on RR and the valuable resource it is. We wanted to educate ourselves on ALEs and present the information we found so you could also see why so many are passionate about this school. Little did we know we were starting a journey of uncovering a series of false information.

It began with finding out that Russell Ridge is a school. It is funded by and registered with the state as a school and can not just be shut down without following proper procedure. Upon Mr. Morrow being confronted with this information, a letter was issued March 19th (but dated March 13th). It stating that 2 public meetings would be given. Had we not uncovered this information, Russell Ridge would have been closed down, illegally. We should not have had to research and find out WA state laws regarding closing a school, the district should have known them and followed the proper procedures.

We moved passed this and were happy to have an opportunity to plead our case at 2 public meetings. We immediately got to work and requested as much information as we could via public records requests so that we could be well educated and able to present as much information as possible during the public meetings. We were met with much resistance from the district when requesting records. We didn't understand why there was so much animosity towards us in this regard. At this point we were just a group of parents trying to save our school.

We wanted to show that RR can be financially viable, and if there were deficiencies, we wanted to be able to help in any way we could to make RR cost neutral. Being a parent partnered school we are very hands on, and if there was anything we could do to help RR we would do it. As it is, Lea shops at garage sales and consignment stores for materials RR needs so as not to spend much money. This is the group you have at RR, whatever it takes we would work towards making RR cost neutral in your eyes. However, upon reviewing the closure analysis and TSD public records requests and OSPI public records requests we found some discrepancies. The closure analysis shows that Russell Ridge revenue in 2013-14 was $317,074 and expenditures were $323,351. However, OSPI shows that WA State paid Tahoma $329,616 for K-8 ALE students for that school year. In our first presentation we asked why there is a $12,542 difference between our budget and what we receive from the state. We still haven't been given an answer to this question. The Voice of the Valley did an article on Russell Ridge and asked about this $12,000 difference. The state said the only thing that would cause this difference would be an audit and Lori Cloud confirmed an audit had been done in the Voice article. Here is the link for your records: http://www.maplevalleyreporter.com/news/299873091.html #

"Nate Olson, communications manager for OSPI, confirmed this was the amount apportioned, unless the school district sends a revised FTE enrollment number to them.
Lori Cloud, assistant superintendent and director of financial services for Tahoma, said that’s exactly what happened.
Cloud said an audit of the ALE programs was completed in March of this year, and the number for FTE enrollment decreased slightly as a result of the audit.
Due to this change, the district’s revenue for Russell Ridge changed to about $319,000 of the 2013-14 school year, which is still $2,000 over what the district reported. Cloud said that difference is due to an adjustment made to the previous year’s apportionment from the state." So basically she is saying there was an ALE audit that cost RR $10,616 ($329,616-$319,000) and there was still a difference of about $2000 ($319,000-$317,074) which had to be adjusted due to the previous year.

We requested this audit from the school district. Not because we were skeptical about the audit, but because we wanted to help get it adjusted. Several years ago, Lea was able to get a $40,000 audit reduced to $1,800 even though she was advised by the district to leave it alone and just pay it. She was able to clarify things to the state through a dispute. This was the only reason we requested the audit. It took 3 weeks to get this audit we requested. In the meantime we called OSPI about the March audit and they said they have no records of such audit. Upon receiving the audit from TSD, we found out that there was a district wide audit done which resulted in $2300 adjustment, not an ALE audit as claimed by Lori Cloud.

Remember, we started out passionate about showing you the benefits of RR and trying to prove we can be cost neutral if given the chance. We were blown away by the inconsistencies between TSD records, OSPI records and what was told to the school board at a round table in September. We requested the meeting notes from the September 14th school board retreat meeting and they appear to show that the school board was told that RRC was "over $100,000 in the red each year." I say appear to show because the notes are not word for word board meeting minutes and could be referring to the Tahoma Learning Community. You all were at that meeting, was it TLC or was it RR that was referenced as being 100,000 in the red each year? (We gave you the information on the ONE YEAR that RR was over budget by that amount and the fact that the district said they would not hold that year against us because of their HR problem with a displaced teacher and the fact that the schedule changed from week to week depending on blue/gold days and when she could be available for class).

Rob Morrow did speak to a parent who attended the community meeting Senator Mullet did in MV. She asked Sen Mullet what he though about ALE's in WA state. After the meeting Rob Morrow spoke with her and said "every year RR is over budget by $100,000 and we just can't have that." He also had a meeting with the PTSA presidents and discussed Russell Ridge. Here are the draft meeting minutes from that March 19th meeting (we obtained these from someone who was at the meeting, however we can not get the submitted meeting minutes via public records request because we are not a PTSA president):
"The Russell Ridge Program will close at the end of the school year. A meeting with the staff was held last Friday and a letter was sent home to all parents with students in the program. The district has run this home school partner program for the last 20 years. Recently the board has asked the program to become financially viable. Russell Ridge was unable to meet the benchmarks set by the school board. The announcement was made now to allow time to reassign staff and for parents to find other options for their students. The district pays an additional 8-10% per teacher above the FTE. With nearly half of the Russell Ridge students coming from outside the district, the school board needed to assure that local tax dollars were being spent on local kids. The majority of students in the program choose not to participate in state testing which results in a zero for the district, bringing our total scores down. While there is no connection between scores and funding, it impacts how the district looks in terms of progress. Portables from Russell Ridge will be repurposed at the elementary level to prevent the possibility of suspending all-day kindergarten for the next two years."

