Parents accuse Bellevue School District of favoring rich kids in school closures 

By Mahlon Meyer
NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY

When the Bellevue School District (BSD) opened its newest, state of the art elementary school on pristine wetlands and powered by geothermal energy in 2018, at a cost of $49 million, its principal did a welcoming dance in a video to show off the school.

As she led the camera through the Microsoft Showcase school, showing classrooms that could be converted to learning pods for smaller or larger groups, she also pointed to teachers in a large group, waiting to teach kids.

Today, however, issues of equity are dampening the shining reputation of the school—and raising questions about the district’s commitment to fairness.

According to Tim Chiang-Lin, an attorney representing parents, U.S. Department of Education investigator Steven Riley will decide whether to initiate an investigation next week into the district’s decision to “consolidate” Wilburton and one other school.

There may be ample cause.

According to multiple interviews with parents and teachers, many are having misgivings about the direction of the school, Wilburton Elementary—and their district.

Some of their concerns center around what they see as a recent decision by the district to displace the relatively low-income and diverse student body of Wilburton, and one other school, and move in students from relatively affluent families to the spanking new—and in the case of the other school, recently remodeled—facility.

One longtime teacher, speaking anonymously for fear of professional retaliation, reflected concerns that are widespread, according to a group of parents that have formed a grassroots organization calling for an investigation into the closures and consolidations.

Although the district has publicly stated that its decision to “consolidate” Wilburton and Eastgate Elementary is a way to save money in the face of a $31 million budget shortfall, this educator said the move was actually done to favor families of higher socioeconomic status—the families of students who go to Jing Mei Elementary and Big Picture Elementary who will be moved into those emptied schools.

“This is 100% true. Follow the money and look at the current school board and where they live,” the teacher said.

The district has characterized its position, instead, as a painstaking and difficult process to do whatever is necessary to keep offering programs and resources to all its students, while facing budget difficulties that are affecting schools locally and nationally.

Little clarification offered

After requesting to review quotes, the district declined to offer more than a single clarifying comment in response. It also, at the last minute, canceled a phone conversation it had requested to discuss the story.

“I don’t think having a phone conversation will produce a more balanced story that will empower you to give your readers any factual information about what is clearly happening in public education regionally and nationally,” said Janine Thorn, a spokesperson. “I will ask that you review the responses originally provided to you via email and consider adding data to back up many of the assumptions and opinions stated by your sources. It is a difficult time for many of our families and I acknowledge that on behalf of the district.”

The district’s response: declining enrollment

In a first set of emailed responses, the district strongly disputed the characterization captured by the response of the teacher. According to Thorn, the decision to close Wilburton and Eastgate was initially made because those schools had the greatest rate of declining enrollment, a statistic that some parents question.  

It attributes the decline, which occurred across the district, to the pandemic, rising housing costs, and declining birth rates here and nationwide. As a result, the district said, the average enrollment would have dropped to a level that could impact state funding if it did not “rightsize” schools in the district.

“We had too many elementary schools compared to the number of elementary students we are serving. Right sizing the district will provide the funding that will allow us to continue to offer the services most needed by impacted students,” said Thorn.

The transfer of students from Jing Mei to Wilburton and from Big Picture to Eastgate means those two facilities can house student bodies of over 400 students each, said the district.

“The state funds elementary schools assuming there are 400 students enrolled in those schools. A district can manage some lower enrollment schools if it has enough larger schools to balance out the funding and resources,” said Thorn.

At the same time, however, the district said Jing Mei was in a building that no longer meets the district’s standards (the building completed a $4.8 million renovation in 2016). Big Picture, according to the district, likewise, needed to be remodeled.

Calling for an investigation

But Chiang-Lin, who is leading the grassroots advocacy group Parents Advocating for Children, said state data shows that the district appears to be in violation of state and federal laws since its actions appear to be favoring families whose kids come from not only more affluent backgrounds, but who are less diverse. 

“Bellevue School District’s [BSD] school closure plan disproportionally favors the affluent, and discriminates against the students of lesser means, neurodivergent students, students with special needs, and students who qualify for section 504,” he wrote in a letter to district officials, the state superintendent of public instruction, the civil rights office of the U.S. Department of Education, and the state attorney general. Section 504 refers to a national law that prohibits discrimination against anyone based on a disability.

“Our immediate goals are to make you aware of BSD’s [mis]conduct in perpetuating race, economic and caste segregation, and request an investigation to determine whether BSD’s actions complied with both state and federal law, including law against discrimination and preferential treatment.”

Giving to the rich?

