With school cutbacks in the air, Seattle parents embrace neighborhood schools

As school lets out for the day, Betty Gray waits patiently at her post outside Stevens Elementary. You can't miss her, with her neon yellow vest and bright orange flag on this gray late November day.

"Miss Betty," as the kids and parents all call her, is something of a fixture at Stevens. The 80-year-old has been the tiny, tight-knit school's crossing guard for nearly 15 years — a friendly face many students see at the beginning and end of each school day.

Gray's job is an especially important one at a school like Stevens, where over half of students regularly walk, bike, or scooter to school.

For Gray, the part-time job gives her something to do in retirement — and, more importantly, keeps her involved in the community she loves.

Her favorite part of the job? That's easy.

"The kids make it special," Gray said quickly, with a laugh. "They are sweethearts. I have a paper. If they don't obey me in the crosswalk, I could write them up. But I've never written up a kid."

Long-time staffers like Gray are part of what makes small neighborhood schools like Stevens special. They're the people who make it feel like home.

RELATED: Seattle Public Schools' budget woes continue

As several Seattle schools faced the threat of closure this past year, KUOW decided to look at the role schools play in a neighborhood, and the sometimes hidden ways they knit together a community.

Meetings got heated and personal, as individual schools fought for their survival last fall — and these difficult conversations are not over. The district still faces a major deficit, and is expected to start laying out budget cuts this month.

Parents and staff from schools that had been on the chopping block say they're relieved. But they're nervous for what's ahead — whether it's closures in years to come, or their beloved schools being gutted by budget cuts.

Besides staff, something else families value is the unique programs and services that vary from school to school, like STEM-focused learning or language immersion.

That's what initially drew Rachel Kubiak and her husband to John Stanford International, an option school with dual language immersion programs in Spanish and Japanese.

So, they enrolled their oldest son there for kindergarten. It went really well — at first.

"It works great for a lot of families," Kubiak recalled. "My son was really happy there in kindergarten. He loves Spanish."

But in first grade, he struggled. Kubiak and her husband learned their son is autistic, and he needed a more supportive school environment.

"It was just really hard for him, and got to the point where he couldn't last a day in school," Kubiak said. "It was too stressful, too anxiety-provoking, too demanding for him."

Finding the right school for their son was awful, Kubiak said. At some points, they considered switching to private school or even moving.

"There aren't great options for kids who learn differently in Seattle," she said.

Then, Kubiak heard about Sacajawea Elementary. The small northeast Seattle school has become something of a haven for students with disabilities who couldn't get the resources they needed in other neighborhood or option schools.

More than a third of students at Sacajawea receive special education services, and Kubiak feels students' different abilities are embraced — even celebrated.

Since moving to Sacajawea, Kubiak has seen firsthand how kids in her son's class feel comfortable being themselves.

For example, Kubiak said, her son's second grade teacher read a story about diversity and kids with different abilities. During and after story time, kids raised their hands to share things like, "I'm autistic," or, "I'm diabetic," with their class.

"It's just a piece of who they are. It's not a thing," Kubiak said. "I think that in itself is special."

"The world won't treat him that way," she continued. "But in this school, he can be himself and be accepted, and that's a really special thing."

Kubiak is happy Sacajawea is no longer at risk of being closed this year, but it feels like temporary relief.

"There's still a lot of uncertainty around what it means for Sacajawea in the long term," she said.

RELATED: Seattle Public Schools drops contentious closure plan following months of waffling and backlash

Seattle Public Schools still faces a nearly $100 million budget deficit. District officials are hoping to get more funding this legislative session, at a time when the state is facing its own shortfall.

RELATED: 'We are at a crisis.’ Seattle Eastside schools call for increased state funding

And even if that extra funding does come through, the district will still have to slash at least $30 million.

So far, officials have hinted at changing school start times and laying off staff. That idea is already getting community pushback.

At a School Board meeting last month, some students urged the district not to cut school library staffing and hours.

Lillian Stowell was among them. She's a seventh grader at Denny International Middle School. Almost 250 students there have signed Stowell's petition to keep the library open and fully staffed.

"There's no place more important than a school library," she said. "When the library is open all day, people can stop by any time for a book recommendation from our librarian — a thing that's so important, but often overlooked. Finding the right book is key to learning to like reading."

Meanwhile, some school board members have continued to argue that closures are still necessary down the road.

For Ken Beatle — and many other parents across the district — the rollercoaster of school-closure discussions and budget conversations has sown distrust and frustration.

All four of Beatle's children have attended Sanislo Elementary, what he sees as a hidden gem of a school in West Seattle.

Beatle and his family love the school's great diversity and teachers, and most of all, the way it brings the community together.

"It's like that sort of corner store that everyone goes to," Beatle said. "Once you know it's there, it's like, 'Oh, that's the good one. That's the one you want to go to,' because it's just so great."

Beatle is grateful the school will remain open next year. But he believes systemic changes are needed.

"It's a better answer than we had before," Beatle said. "But I feel like there needs to be more transparency. There needs to be better budget management, a better hiring process, a better retention process, better enrollment — better everything, pretty much."

The district's next budget update is expected at the School Board meeting next Wednesday, Jan. 22.