Tag Archives: sccc

Capitol Hill’s Seattle Central drops ‘Community’ from college brand

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A game of musical chairs at a Seattle Central Unity Fair past (Image: Dave Lichterman for CHS)

A game of musical chairs at a Seattle Central Unity Fair past
(Image: Dave Lichterman for CHS)

Seeking to “raise the ceiling” for its system’s students, the Seattle Community Colleges District Board of Trustees have voted to drop the word “community” from the names of the three schools in its system:

At its meeting on March 13, the Seattle Community Colleges District Board of Trustees voted unanimously to change the name of the District to Seattle Colleges and to change the names of the colleges to Seattle Central College, North Seattle College and South Seattle College.

Capitol Hill’s campus will now simply be known as Seattle Central College. The decision hasn’t been a big hit with everybody, of course, given the symbolic connotations of the word and changes to the colleges in recent years that have optimized operations sometimes at the expense of broader program and service offerings. The name change was raised and criticized Saturday at the minimum wage rally held at the Pine/Broadway campus. A student publication looked at the planned name change and the issues it raised for the campus earlier this month.

In a statement, SCCC SCC officials said the change was good for the school’s image and a more accurate description of its mission. “We believe this will inspire prospective students to reach higher than they thought possible,” district chancellor Jill Wakefield said. “With the same open admissions policies and the same low tuition, local students can start at a local college that can eventually take them all the way to a bachelor’s degree.”

The name changes are expected be fully implemented by September for the start of the Fall Quarter, school officials said.

School notes | Changes at Lowell Elementary, SCCC considers dropping ‘Community’ from name

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Edison School cooking class, 1955 Item 168627, City Light Photographic Negatives (Record Series 1204-01), Seattle Municipal Archives via Flickr

Edison School cooking class, 1955. The building is now part of the Seattle Central campus.
Item 168627, City Light Photographic Negatives (Record Series 1204-01), Seattle Municipal Archives via Flickr

The CHS Community section welcomes anybody to post items of area interest to the site. This week, we have some useful submissions about area schools to share. Those posts and a handful of additional Capitol Hill school-related news, below.

  • Lowell changes: In addition to new attendance boundaries, an “advanced learning” program is planned to be part of Lowell Elementary’s 2014-2015 school year. This community post has more details of the newly centralized Spectrum Program at the E Mercer public school:
    Boundary changes will increase the existing attendance zone for Lowell to approximately double its size and will now include families who live in the downtown Seattle area between the Puget Sound waterfront and I-5 from Broad Street to James St.
    In order to create a centralized location for a Spectrum program in Seattle, Lowell will have a Spectrum Program beginning in the 2014-2015 school year.  The addition of the Spectrum Program will build heavily on the existing Advanced Learning Opportunities (ALO) instructional framework and incorporate the Writing, Inquiry, Collaboration and Reading (WIC-R) methodology to accelerate and target student success in math and reading.CHS wrote about the boundary changes at Stevens and Lowell here previously.
  • SCCC name change? A Seattle Central student publication reports that the Seattle Community College system — and SCCC — are considering a name change to drop “Community” from their branding:
    The Seattle Community Colleges (SCC) Board of Trustees (BoT) is considering whether to drop “Community” from the name of SCCC and other community colleges in the district. Advocates of the change say that “Community” is inaccurate and outdated, while opponents say that dropping “Community” from our name implies dropping it from our mission.A rally planned to oppose the proposal is planned for the campus Wednesday.
  • Preschool celebrates 50 years on Capitol Hill: In another CHS Community post, we learn details of the 50th anniversary of Prospect Enrichment Preschool. The school at 1919 E Prospect utilizes the Prospect Congregational United Church of Christ building:
    This story begins in the early 1960s when church members were discussing the church’s relevance to the world and in particular, its Capitol Hill and Central Area neighbors. Discovering that the Seattle School District lacked funding for needed preschool programs in the schools and that some children were entering kindergarten without the opportunity to attend preschool like their more economically advantaged peers was impetus for the Prospect community to take action.
    A small army of volunteers worked with the Seattle Public Schools to establish a non-sectarian preschool program with a strong curriculum. They contacted local elementary schools to identify families whose children would benefit from a preschool experience and went door to door in neighborhoods to recruit families. This dedicated team also recruited other volunteers to work in the classroom and to drive the children to and from their homes. A head teacher was hired, and in the fall of 1964, several years before the federal Head Start program began, the doors were opened to the first class of three and four year olds at Prospect Enrichment Preschool.

With developer selection process for Capitol Hill Station properties impending, group shifts focus of its advocacy

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(Image: Capitol Hill Champion)

(Image: Capitol Hill Champion)

Change is about to accelerate on Broadway’s central strip. After several years of planning and negotiation, all eyes are about to turn to potential developers for the land around Sound Transit’s Link Light Rail Capitol Hill Station, and the Capitol Hill Champion group, a player in the development process since 2010, is wasting no time preparing to shift its focus.

Champion steering committee member John Akamatsu presented an update of the Champion group’s most recent efforts—the group advocates to secure the inclusion of what they have identified as features beneficial to the community in future developments on the land—at the January Capitol Hill Community Council meeting last Thursday night. Akamatsu is also vice president of the Community Council.

“We want Sound Transit to hear the community,” Akamatsu said about the Champion group’s planned efforts to influence Sound Transit’s developer selection process. The group — a joint venture between the Capitol Hill Community Council and the Capitol Hill Chamber of Commerce — will also be working to influence the developers making a bid for a parcel of Sound Transit’s prime real estate. Continue reading →