Using data from the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI), Chiang-Lin showed that 26% of the students at Wilburton (that are being dispersed) are low income (In fact, the number may be much higher, since the cut-off for a family of four to qualify for “free and reduced” meals, is $36,000. A penny more, and the family is no longer considered “low income.”)

The students that are taking their place, from Jing Mei, are only 8% low income. At least one member of the current BSD Board has sent a student to Jing Mei, according to parents in the district.

The disparities seem to continue. Wilburton has 7% homeless kids. Jing Mei has 0%. Those with disabilities at Wilburton are around 11%. At Jing Mei, the number is around 4%.  

Finally, at Wilburton, there are 29 languages spoken. At Jing Mei, there are two.

“Wilburton Elementary School has achieved not just racial diversity, but also economic and caste diversity that mirrors the district. It is an achievement that was brought about by decades of community investment in funding public school construction through levies, and community commitment to hiring, training, and retaining a talented pool of teachers from multitudes of cultures,” said Chiang-Lin. “Yet, [former superintendent] Art Jarvis, his deputies, incoming Superintendent Kelly Aramaki, as well as School Board President Sima Sarrafan, and board members Carolyn Watson and Joyce Shui either advocated or voted to shutter this diverse school to expand a racially segregated, economically privileged, a homogenous ‘caste’ school. Their official actions are an affront to the values of diversity and integration in public education.”

Asian hate?

The district countered such assertions in several ways. Publicly, leaders have apparently sought to cast the sense of betrayal and outrage felt by parents at Wilburton as “anti-Asian hate,” since Jing Mei students are mostly Asian.

Five days after Chiang-Lin sent his letter to the district on May 17, summarizing concerns of parents whose students were being dispersed, Chhoun Mey, principal of Wilburton, in an email to the community, asked “community members to stand up against Asian Hate and racism.”

When asked if the district was attempting to reframe the protest as racist, while parents said they were, in fact, objecting to socioeconomic discrimination, the district did not respond directly. Instead, it gave a breakdown of the racial demographics of each school. Chiang-Lin said the message appeared to be that anyone questioning such a transfer, since it involves a school with a large Asian population, is engaging in anti-Asian hate (Chiang-Lin himself is from Taiwan). 

Jing Mei is 74% Asian while Wilburton is 41% Asian. For the district as a whole, Asians make up 47%, with 27% white, 15% Latino and 4% Black (This contrasts with the demographics of the city, with 50.2% white, 38.4% Asian, 7.7% Latino, and 2.7% Black residents).

Jing Mei’s high proportion of Asian students derives from its being a “choice school,” with instruction in English and Mandarin, and 50% of its kindergarten spots reserved for siblings, in contrast to neighborhood schools that draw from and reflect the demographics of their surroundings. 

Not the most impacted school

At the same time, the district said Wilburton’s number of students on free and reduced lunches—who thus qualified as “low income”—had increased to 26% only recently because of the location of a homeless shelter, Mary’s Place, within the school’s boundaries. Before that, free and reduced lunches at Wilburton were an average of 10.9% over three years, a number closer to Jing Mei’s. 

The district also seemed to suggest that focusing on the low-income students at Wilburton was blown out of proportion since there were other schools in the district that were more “impacted.” 

“Our highest poverty school has a 62% free and reduced lunch percentage and our lowest has 4%. The district average is 21%.  These schools [Wilburton and Eastgate] are not the most impacted schools in the district and do not serve our most impacted families,” said Thorn.

Moreover, Mary’s Place “will be relocating to a permanent location in the next school year,” said the district, meaning its students will no longer feed into Wilburton. This means, in effect, that the incoming students from Jing Mei will continue to remain in an environment devoid of the unhoused.

Questions of equity?

Parents interviewed for this article, including Kelly Smith, who attended multiple board meetings to protest the decision, shared another concern. The director of the district’s equity department, Shomari Jones, told her and others that he “did not have a seat at the table” in the decision, they remembered. This was confirmed by Thorn.. 

“Just because Shomari wasn’t at the table, doesn’t mean equity wasn’t considered,” Thorn told Northwest Asian Weekly.

After reviewing these quotes, Thorn added, “Shomari and an administrative team developed the critical criteria review used in this process. There is a greater context that would provide balance to this assertion.”

But the district’s consideration of equity—as spelled out in multiple responses to questions from the Northwest Asian Weekly—seemed to focus on the entire school district.

The argument made was that only by redistributing students could the district keep up services and programs for all students at all schools. 

“If we continue to support small enrollment schools, then we will need to reduce services offered to students at the small enrollment schools and throughout the district,” said the district.