That was on March 19th! When did the decision get taken out of the boards hands and given to him? We were met with so much resistance from the community because of this meeting. People were commenting on our posts saying, "we had a meeting with Rob Morrow and he told us the FACTS. RR is costing the MV tax payers every year." This is so untrue, as we have shown, all money given by the state is more than enough to cover our yearly expenditures. In district and out of district kids get the same amount of funding from the state and in district kids get ZERO dollars from the levy. We've also shown that there are many out of district kids who attend other schools in the district and cost MV tax payers upwards of $4,000 above what the state pays for those kids.

At our 2nd public hearing we prepared our presentation on education. That day the district put up the information they were going to present to the board that night. We had just a few hours to research state law and educate ourselves on the information that was going to be presented to you all that evening. Upon speaking to OSPI and doing our research that day, we could not believe what Dawn was going to present to you all. We came prepared with the facts. She tried to tell you all that RR was a priority school.. that the state has deemed RR a priority school and there were now procedures in place to deal with it. You were presented with an email saying that RR is a priority school, but when she was confronted on that from a board member she changed her tune and said that is what it would look like if the state labeled RR as a priority school. Was there any accountability for those statements and that she changed her story around after we presented you all with the facts? WA state recognizes that statistically you CAN NOT compare ALE to traditional school. Our testing population is much too small to get an accurate statistical reading! They have not and will not consider RR a priority school due to the size! Here is an example for you: lets say 7 kids are able to test in any given grade (only full time students affect RR testing). 1 full time kid opts out which counts as a zero for the school. Now lets say those other 6 kids get 100% on the standardized test. The highest possible average of those testing kids is an 85.71%. All because 1 full time student exercised their rights and opted out of testing. I would also like to state that if ALL RR students opted out of testing, it would only affect TSD overall testing average by half a percent!

Can you see our frustration? I beg you to put yourselves in our shoes. We started out passionate to help RR meet all standards you set before us. We have disproved many of the facts put in the closure analysis. Do you realize that you have a group of parents who have started out on fire because of our love for RR and the TSD, and the district has beaten us down to the point where, at least I, don't have faith in this district anymore. Every fact we uncover is met with half truths. We went to the media because of all these inconsistencies and have been met with Kevin Patterson giving opposite information to everything we write and have source documents to prove. Here is a link to the news broadcast that King 5 did: http://www.king5.com/story/news/local/2015/05/01/tahoma-school-district-russell-ridge/26686021/ When we met with them, we couldn't understand why the reporter was stuck on the fact that RR is legally a school. We had already established that it was and Rob Morrow even said at a public meeting, no one is disputing whether or not RR is a school, we know it's a school. We found out it was because the reporter that afternoon had been told by the district that RR is a program and can be shut down at anytime! "Well that's not what the sign says, and if the sign says it's a school, so does OSPI" (quote from King 5 article). This is our frustration!!! The information that the district is putting out to the community and to you, the board members, is BOGUS! Every fact is turned into a falsity.
Here are 2 articles put out by the district to the community. Please read the comments we have made to each of these statements the district claims. We would be happy to provide any source documentation needed.
http://www.maplevalleyreporter.com/opinion/302844791.html
http://www.voiceofthevalley.com/editorial/letters_to_editor/article_497088bc-fde0-11e4-86dd-e3b50e63a6fa.html -comment-area

I'm going to leave you with this little bit of information. A RR parent shared this with me today: "I ran into a friend that works for the school district, and she asked if the RR parents know that the closing is a done deal. Then she condescendingly made a remark about "hoping the parents are done making a fuss". It was pretty bad. I told her that it wasn't over yet".

Is it a done deal? Have you made up your mind and just not told the RR families that we can stop fighting for our kids? The employees seem to think "the decision has been made." I thought that was your job as an elected board member? Does this job belong to the district instead? I know you're probably all tired of hearing about Russell Ridge. I'm tired too. I'm tired of the fight. I'm tired of the back and forth and changing of stories. I'm tired of the fact that these children are tossed aside and that we parents are being treated like a bunch of 2nd class citizens who can't properly educate ourselves, let alone our children. I'm tired of there being no accountability for the false information being put out by Rob Morrow, Lori Cloud, Dawn Wakeley, and Kevin Patterson. What are you, the elected board officials going to do to about it? Are they going to get away with their statements to the staff and community that the closing of Russell Ridge is a done deal, that there was an audit when there was none, that the children are below average on standardized test scores, that Russell Ridge is a priority school and that we are over budget by $100,000 every year and costing MV tax payers money.. or are you going to hold them accountable?


Thank you for your time, I truly appreciate all you do!

Adrianne

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