One day before his 6-year-old started at Broadview-Thomson Elementary School in Seattle, Ryle Goodrich was on the phone with the police department.
He was walking near a sprawling homeless encampment on the edge of school grounds when he spotted a sword in one of the tents.
“I have to go right now and call the police because I saw a sword back there,” Goodrich told KOMO. “After that, I have to go and calm my child and convince myself and him that it’s OK to go back to school tomorrow.”
Another parent, Ocean Greens, told KIRO-7 he is keeping his children out of school until the area is cleaned up.
“There is no other school [that has] an encampment next to it in the union, let alone the state or the city,” he said.
PARENTS FURIOUS OVER HOMELESS CAMP ON SCHOOL PROPERTY – BUT BOARD SAYS IT’S A TEACHABLE MOMENT
Despite multiple pleas from anxious parents such as Goodrich and Greens to remove the camp, the district has said no. They argue that sweeping the 50 or so tents of homeless people would send the wrong message to children and believe keeping them up would provide an up-close, in-person lesson in compassion.
In fact, Seattle School Board President Chandra Hampson and Director Zachary DeWolf have demanded that “sweeps never occur.”
“Our students deserve to see the adults behave compassionately and responsibly in the face of a tragically mounting homelessness crisis,” they said in a joint statement. “Sweeps are not a form of compassion nor do they demonstrate responsible adult behavior. In fact, they are decidedly inhumane and irresponsibly set people struggling with homelessness further into the margins.”
SPS spokesman Tim Robinson told the Washington Examiner that the district has received countless emails from parents applauding the decision to keep the encampment in place.
Goodrich was not one of those parents. He, like several others, has openly questioned “the judgment of those in charge of keeping your children safe.”
“Now, it’s getting to the point where I’m going to have to pull them out of school,” he said. “It’s completely out of control back there, it’s like Mad Max. They have propane tanks, they have weapons, there’s heroin. It’s unbelievable the school board is allowing this property to be completely unmanaged.”
People started camping behind the school last summer during the coronavirus crisis. It was a small group at first but has ballooned over the months.
The school district says it is handling the situation by putting a lock on a chain-link fence separating the playground and the encampment. They have also rerouted a path to the school.
Parents and neighbors in the city’s Bitter Lake neighborhood say it’s not good enough. They’ve called on the mayor to come in and clean up the encampment. But that is a lot easier said than done.
The problem is that the mayor lacks the authority to do anything because the school is on Seattle Public Schools’s property and not on city property. The city can’t get involved until it is specifically asked by the school board, nor can it override a decision the school board takes on the topic.
“They are a separate government,” Mayor Jenny Durkin said. “They are just like the state Department of Transportation or the city of Auburn … They are a governmental entity that owns its own property. They are like other property owners in the city of Seattle in that there’s legal steps that they would have to go through.”
The city has been able to step in and clear another homeless encampment near Edmond S. Meany Middle School because the encampment was technically on city property.
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In fact, city outreach providers had been working for months to connect people living at Miller Park to a shelter. After an extensive effort, the remains of the encampment were cleared ahead of the first day of in-person classes.