Still, both parents and teachers said the school was unique in the district for its supportive atmosphere—which could not be replaced by shuttling students to other schools.

Sam Radics, a second grade teacher at Wilburton, in a district special board meeting on March 2, read comments from another employee. The school had been the first in the district to incorporate a full inclusion special ed model. It was also the first school for many immigrants to the U.S. As a result of its inclusive atmosphere, it was the only school in the district where non-binary and trans students were accepted by all teachers and all other students. She added, “This is not true of the rest of the district. The district talks about inclusion and equity, yet we prioritize specialized schools for gifted children. You just need to look at the statistics about free and reduced lunches and special education at these schools to see this is true.”

“The district lied to me”

To the parents of students at Wilburton (and Eastgate) who are losing a dearly beloved, and by all accounts, highly effective community, the dispersal of their children feels like a betrayal.

Gloria Ifanse, 31, is the mother of twin girls who just finished second grade at Wilburton. Her daughters, Titi and Tari, 7, are awaiting diagnosis at the University of Washington Autism Center.

In an interview, Ifanse said she first heard the school might close in an email from the school.

Later, she learned of parents going to board meetings to protest. Finally, she said she heard from multiple teachers who told her they were “saddened” by the decision.

Then, at the last minute, she said, she found out her daughters were being sacrificed for a group of new students.

“The school district lied to me,” she said. “If it was just needing to shut down the school, that would have been one thing. But instead they are going to move a whole bunch of kids in.”

A tightly knit community

Wilburton was good for the twins. The community of families and students, though coming from diverse backgrounds, never discriminated against her or her daughters—unlike in other parts of Bellevue.

Shortly after she first moved to the city, Ifanse tried to bring her daughters into an Italian restaurant in what she described as the “old” part of Bellevue, “just to look, to see if we might want to eat there someday.”

But the kind of stares and cold shoulders she got from servers and management made her vow her kids would never suffer the same thing again.

Wilburton had a relatively high proportion of neurodivergent students, she said. She and her daughters always felt supported.

“They could always count on their classmates. If they were having trouble forming words or expressing themselves, the other kids knew what they were trying to say and would say it for them to the teacher,” said Ifanse, who has gone back to school to complete a degree in computer science.

But this was only the beginning.

In the close-knit atmosphere of Wilburton, where each staff member knew the needs of each kid, from the custodians to the front staff workers (many of whom have lost their jobs), her daughters thrived.

When they arrived three years ago, Titi and Tari could not stand still in line for the bathroom but would try to run out of the building.

They were given electronic tablets to express themselves, hitting keys for “angry” or “good night” (they also used the tablets at home).

Ifanse initially felt “horrible” going into teacher meetings.

“But the teachers would always say, ‘Progress is happening, we’re moving along,’” she said.

And the twins did make tremendous progress.

By the end of this year, the two girls were highly vocal.

“Their favorite activity was to tell the class what they did on the weekend or over holidays—Christmas, Easter, and Halloween, especially, when they dressed up as cheerleaders,” said Ifanse, whose parents were immigrants from Nigeria.

The community extended beyond the classroom.

If only one twin mistakenly got an invitation to a birthday party, Ifanse would call up the parents and both would be invited.

“They were always loved and supported,” she said. “Even though the parents all came from different backgrounds, we all shared similar struggles.”

Ifanse is dreading their “starting all over again” at Clyde Hill Elementary in the fall. The neighborhood is not as diverse. Their beloved paraeducators, speech therapists and occupational therapists, who have coached them all the way, will not be with them.

Asked what she would say to district leadership, if she could, her anger suddenly gave way to helpless sadness. 

“I just wish they could bring Wilburton back to us, somehow—that something could get resolved. I would love for my children to be back there,” she said.

A drop in students

The district said its predicament is revealed by the declining enrollment numbers. From 2020 to 2023, the average enrollment in district schools dropped from 498.3 to 434.6, it said. Without moving students around—what the district calls “consolidation”—the average enrollment would drop to 397.4, it said. “With consolidation, the average enrollment is 447.1,” which puts schools above the threshold of 400. 

Such a drop also shows up in a decrease in larger elementary schools, and a corresponding increase in smaller ones, said the district.

From the years 2019-20 to 2022-23, schools with fewer than 300 students grew from zero to three. Schools in the 300-400 enrollment range also increased—from two to five. 

But larger schools took a hit: the number of schools with 400-500 students dropped from eight to seven, while those with 500-600 dropped from five to two, and those with greater than 600 students dropped from three to one.

