Superintendent's Message

January 2009

Dear Shoreline Families:

(The Shoreline School Board and Superintendent Sue Walker have sent the following letter to the North/East Cities and the City of Shoreline regarding the proposed jail on the Aldercrest Annex property owned by the District.)

As you know, the Shoreline School District owns the vacant Aldercrest Annex site (also known as Grace Cole Educational Complex and ‘Old Kellogg’), which was recently proposed by the City of Shoreline and NEC as one of six potential locations for a new 640-bed municipal jail facility. While the Shoreline School Board has declared the property surplus and no longer needed for school purposes, no decision has been made as to its future use or sale.

As we are sure you understand, the possibility of this site being selected as the new jail location is of grave concern to the Shoreline School District and the parents and students that the District serves.

As an initial matter, the District is distressed that the Planning Group chose not to involve the School District in the site pre-selection process. Had the Planning Group done so, the School District would have been able to explain why this site is inappropriate even to be considered as a jail site, much less to be chosen as the jail site. Unfortunately, the Planning Group did not provide us with that opportunity. Accordingly, this letter is our first opportunity to do so.

Our first and most immediate serious concern is that the site is directly adjacent to an active school site, Aldercrest Learning Center (2800 NE 200th Street, Shoreline), home of the Discovery School (Interlocal agreement school serving Snohomish, Northshore and Shoreline special needs students) and the Living Wisdom School. This site is not on the District’s surplus list and there is a possibility that with increased enrollment in the future, this site would become one of the school district’s traditional elementary schools. We trust you would agree that it is inappropriate from a security perspective to site a large jail facility directly across the street from an active school educational program that serves vulnerable children and it would create a public safety risk to students.

Our second concern results from the length of time that the Planning Group intends to take in making its site selection. Being identified as a potential jail site will cause a serious chilling effect on the District’s ability to market the Aldercrest Annex property. The extended delay of the sale and/or long-term lease of the school district’s property directly impacts the financial resources of the school district and its ability to provide for our educational program. For example, interest earnings from the sale price of the property could be used for curriculum and other instructional materials in the general fund – a notoriously underfunded aspect of public education in our state. The unintended financial damages caused to the school district would be significant.

Our third concern is that, while the Planning Group goes through the lengthy process to select the jail site, in the interim the Aldercrest Annex site will continue to deteriorate and create an expensive maintenance, liability and security issue for the School District. Considering the inadequate facility and maintenance budget available to public school districts, this imposes a serious hardship on the school district.

Our final concern, but certainly not the least, is that the Aldercrest Annex site is the only residentially zoned site of the six sites identified, and therefore the only site in a residential neighborhood. This fact creates a hardship on our residential community, devalues the adjacent property and lowers our tax base. Obviously, a municipal jail site would add nothing to the tax base in Shoreline and would only negatively impact our existing tax base. This will result in reducing the ability of the City and the School District to meet the needs of Shoreline and its citizens.

In conclusion, the Shoreline School District does not believe that the Aldercrest Annex property is an acceptable location for a municipal jail for the reasons stated above, and therefore the School District is not willing to sell its property to the NEC for this purpose. The School District respectfully requests that you remove the site from the list of potential sites of the municipal jail. We would suggest that if you are going to consider a Shoreline site for the jail, the best choice would be the highest scoring Shoreline site in the Carter Goble Lee analysis for NEC, the Fircrest property.

Sincerely, Superintendent Sue Walker and members of the Shoreline School Board