Questions about data

Still, some parents, who said they handle data for a living, questioned the demographic and statistical methods used by the district, adding that the district lacked adequate transparency.

In response, the district said, “Previous school district has been sharing this information with our community since October of 2022 with respect to the budget, anticipated budget shortfalls and the lower enrollment. Our demographer presented to the board in a public session in November.” 

The district also said that the massive changes brought about by the pandemic threw off predictions about a return to financial stability.

“The 2022-23 school year was the first school year since the 2019-20 school year that school districts opened without any impacts from COVID-19 like mask wearing, physical spacing, lunch outside, etc. Many believed that enrollment would come back as the pandemic ended,” it said. “However, the official enrollment count in October of 2022 provided a clear picture that enrollment was not coming back at pre-pandemic levels, nor could we expect it to in the next 5 to 10 years. The majority of our enrollment loss has been at the elementary level and is now moving into middle schools.”

Still, the most striking challenge to the computations used by the district in its decision making came from the office manager at Wilburton, Megan Bechthold.

At a special board meeting on March 2, she said the district had relied on incorrect data to determine that Wilburton was among the three schools in the district with the lowest enrollment. The district had overcounted those students who were enrolled in the school and came from outside the attendance area by multiplying their numbers by the number of years they had been enrolled.

For instance, a single fifth grader was counted as five students, since he had been attending for five years.

This enabled the district to claim the number of students enrolled in the school—who were not outside its attendance area—was 279.

When Bechthold ran the numbers, she found the actual number of students enrolled was 312.

“That would move Wilburton out of the bottom three in enrollment,” she said.

Bechthold said she emailed district leadership three times without a response.

“The decision,” she said, was made in a “disingenuous manner and based on incorrect statistics.”

Other ways to save money?

District leaders thought through many other strategies to save money, the district said. These included reducing staff in under-enrolled buildings, laying off assistant principals, counselors, librarians, paraeducators, and general school assistants. Their conclusion was that such a move would end up affecting service and program levels at all elementary schools. 

“Bellevue school district did consider other alternatives to closing buildings. Our goal throughout this process has been to stabilize our financial position. We have already lost enough enrollment at the elementary level to close up to five elementary schools. Maintaining under enrolled elementary schools throughout the district further erodes our financial stability,” said Thorn.

Chiang-Lin said, however, that the central administration budget grew from $25.5 million to $30.2 million, an 18% increase, between fiscal year 2020-21 to 2022-2023. At the same time, public relations expenditures increased from $789,000 to $1.24 million, a jump of 57%.

Jarvis, said Chiang-Lin, “led BSD to become the first district in the state to close general education schools due to the recent decline in enrollment.”

Bond money redirected to help families that are taking over the schools?

The issuing of bonds has complicated the picture, and increased pressure on the district to explain its actions. In 2014, the district raised $450 million in bonds. In 2020, it raised $675 million, the largest ever bond fund in the district’s history. At a May 18 special meeting attended by one parent—who complained the district was being “secretive” and other parents hadn’t known of the meeting—the district collapsed the accounts bearing the separate bonds into a single account.

(The district said it had advertised the meeting in the Seattle Times as with other meetings).

Clarifying the combining of the accounts, a district spokesperson, Gargi Trichel, said, “This resolution requests that we can use 2014 bond monies for 2020 bond projects and visa-versa.  This change will give the district an opportunity to share costs between 2014 and 2020 bonds. This change would ease the fiscal management of all the projects by being able to use funds from a single account as opposed to keeping them separate.” 

The 2020 bond funds were originally slated to be used to remodel several schools, including Jing Mei and Big Picture. But after the special resolution was passed, the money was allotted for a different purpose.

Nevertheless, it was still centered around meeting the needs of the students from Jing Mei and Big Picture—in fact, it would follow them, according to Trichel.

Rather than remodeling or rebuilding Big Picture and Jing Mei—the original intent—the money will now be used to “repurpose another facility deemed appropriate to meet the educational needs of the Big Picture School” and to “repurpose another facility deemed appropriate to meet the educational needs of Jing Mei Elementary School.”  

In other words, the funds will evidently be used to upgrade Wilburton, already the newest school in the district for the benefit of the students being transferred there from Jing Mei. Likewise, Eastgate, completely rebuilt in 2009-2010, apparently will also be upgraded for its new students—coming from Big Picture.  

When Northwest Asian Weekly sought to confirm this understanding of the amendment to the bond fund text, the district replied, “No additional facilities information is available at this time.”

The district was scheduled to hold a regular board meeting Thursday, Aug. 3 at 4:30 pm.

Mahlon can be reached at info@nwasianweekly.com.